WW News Service Digest #375
1) Choice for steel workers at LTV
by WW
2) Milwaukee: Another Black man dies in police custody
by WW
3) World Trade Center cleanup workers denied pay, safety
by WW
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 23. tammikuu 2002 17:23
Subject: [WW] Choice for steel workers at LTV
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 24, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
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CHOICE FOR WORKERS AT BANKRUPT PLANT:
IT'S EITHER LOSE UNION JOBS OR DEMAND CONTROL OF LTV
By Martha Grevatt
Cleveland
Throughout the month of December, developments involving the
bankrupt LTV steel company were daily front-page news in
Cleveland. This ought to have been the case. Some 3,200 jobs
were on the chopping block. Many times that number were
indirectly threatened with losing work, and tens of
thousands of retirees were worried about their health care
benefits.
Yet on Dec. 30 the articles stopped. What happened?
Before the bankruptcy court proceedings had even begun, LTV
had gone behind the backs of the United Steelworkers of
America and started to lay off workers and permanently shut
down operations.
The USWA was able to negotiate a delay in the company's
plans. While nearly all of the workers are currently laid
off, the mills remain on "hot idle," a condition that allows
mills in Indiana and Illinois as well as Cleveland to be
restarted.
They will remain in hot idle until Feb. 28, leaving open the
possibility that a buyer for the mills will surface. If no
buyer is found, however, steelworkers will lose all hope of
ever going back into the mill. The mills will switch to cold
idle, a condition that makes restarting the mill's equipment
impossible.
On top of that, the workers will stop receiving
supplementary unemployment and pensioners will lose their
health benefits.
In a booming economy, this might give workers enough time to
find employment elsewhere, but the current recession has
attacked northeast Ohio with a vengeance. Cleveland Steel
Container and American Steel & Wire have already closed
down, taking 1,400 jobs away. Republic Technologies
International, WCI Steel, and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel are
facing collapse.
Now Ford has announced 1,000 immediate job cuts for this
area, with more to follow. The Regional Transit Authority is
laying off bus drivers. As a result of all these job losses,
evictions are at an all-time high.
Of course, scabs are always needed at AK Steel in Mansfield,
Ohio, where workers have been locked out for over two years.
This union-busting outfit is replacing LTV as a major
supplier to the auto industry.
On Dec. 21 it was announced that USWA District Director
David McCall had brokered a deal to better attract a
potential buyer. This deal would abandon the successor
clause in the contract. A successor clause requires a buyer
of an operation to recognize the union at the operation and
abide by the contract in effect at the time of sale.
Without the successor clause, workers who do get recalled if
a buyer is found will most likely have to work without a
union. They would work for substandard wages and benefits
with no seniority rights or job protection. The new owner
could pick and choose which, if any, workers got their jobs
back. Everything won through decades of struggle would be
thrown out the window.
What could the response be of rank-and-file steelworkers to
such a humiliating capitulation?
Whatever the mood of the workers was, it was not considered
prime-time news. After this earth-shattering announcement,
the front-page news articles disappeared. A feature story in
the Cleveland Plain Dealer on "The State of Steel" featured
numerous ailing companies, but not LTV.
After the news broke on the dropping of the successor
clause, a full nine days passed before the Steelworkers
leaders held informational meetings for union members.
Thousands of workers attended these meetings, most with 20,
30 and more years of service at stake. Yet there was no
coverage in the local papers.
One can only speculate that there was tremendous outrage at
and rejection of this latest concession by workers who have
already each given up thousands of dollars to keep the
company afloat.
To add insult to injury, a news article finally appeared in
the first week of January that suggested US Steel was
considering buying the LTV operations. US Steel was
unionized in the first half of the last century. Could it
now be allowed to operate a nonunion mill right in the heart
of Cleveland? Wouldn't this be used to force concessions
from union workers at US Steel and at Bethlehem Steel?
How could the Steelworkers accept this? Is there no other
strategy?
Since December of 2000 LTV has been in bankruptcy
proceedings. Legally, the creditors are the de facto owners
of a company in bankruptcy. All of the previous concessions
during the past year, which only bought time for the
workers, were negotiated between the Steelworkers and the
financial institutions to which LTV is indebted.
The problem with this picture is that the union itself is
the largest creditor. It is owed millions in pensions for
current and future retirees. The future of tens of thousands
of workers, retirees and their families is involved.
The Steelworkers union has not only the moral but the legal
authority to own and operate the mills.
The city government can accelerate this process under its
powers of eminent domain. It has used eminent domain fairly
recently--but against workers, not for them. Many workers
were forced to vacate their homes to make way for the
expansion of Cleveland Hopkins airport. Others may be forced
to do the same to allow a Tops supermarket to build a larger
store. If the city has the legal power to do this, it has
the power to intervene for the workers. What it lacks is the
political will.
The Peoples Fightback Center distributed leaflets to
thousands of steelworkers that provided a perspective of
struggle, in contrast to the bleak alternatives of either
selling the plant to a non-union buyer or shutting down and
dismantling valuable means of production built over years of
toil.
The leaflet raised the critical issue of who owns LTV when
the company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy:
"Once LTV management declared bankruptcy, they LEGALLY gave
up their ownership rights. ... It's time for the USWA and
union members to assert your rights to be the trustees and
run the company. ... Who else built the equity of the third-
largest integrated plant in the country but USWA members
with their labor? Who else has the skills involved in making
steel from iron ore to finished steel? ... Who else has the
equity in health care funds--over $85 million that current
employees and retirees built working 20 to 30 years?"
The leaflet concludes: "If Judge Bodah [the bankruptcy
judge] refuses to honor your legal rights as the principal
creditor to ownership, it's appropriate to petition under
eminent domain principles to occupy and operate LTV plants
to protect your equity."
The leaflet was well received, according to the Peoples
Fightback Center. One of the distributors was Frances
Dostal, the wife of Ted Dostal, a longtime union militant in
United Steelworkers of America, now retired, who led many
struggles in the Youngstown/Cleveland area, particularly
those of retirees.
Workers' control under capitalism is only a temporary
solution--unless it is anticipating an upsurge in the
working class movement, which is challenged by thousands of
similar bankruptcies, plant shutdowns and layoffs during the
recession.
There is a fightback alternative to the desperate strategy
of buying time with concession after concession. But even
with the laws to back it up, it will require mass
mobilization of the workers and the community at large.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 23. tammikuu 2002 17:24
Subject: [WW] Milwaukee: Another Black man dies in police custody
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 24, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MILWAUKEE: ANOTHER BLACK MAN DIES IN POLICE CUSTODY
By Bryan G. Pfeifer
Milwaukee
One can't possibly imagine the terror Mario Mallett felt in
his last few minutes on Dec. 27 as, according to
eyewitnesses, he lay face down, pepper sprayed and
handcuffed, in the back of a barren police van on a bitter
cold winter day.
Mallett, a 29-year-old African American son, father, brother
and husband, never made it out of police custody alive--like
dozens of other victims of the Milwaukee police.
For six days the Milwaukee Police Department refused to
release Mallet's name to the press or public, evoking
outrage from the African American community. The community
only learned his name upon the release of the medical
examiner's preliminary report on Jan. 2.
In the early evening hours of Dec. 27, police were called to
27th and Lisbon streets in the heart of Milwaukee's African
American community. According to police accounts, Mallett
had no jacket on and was running in and out of traffic
erratically. Upon making contact with Mallett, the police
claim he fought with them and grabbed for a shotgun in a
police car while biting an officer.
The police admit pepper spraying, subduing and handcuffing
Mallett behind his back. But this is where police and
eyewitness accounts diverge.
The police say they placed Mallett in a police van in a
sitting position secured with a seatbelt, but didn't monitor
him--a violation of Milwaukee police policy. Eyewitnesses--
including two sisters aged 12 and 17 who watched from their
home across the street--say the police forcibly subdued
Mallett and placed him face down in the police van. They say
that Mallett didn't grab for the shotgun and only seemed a
little tense--not out-of-control as the police claim.
Other witnesses say Mallett was in the street trying to gain
control of a pet dog that had gone astray. Upon arrival at a
local hospital, Mallett had no pulse and was not breathing.
He was pronounced dead moments later.
On Jan. 8 Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen
issued a final report that stated Mallett died from cardiac
arrhythmia or "acute exhaustive mania," which can't be
proven. No independent autopsy was conducted.
At a scheduled press conference, Jentzen claimed Mallett
became so agitated when scuffling with police that his heart
developed an arrhythmia and ceased to function sometime
after he was put in the van. Jentzen admitted Mallett never
had a heart problem. He also said that an undiagnosed sickle
cell trait and cold weather played a part in his death.
Mallett's mother, widow and friends challenged this
immediately. They said Mallett had never had any health
problems. In fact, Mallett was in top shape, working as a
construction worker. He was also a former semi-pro football
player.
Mallet's widow has requested an inquest, which will take
place in the coming weeks, and has hired counsel with the
aim of filing a civil suit against the city.
The African American community and its allies have been
conducting their own investigation into what they see as
another murder cover-up by the Milwaukee police, City Hall
and the district attorney's office.
The Coalition of Justice for Mario Mallett has demanded that
the police be charged with Mallett's murder and is seeking a
community investigation into the racist terror policies of
the Milwaukee police, which are sanctioned by the city's
ruling class. Over 30 Milwaukee residents--the majority poor
African American and Latino--have died either in police
custody or in contact with the cops since 1990.
Nationally, over 2,000 people have died in this manner since
1990, according to the book "Stolen Lives: Killed by Law
Enforcement," published by the Oct. 22nd Coalition to Stop
Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a
Generation.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 23. tammikuu 2002 17:25
Subject: [WW] World Trade Center cleanup workers denied pay, safety
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 24, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
GROUND ZERO OUTRAGE:
CLEANUP WORKERS DENIED PAY & SAFETY
By G. Dunkel
New York
Hundreds of undocumented and non-unionized workers, mainly
Latinos, who did the first cleanups of lower Manhattan after
Sept. 11, are currently fighting to get all the pay they
were promised but have not yet received. They are also
demanding treatment of health problems created by working in
a dangerous environment without proper protection.
The workers were paid $7.50 an hour--$90 for a 12-hour day--
by contractors who stiffed them as often as they paid them.
Most were not told about the risks and were not given
respirators or other protective gear. Some workers who
brought their own protection were forced to hand it over to
the bosses. (Daily News, Jan. 11)
The original cleanup crews have now been replaced by
unionized workers. Members of Asbestos Workers Local 12A,
they get $23 an hour when they work, but must be licensed.
To get the license, they have to pay $550 to the city and
attend a training course.
According to a report in Newsday on Jan. 13, 80 percent of
these union workers may also be undocumented. It has been
difficult to get other workers to do these dangerous, dirty
and intermittent jobs.
Since the need for such workers in New York is currently so
high--only 40 percent of the stores, offices and apartments
in Lower Manhattan have been professionally cleaned--the
immigration system winks at their status. But if they get
into trouble with a supervisor, the threat is always there.
EXTENT OF DANGER STILL NOT CLEAR
While unionized workers generally have protective gear, they
often find that they need to take off such paraphernalia as
masks to get the work done in the time allotted.
Furthermore, some of the equipment appears not to be
effective against the fine dust created by the collapse of
the World Trade Center buildings.
Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee
for Occupational Safety and Health, which represents more
than 250 unions, said, "The agencies have made it a priority
to get the lower Manhattan financial and stock markets up
and running at any cost. In so doing, they have allowed
thousands of people to be exposed to substances that haven't
even all been identified, let alone quantified."
The ombudsperson of the Environmental Protection Agency has
opened up an investigation of charges that the head of the
agency, Christine Whitman, and other top officials lied
about the extent and risks of contamination at the WTC
disaster site. According to the ombudsperson's office, the
evidence "demonstrates that there is and was a substantial
health risk that EPA had documented in its testing. There's
enough evidence to demonstrate that Mrs. Whitman's statement
to the brave rescue workers and the people who live there
was false."
Whitman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, is
former governor of New Jersey and a major figure in the
Republican Party.
Even though the EPA's data on the dust plume that covered
most of lower Manhattan was so scary that large portions of
it weren't reported, it now appears that even that data
might have severely underestimated the hazards.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Jan. 13 on the results
of two widely respected asbestos researchers, Eric Chatfield
and John Kominsky, who tested apartments and condos near the
collapse that either had not been cleaned or were cleaned
improperly.
Using modern, up-to-date methods, the researchers found nine
asbestos fibers for every one that had been detected by the
EPA. Cate Jenkins, a senior chemist in the EPA's hazardous
materials division, said, "If people continue living and
working in places that still have dust in the carpets,
furniture, drapes and heating and cooling system, these
fibers will continue to be re-suspended. The elevated risk
could be from around one-in-a-thousand extra cancers to
maybe as high as one in 10."
Jenkins has worked for the EPA for 22 years. She went on to
say about the difference between their results and the
EPA's: "This is too important ... to be ignored if you
really care about the health of the public."
Four other federal health experts from the EPA and Centers
for Disease Control agreed with the findings of Chatfield,
Kominsky and a team headed by Hugh Granger of HP
Environmental in Virginia. They are all experts frequently
used by the government for special studies. Their research
was funded by a coalition of labor unions, tenant groups,
contractors and New York political leaders.
There is no dispute that the dust has been making thousands
of New Yorkers ill with sinus infections, asthma attacks,
nausea, headaches, rashes and coughing. Then there are
possible cancerous effects from asbestos exposure, which can
take 18 to 30 years to show up.
Some 300 firefighters who spent time at ground zero are on
light duty or at home on disability. Another 600 or so have
filed notice that they feel impaired. Their union has also
demanded that the fire department remove all the asbestos
from fire equipment that responded to the collapse.
NYCOSH, the Latin American Workers' Project and Queens
College Center for the Biology of Natural Systems are
setting up a mobile health clinic near City Hall, starting
Monday, Jan. 14. It will test day laborers, unionized
cleanup workers and anybody else who is having problems from
the dust. It will help fit respirators and protective gear
and gather data like blood samples and lung capacity.
The National Employment Law Project has been examining the
abuses. "The most outrageous thing is that these are the
workers who enabled lower Manhattan to go back to work,"
said Luna Yasui, a lawyer there.
Groups such as the Latin American Workers Project and the
Tepeyac Association are helping workers with their pay
claims, urging that any worker, documented or not, must be
properly paid and protected. So much pressure has been
generated that the attorney general of New York has opened
an investigation.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
