[PEN-L:12027] Re: Shameless self-promotion
Monday morning, 9-9:45 EDT I will be on WBAI (and Pacifica Radio) (oh, along with Karen Nussbaum). Discussion subject: labor day, women, unions. maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:12029] Growing labour strife?
The Vancouver Sun Friday 29 August 1997 LABOR PEACE DISTURBED BY PILES OF GARBAGE Ken MacQueen and Eric Beauchesne It was a week with garbage on Vancouver streets where the buses should have been. There's talk of a national postal strike, and some 2,000 pulp and paper workers at Fletcher Challenge mills in Crofton, Elk Falls and MacKenzie have been striking since mid-July. Could it be the province is sliding back to the bad old days of the early1980s when the entire B.C. economy seemed impaled on a picket sign? No need to panic, say those who track B.C. labor issues. However, some see signs of unrest on both the provincial and national scene. A Statistics Canada report, released Thursday to coincide with the Labor Day holiday weekend, warns that "labor unrest may be on the rise following a prolonged 'cooling-off' period." It says the public sector is spoiling for a fight after years of wage freezes and job cuts, that union strike funds have swollen in the absence of disputes, and the number of days of work lost nationally to strikes is creeping up. After three weeks of triple-bagging their garbage, Vancouver residents might agree there is trouble in the air. Several of those recent provincial disputes, including Wednesday's wildcat BC Transit strike and the Vancouver outside workers' strike, have landed on the desk of mediator Brian Foley. Both are high-profile and troublesome, says Foley, head of the B.C. Labor Relations Board mediation division. "But the number of disputes over the past year has not been abnormal, has not been chaotic. The majority of collective agreements are being settled by the parties, either directly or in mediation, without the need for a work stoppage." This week's flurry of problems is "an accidental convergence of a couple of isolated events." says Jerry Lampert, president of the Business Council of B.C., which represents 155 major corporations employing one-quarter of the provincial workforce. "Generally, since the Labor Code came in 1992, the labor relations atmosphere has been pretty good." Ken Georgetti, president of the B.C. Federation of Labor, also credits the 1992 revision of the code by Mike Harcourt's NDP government for giving B.C. "relative peace" and the lowest number of work stoppages since the Second World War. Georgetti, whose organization represents 456,000 unionized workers, wonders if the era of peace is coming to an end. He raises as an example the 1,100 striking Vancouver outside workers whose wage demands are only about 18 cents an hour apart from the city's offer. "What you're seeing, although the dispute seems to be over a small amount of money, is a level of frustration from workers that they're not even keeping their noses above water for the last 10 years," says Georgetti. "You're going to see more of this." He predicts tougher bargaining from both private and public sector workers: government employees because they are falling behind private sector settlements, private sector workers, because they aren't sharing any of the corporate profits. Neither set of employers is leading by example any more, Georgetti says. "At some point in time their hypocrisy is going to come back and whack them between the eyes." Many of his concerns are reflected in Statistics Canada's "portrait of the trade union movement." It notes that, nationally, 3.3 million person-days of work were lost in 1996 because of strikes and lockouts, more than twice the 1.6 million a year earlier. That still falls far below the nine million days in 1980 when the country was rocked by more than 1,000 lockouts and strikes by what was then a smaller workforce. The B.C. ministry of labor's most recent figures show a steady drop in person-days lost to strikes -- from 345,850 in 1993 to 295,415 in 1995. Ernest Akyeampong, author of the Statistics Canada report, suspects the potential for strike action is greatest among government employees. "With wages freezes and rollbacks, they're certainly in a mood to get something back," he said. "There's the potential for action this year." The report comes as Canada faces the threat of its first postal strike in six years and Ottawa prepares to implement controversial amendments to federal labor laws, which business critics argue will give unions too much power and add to still high unemployment. The planned changes include a partial ban on the use of replacement workers during a strike and require employers to provide names and addresses of off-site employees to assist unions in the drive to certify such workers. B.C. has postponed changes to its labor code after an outcry from business, but it is expected to reintroduce amendments in the next session of the legislature. About 3.5 million Canadians, about one-third of all employees, belong to a union. Union membership rose fairly steadily to 3.8 million in 1990 from
[PEN-L:12033] Re: ADC = BullShit (fwd)
Shawgi A. Tell wrote: In short, on matters political and historical, ADC has become a kept woman of the Arab regimes. Now that's not a very nice way to put it, is it? Doug
[PEN-L:12034] Re: ADC = BullShit (fwd)
Greetings, On Fri, 29 Aug 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: Shawgi A. Tell wrote: In short, on matters political and historical, ADC has become a kept woman of the Arab regimes. Now that's not a very nice way to put it, is it? Doug For the sake of accuracy, MER wrote this. I think what they mean is that the Arab regimes are despicable. Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:12037] A rally against police brutality
Between 10 and 15 thousand New Yorkers protested police brutality at rally this afternoon in City Hall park. They demanded justice for Abner Louima--in Creole, "Jistis pou Abner Louima"--as they streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge. The crowd was mostly Haitian, judging from the Creole conversations I heard all about me. Louima is the Rodney King of New York. The brutality of Los Angeles cops was captured on amateur video. The sadism of New York's cops is documented not by video, but by the extensive damage done to Louima's intestines and bladder as a consequence of having been sodomized by a toilet plunger in Brooklyn's 70th Precinct. He is in critical condition and very likely has suffered permanent damage which will require the use of a colostomy bag. He is suing New York City for 550 millions dollars and Johnny Cochran has agreed to represent him. The Haitian community has correctly blamed the Giuliani administration for the injustice done to Louima. The cops who sodomized him taunted him in the act: "It's Giuliani time, not Dinkins time." Dinkins, the rather hapless former Mayor of New York City, spoke at today's rally and was roundly booed after making the observation that most New York cops are not racist. Giuliani has appointed a investigatory committee that is stacked with right-wingers. It includes Raymond Joseph, a Haitian whose newspaper regularly attacked Aristide. Giuliani writes a weekly column in this newspaper, the "Haiti Observateur". Giuliani himself went to Haiti in 1982 when Jean Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier was in power. He was a representative of Reagan's Justice Department on a fact-finding mission. His conclusion? There was no repression in Haiti and the refugees fleeing the dictator were economic rather than political refugees. The Haitian community in New York, especially in the borough of Brooklyn, is immense with estimates of at least 400,000 according to an informative column by James Ridgeway and Jean Jean-Pierre in this week's Village Voice. Economic conditions have been deteriorating steadily in Haiti, even after the election of Aristide and successive reform administrations. The neoliberal agenda is being accepted by these administrations, in much the same way that they are being accepted in South Africa or Vietnam. What is the alternative to neoliberalism, they ask? The Haitian community in Brooklyn is in touch with a myriad of communications outlets that keep them informed of island and local politics. The left-wing newspaper "Haiti Progres" vies with Raymond Joseph's newspaper. Creole radio in New York is constantly burning up with political discussion. There is liberal Radio Soleil, which claims a half-million listeners to Columbia University's Sunday morning L'Heure Haitienne. The host of this show is Lionel Legros who had set up a trip to Haiti for me and other members of Tecnica in 1988 to work with Father Aristide on an agronomy project. The trip was aborted after Ton-ton Macoutes launched a reign of repression during the elections in Haiti. The Haitian community in New York is highly politicized and well-organized. It is in marked contrast to the African-American community which suffers from inadequate leadership and poor morale. The economic depression in the black community of the past 20 years or so seems to have generated much more drug traffic and aspiring basketball players or rap artists than political activists unfortunately. One can only hope that the Haitian political initiatives might provide an example of how to fight back to a beleaguered black community. Another interesting development might be the shift in politics to the left overall from a radicalized and organized immigrant community. There is a precedent for this. The Communist Party of the early 1920s was made up primarily of immigrants, Finns in particular. Nowadays, the "globalization" phenomenon is seen as something that starts in the United States and expands outward. Perhaps it is time to reflect on another aspect of globalization. The misery that the United States and other advanced capitalist countries is bringing to the underdeveloped countries produces a reaction in the form of population shifts. Mexicans and Haitians come to the United States, while Africans and Arabs come to France. If current demographic trends hold up, they expect that a majority of the work force in the United States in 2050 will not be white and male. This should challenge many of our most deeply held shibboleths about the conservatism of Joe Six-Pack. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:12038] Disney Globalization
This is passed on from another network with permission. Cheers, Ken Hanly A colleague passed on to me this tid-bit --- from Disney's contract with SUBSCRIBERS to its for-pay Web site: Disney shall exclusively own all now known or hereafter existing rights to the Information of every kind and nature THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE and shall be entitled to unrestricted use of the Information for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to the provider of the Information. . . (emphasis added) Colin Boyd, Dept. of Management and Marketing, College of Commerce, University of Saskatchewan, 25 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Sask., CANADA S7N 5A7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (306) 966 8436 Fax: (306) 966 8709
[PEN-L:12031] Is Capitalism Sustainable?
While I was doing research on the tourist economy of Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
Richard Douthwaite posted a message with the above title, among other
things saying:
Herman Daly looked at the extent to which technology had already
increased factor productivity and found the results disappointing. He cites
a study by D.W. Jorgenson and Z. Grilliches (The Explanation of
Productivity Change, Review of Economic Studies, July 1967, pp 249-283)
which indicates that 96.7% of the increase in output between 1945 and 1965
had been due to simply increasing the use of labour, capital and/or energy.
Only the residual, 3.3% was possibly the result of technological advance or
a switch to quality.
It's been ages since I read that article (if I really did: my memory is
going away). But I think the point is that such studies ("growth
accounting") are extremely iffy, being based on not only neoclassical
economics but some unreasonable auxillary assumptions such as that
"factors" are hired in competitive markets (and thus paid according to
their marginal products). Crucially, one's results depends on one's biases
("priors"). At that time, Jorgenson assumed that all growth could be
accounted for by factor input (i.e., zero residual), so it's no surprise
that his residual approximated zero. At a UC-Berkeley seminar, he was asked
why there were no nuclear power plants in the 19th century and answered:
the factor prices were wrong. In other words, nuclear power arose not
because of science but because prices changed, creating profits for those
interested in creating nukes. So I don't think one can trust that research
very much.
I really couldn't read all of what others on pen-l contributed, but here
are my two centavos: Is capitalism sustainable? I think the problem is the
bias in technical change, which under capitalism leans toward internalizing
external benefits (grabbing public resources for private hands) and
externalizing internal costs (dumping costs on society nature). That's
what's profitable. Absent sufficient pressure from the people, it leads to
environmental disaster.
Concerning interaction with the other "big contradiction" of capitalism,
class relations, an environmental crisis -- like more "normal" economic
crises -- creates opportunities which might cause working-class
mobilization, reforming and/or abolishing the system. But such results are
far from automatic.
(BTW, our society has other contradictions, just as our society is more
than just capitalism. In addition, we see sexism, racism, etc.)
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/fall%201997/ECON/jdevine.html
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
[PEN-L:12032] ADC = BullShit (fwd)
FYI Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 09:41:43 -0400 From: MID-EAST REALITIES [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ADC = BullShit .. ___ __ / |/ / /___/ / /_ //M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ http://WWW.MiddleEast.Org /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ "Washington Scene" - an occasional series ___ YOUR BEST SOURCE FOR CONCISE AND INDEPENDENT INFORMATION AND _ A D C = B U L L S H I T _ To receive MER regularly email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A D C = B U L L S H I T "Most of what I've heard from this panel is BULLSHIT." First audience comment at ADC annual conference MER - Washington - 8/27/97 There are many reasons the Israeli/Jewish lobby rules in Washington with hardly any effective opposition. One of the main reasons is that the various Arab-American organizations that exist are all controlled, manipulated, and usually paralyzed by the political and financial corruption of the Arab world. That corruption and impotence is translated to Washington by Arab ambassadors and the many they employ, most especially by Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, now one of the longest-serving Arab representatives in Washington. Not widely known, Bandar has actually been working closely and personally with some of the main elements of the Israeli/Jewish lobby for years, even before the Gulf war in 1991. His goal is simple -- use the power and influence of the Israeli/Jewish lobby to perpetuate the rule of the al-Saud family in "the Kingdom" -- everyone else be damned. For many matters involving commenting to the often gullible press, the Saudis use Jim Zogby, a kind of public relations flak masquerading under the guise of the "Arab American Institute" (AAI). When it comes to the only Arab American organization that has any grass-roots, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the situation is a bit more complicated. ADC does a few useful, though always very easy, things in the area of discrimination. Indeed, nothing could be easier in America then to oppose discrimination; and actually ADC doesn't really do that very well either. But far more importantly, when it comes to the serious and historical political issues of our day, here ADC is worse than a failure, it is a fraud and a deception -- one largely perpetrated on its own membership. That fraudulent reality might well have been behind the private and unheeded call a few years ago by ADC founder, former Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota, for the organization to be closed down. Instead, some of the long-time Washington opportunists, with former Arab League Ambassador Clovis Maksoud and wife Hala in the lead, pushed ADC to make a kind of pact with the Arab establishment. In return for financial support from Arab businessmen closely aligned with the American-sponsored client regimes in the Middle East, ADC would not involve itself in anything politically controversial (i.e., anything important), would support the "peace process" and the Arafat regime (no matter how much corruption and repression), and would not involve itself in any way against the terrible abuses and corruption so rampant in many of the key Arab countries -- most especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan. In short, on matters political and historical, ADC has become a kept woman of the Arab regimes. All kinds of simplistic press releases go out to unknowing ADC supporters around the country touting as grand ADC accomplishments what are really very small, usually relatively insignificant, always easy matters. But when it comes to any major political issues, ADC hardly ever has anything to say and even when it does it is always the tritest of slogans always corresponding to whatever the Arab "client-regimes" are pushing at the time. This sad reality couldn't have been better demonstrated this summer then what took place at the ADC annual conference which came during the month of the 30th anniversary of the 1967 war, a theme which was in fact one by which the conference was promoted. After 30 years of brutal and crippling occupation, after a decade of the "Intifada", after the catastrophe that befell Lebanon, the 1982 war, the Gulf/Iraq War, and the apartheid-type "Peace process", all that ADC could muster for this 30th anniversary was a dull and
[PEN-L:12035] Re: ADC = BullShit (fwd)
On Fri, 29 Aug 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: Shawgi A. Tell wrote: In short, on matters political and historical, ADC has become a kept woman of the Arab regimes. Now that's not a very nice way to put it, is it? Au contraire, Doug, that's the very breath and soul of objectivity!
[PEN-L:12044] Slate on taxes
Slate is Microsoft's online mag. The article has a graph showing that the stock market goes up when taxes increase. Yes, I know that the Dow Jones does not really represent well being for most of us, but it makes a nice debating point foor certain purposes. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:12040] Re: taxes
Michael Perelman wrote, Check out the new article in Slate on taxes. Why? and How? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: HTTP://WWW.VCN.BC.CA/TIMEWORK/
[PEN-L:12039] Spy phones
This is reprinted from another net with permission Cheers, Ken Hanly Here is another of those "1984" future technology products which offers some positive benefits at the expense of major intrusions on privacy, just like the closed circuit tv camera systems which now operate in most British towns. This piece from today's UK press refers at one point to the "Suzy Lamplugh Trust": Suzy Lamplugh was a London real estate agent who was murdered in an empty house by an apparent prospective client who had asked her to show the house to him. The world of new technology is sure taking us into new moral minefields. Colin Boyd Spy phones reveal cheating husbands A MOBILE telephone being developed by British Telecom could soon spell an end to the deceptions by idle employees, stressed executives and adulterers. The Mobile Social Alarm or Mosa, currently under development at BT, will be the first telephone that can send precise details of the caller's location to the person receiving the call. Workers will no longer be able to phone the office pretending to be sick when they are at the beach and movements of cheating spouses will be exposed because the phone will show the caller's location to within 30 feet. According to Don Golding, a mobile applications engineer in charge of the project, companies will also be able to call the Mosa-phone without their employees' knowledge to track staff. He said that BT hoped one day to reduce the size of the spy phone to that of a wristwatch. However, he stressed that the Mosa-phone had a more serious purpose. Mosa-phones will have a panic button that automatically alerts authorities of the holders' location. British Telecom, which is working with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, believes that the phone could be used in emergencies by lone women travellers and the elderly. British Telecom has been talking to mobile phone manufacturers about the Mosa-phone and is preparing to give the system a trial. It expects the tracking feature will add around =A350 to the cost of a mobile phone. The first system will work only when the phone holder is outdoors and within sight of the GPS satellites. However, the company is working on three systems to track down errant employees and spouses indoors. They use triangulation between several mobile phone relay stations to plot the phone holder's position. Colin Boyd, Dept. of Management and Marketing, College of Commerce, University of Saskatchewan, 25 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Sask., CANADA S7N 5A7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (306) 966 8436 Fax: (306) 966 8709
[PEN-L:12036] taxes
Check out the new article in Slate on taxes. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:12028] When workers strike back
The Globe and Mail, August 27, 1997 WHEN THE WORKERS STRIKE BACK Stephen Roach The recently resolved United Parcel Service strike was a shot across the bow of the inflationless 1990s. U.S. workers are now beginning to challenge the very forces that have led to a spectacular resurgence in corporate profits and competitiveness. They are, in effect, saying "no" to years of corporate cost-cutting directed primarily at the labour force. The strike and the settlement, largely on the union's terms, challenge the wisdom of a Federal Reserve that seems content to ignore the danger of renewed inflation. And the settlement underscores the potential for a sharp decline in stock and bond markets. These concerns are at odds with today's conventional wisdom. Many believe the U.S. economy has entered a new era in which globalization, deregulation and the Information Age have combined to produce a rare and powerful recovery, led by increased worker productivity. In this scenario, wage gains are largely offset by the increased productivity. As a result, costs are held in check, inflation remains quiescent and profit margins widen inexorably. The financial markets enjoy the best of all worlds: low interest rates underpin a strong bond market and health corporate earnings feed an ever-rising stock market. The productivity-led recovery offers ample rewards for shareholders and workers alike. Labour can reap higher wages as its productivity increases, while investors can reap handsome returns. It's quite possible, however, that a very different scenario has been responsible for the good news on inflation and corporate profits in recent years. Call it a labour- crunch recovery -- one that flourishes only because corporate America puts unrelenting pressure on its work force. This is a much tougher and more pessimistic vision of the U.S. economy in the 1990s. Pressured by intense global competition to boost productivity in information or service industries, businesses become fixated on slashing labour costs. Intimidated by the threat of job security, labour initially complies with the demands. Companies hire more temporary and part- time workers, and full-time workers are made to stretch their work schedules as never before. At the same time, employees begin to bear more the cost of their benefits, including health insurance. Wages, adjusted for inflation, are squeezed, leading to a near stagnation that has persisted for more than two decades. Unlike the productivity-led recovery, the labour- crunch recovery is not sustainable. It is a recipe for mounting tensions, in which a raw power struggle occurs between capital and labour. Investors are initially rewarded beyond their wildest dreams, but those rewards could eventually be wiped out by a worker backlash. Investors are quick to defend the miracles of the productivity-led recovery that promises no end to the bull markets of the 1990s. But there's one small problem: there's not a shred of credible evidence in the macro-economy that supports the notion of a meaningful improvement in U.S. productivity. Indeed, in the just-completed revision of the national economic accounts, the poor productivity performance of the 1990s was left essentially unaltered. Average annual gains over the past six years were slightly less than 1 per cent, little different from the disappointing performance of the 1980s and less than half the gains of the 1950s and 1960s. Productivity revivalists argue that the data must be wrong. But the weight of evidence is increasingly in favour of the labour-crunch scenario. And it's not just the productivity statistics that favour this argument. There has also been a dramatic realignment of the economic pie, with a much larger slice going to capital and a smaller one to labour. Which takes us back to the recently settled UPS strike. For UPS, the cost of settlement, by some estimates, will eventually be as much as $1 billion (U.S.) a year. In the end, that's what worker backlash is all about. It speaks of a labour force that challenges the very notion of cost-cutting that has been central to economic recovery in the 1990s. - Stephen Roach is chief economist and director of global economics for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Re-printed from the New York Times.
[PEN-L:12025] FW: BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1997 RELEASED TODAY: The number of employed youth increased by 2.8 million (not seasonally adjusted) from April to July, the traditional summertime peak for youth employment. This year's seasonal expansion in employment of 16- to 24-year-olds was slightly larger than the 2.6 million increase in 1996. The number of unemployed young people, which also grows at this time every year, rose by 448,000, somewhat fewer than a year earlier (603,000) Wage data compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs for all industries in the first 34 weeks of 1997 show that the median first-year wage increase in newly negotiated contracts was 3 percent, the same as the comparable figure for the same period of 1996 (Daily Labor Report, page D-9). For decades, the U.S. has been evolving from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. As Labor Day 1997 approaches, two major corporations stand in sharp relief, says The Wall Street Journal (page B1). Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the discount retailer, has passed General Motors Corp., the auto giant, as the nation's largest private employer. The shift is more than symbolic. Union jobs with lush pay and benefits, like GM assembly-line work, are disappearing. In their place are nonunion jobs like in the men's department at a Wal-Mart. Worker in both punch a time clock and share a stake in their employers' success. The Wal-Mart workday is less physically taxing than GM's, but the hours are longer and the pay barely supports even a thrifty family. Still, Wal-Mart offers a measure of responsibility and a path of advancement to hourly workers, thousands of whom are promoted to management each year The 10 metropolitan areas with the fastest growth in personal income during 1995 were mainly in the Southwest, Rocky Mountains, and Southeast regions, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. Three of the 10 areas were all or partly in Arizona, with the Yuma area leading the list with a 17.1 percent gain in personal income that was attributed to a large expansion in vegetable crop production. The average gain across the United States was 6.2 percent. It was the first release of 1995 personal income data by metropolitan areas Looking at per capita income, BEA found that San Francisco had the highest in 1995. Close behind was the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, Fla., metro area. At the other end of the scale, "all of the areas with the lowest per capita personal income, except El Paso, Texas, were small in terms of personal income and population, and were located in the Southwest or Southeast regions." The five lowest ranking were on the U.S.-Mexico border (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). Office smog probably isn't something you have heard of, yet. But you will soon, says Alun M. Anderson, editor of "New Science," a weekly international science magazine, whose article appears on the op. ed. page of The Washington Post. The article says that humans, perfumes, chemicals, and electronic equipment don't always live happily together In an op. ed. column, "All Globalization Is Local," Jim Hoagland quotes from a speech Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, made earlier this summer at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Greenspan ended by "arguing that democracy is a necessary component for the efficient long-term functioning of a free market economy. Only `a free press and government data information systems that are perceived to be free of hidden political manipulation' can empower consumers and producers to shift resources rationally"
[PEN-L:12024] Labor Day, 1997
LABOR DAY 1997: FULL-TIME, PART-TIME AND UNEMPLOYED WORKERS INTENSIFY THE STRUGGLE By General Baker DETROIT -- The year 1997 has sparked an intensification of the class struggle here at home. Labor Day 1997 follows the first anniversary of the so-called welfare reform bill, which ended the historic social safety net dating from the New Deal of the 1930s. Different states are still competing on the basis of which of them can cut the safety net the deepest and fastest, beyond the federally demanded cuts. But this section of society is fighting back, as shown by the National Welfare Rights Union, with its Kensington branch, when they marched from Philadelphia to the United Nations. With the support of AFSCME and other unions, they protested the welfare reform bill as a violation of human rights. In Detroit, the newspaper strike is entering its 26th month. Here, Labor Day has been bottlenecked since a federal judge refused to issue an injunction that would have forced the newspapers to hire back all of the strikers at an estimated $50 million in back wages. This marked a severe setback to the union, whose strategy for victory lay solely on the legal channels of the NLRB and the courts. The United Parcel Service strike and its aftermath show some tremendous lessons for the upcoming period. No matter how importantly UPS or the Teamsters viewed the pension package, the issue of the part-time worker continued to take center stage in the walkout. In the eyes of the general public, the strike became a battleground for a new and growing section of society. In the wake of the partial victory of the UPS struggle, President Clinton quickly imposed a 60-day cooling-off period on employees of Amtrak, in an effort to thwart an outbreak of strikes there. With these struggles before us, we salute each other on this Labor Day as a new class of impoverished proletarians begins to assert its leadership of the social upheavals of our time. [General Baker is the chair of the Steering Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America and a member of Local 600 of the United Auto Workers] ** This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition), Vol. 24 No. 9 / September, 1997; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, [EMAIL PROTECTED] or WWW: http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html For free electronic subscription, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "Subscribe" in the subject line. Feel free to reproduce; please include this message with reproductions of this article. **
