US Iraq Deaths Hit 1000

See Iraq Coalition Casualty Count for the grim statistics.

Posted by Nathan at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track (0)

A New Group LaborBlog

In celebration of Labor Day, I've joined up with a bunch of other labor folks to launch a new group blog, a LaborBlog, to bring a diversity of voices together to talk about labor issues.

Check it out or go here (as a backup if the global URL databases haven't caught up) .

Why a group blog on labor? Well, for those of us in and around the labor movement, it's because we think what people do 8+ hours per day, 5+ days a week is where the fate of the nation and the world rests. When workers have power in the workplace, they end up with power in the political world, just as employers use power in the private economy to leverage privileges from the public sector.

That's the simplest message for many of the political folks who frequent progressive blogs, but the importance of unions goes beyond this year's election to whether there will democracy not just every four years but every day when people go to work. A union is about having a chance to vote on what your benefits will be, whether you have child care or have time to stay home with the kids when you want to, and, at the most basic level, whether you have the dignity of a voice at work.

But there is a more immediate need for a broad discussion on labor issues. Major changes are coming in the labor movement, as this Business Week article highlights. Some unions are even discussing breaking off from the AFL-CIO to more effectively organize new workers, but whatever happens, there needs to be a broad ranging debate among unionists and progressive allies on what it will take to revive the labor movement and expand the ranks of union members.

This effort is a work in progress. You'll be seeing additional authors in coming days and while you'll also be seeing additional features soon-- more links to labor resources for example-- the core of the blog is going to be the various voices involved. Please add yours to the comments and join the dialogue.

Posted by Nathan at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Track (0)

Labor Day

Big Think Pieces in the Media

Start with Business Week's Can This Man Save Labor about SEIU's Andy Stern and the debate on the future of labor. (Note the big news that the Carpenters Union is rejoining the AFL-CIO, partly so it can support the Stern-led NUP movement).
The Nation asks Will Labor Come Back?

James Lawson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference talks about Liberation and Labor Day.

From a Canadian perspective: Unions Take Aim at Wal-Mart.

Unions and the 2004 Election

40,000 unionists protest in New York City.

And on the night of Bush's acceptance speech, 15,000 unionists across the country were knocking on doors with an alternative pro-labor message. See here and here and here for stories.

John Sweeney is spending the long weekend campaigning for and with John Kerry.

Mass mobilization of labor in Pennsylvania to support Kerry.

Unions announce plans to monitor election for fraud in cities across the battleground states.

The Economy

The Economic Policy Institute releases its annual State of Working America and the results are not pretty. As the BBC summarizes, many working families still feel no benefit from the US economic recovery.

Or as the AFL-CIO simply states, ten million US workers are unemployed or have given up looking. Add in the increases in poverty and those lacking health insurance and the numbers look even grimmer.

Part of the reason is the disappearance of call centers, as jobs are sent overseas.

Mike Davis writes about the death of the textile industry in the South and around the United States.

But CEO pay soars at companies that send jobs to low-wage countries.

Organizing Campaigns

Cintas signs labor agreements at Arkansas and Missouri plants, with the assist of the postal unions.

The Steelworkers have joined SEIU and the AFL-CIO in setting up an associate membership system for people without a union in the workplace who still want help from the Steelworkers for fighting for their rights.

Independent truckers, denied the right to unionize, are fighting with the support of the Teamsters at the Tacoma port to restore pay due to low rates paid by shipping companies.

Labor Notes has a series of article on why and how the UAW should be mounting its campaign to organize Toyota workers in the US.

The state government recognized a union for 1200 grad student employees at the University of Illinois at Chicago following a majority of students submitting cards under the state card check system; grad students at University of Pennsylvania intend to keep organizing a union, despite the recent NLRB ruling denying them labor rights under the federal NLRA.

Decade old pact between hotels and unions in San Francisco threatens to come apart as bargaining heats up.

Bargaining and Benefits

Due to slashed budgets at the state and local level, public employees salaries are dropping as inflation increases faster than pay.

Pilots union weigh abandoning traditional pensions for younger workers, replacing them with 401Ks and similar plans.

Internal Union Politics

Morty Bahr, President of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), announces retirement.

Law and Policy

California passes bill to ban outsourcing of taxpayer-funded work to foreign countries.

Unions use Presidential campaign to promote the Employee Free Choice Act , which would allow workers to join a union through card checks.

Unions around the Globe

Volkswagen becomes center of German employer fight against the 35-hour work week; street protests are hitting the government for its threat to scale back social welfare spending.

Indonesia NGOs and unions are mounting protests against criminal defamation charges brought against a newspaper for attacking a prominent businessman-- a threat to press freedom and union organizing campaigns.

Asian Labor News does a roundup of news from China and southeast Asia.

Posted by Nathan at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Track (0)

Retails Sales Down, Unemployed Up

Two big bad economic numbers for Bush going into his speech:

Seasonally adjusted jobless claims for the week ended Aug. 28 rose by 19,000 to 362,000 from an unrevised 343,000 in the previous week.

Retailers reported worse-than-expected August sales Thursday.

Some of the unemployment claims can be blamed on hurricaines in Florida, but the overall trend lines in the economy still show little job growth.

Posted by Nathan at 08:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track (2)

Zell Praised Segregationist

Let's be clear. Zig-zag Zell made his career as henchman to segregationists, zagged to being a "New South" Democrat when that could get him elected, and now has zigged back to standing with racist southern conservatism now that he thinks that's where the power is.

Lester Maddox, the governor who rode into office on the notoriety of driving blacks out of his restaurant, died this summer and Zell Miller was there to praise his old boss:

"The Maddox administration was a good one, marked by historic and progressive achievements," said U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, Maddox's former chief of staff. "History will judge his administration well."

Haters-- that's today's GOP. Welcome to your new party, Zell. And good riddance.

Update: And let me give Andrew Sullivan a word on Zell:

I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift. Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric.

And like the old Dixiecrats, Zell has found his final resting place in the GOP.

Posted by Nathan at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | Track (2)

Random Thoughts

A bit of realtime blogging for the fun of it.

Geez- Elaine Chao gave one of the worst speeches I've seen. She promotes such evil policies, but can't even say anything interesting. Which I guess is the point. Unlike Ashcroft, who is a lightning rod for criticism of the actions of his department, Chao is so unassuming that she has promoted bad policies in the Labor Department with almost no attention. I so wish Linda Chavez, the original nominee for the Labor Department, had made it through to confirmation-- she was so loudly and outrageously anti-labor that she would have kept Bush's anti-labor policies in the public eye.

Russ Feingold took a lot of flack from liberal pundits for supporting Ashcroft for Attorney General, but he probably did a great favor for civil liberties. If Ashcroft had been knocked out, they probably would have found some unassuming former prosecutor to promote the exact same polices with less controversy. Sort of like Chao.

Update: Okay, the tribute to Reagan made me want to retch. I continue to see giving Reagan credit for the fall of Soviet client states as a deep insult to the dissidents who challenged the regimes. And what's the idea-- that Reagan somehow engineered Gorbachev's rise to power? It's clear that the Soviet Union was heading for a political and economic crash-- that's why Gorbacheve instituted Perestoika and Glasnost. The idea that the US wasting trillions of dollars on weaponry speeded that process has no reasonable basis in reality.

On Zell: What a piece of crap. I couldn't go to Madison Square Garden tonight because I couldn't bear the stink from him. He wonders what happened to the Democratic Party? It got rid of the segregationists Zell Miller has such praise for.

It's amazing he has the guts to talk about politicization of foreign policy and evokes Roosevelt, when Roosevelt went out of his way to include members of the other party in the leadership of the wars he fought. And he shelved his domestic policy initiatives in order to build bipartisanship. Bush has rammed partisan policies on both foreign policy and domestic policy down the opposition throats-- from stripping union rights from Homeland Security government workers to tax cuts for the wealthy-- and then Zell complains that the Dems haven't played nice.

Well, this is the read meat from the last of the old South Democrats. Notably, he slipped and talked about the Democrats who no longer leading the party, citing to Richard Russell, the leader of the filibusters against Civil Rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s. Here is the "Southern Manifesto" that Richard Russell led the drafting of in opposing civil rights:

We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power. . . It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding. With the gravest concern for the explosive and dangerous condition created by this decision and inflamed by outside meddlers.

This is the example of the Democratic leadership that Zell Miller misses. Well, he's found the right party tonight if that is the racist leadership he is longing for.

Zell's speech is the biggest pack of lies of any I can remember, accusing Democrats basically of treason and Kerry of handing US sovereignty to France. This from a guy who praised Kerry just a couple of years ago, and then blithely contradicts everything he said then. He's a liar, like Bush, like Cheney.

As for Cheney's speech, he just kept the warm cuddlies coming. "Sensitive war" and blah, blah, blah. Distortion, lies, baiting of Kerry's patriotism. All as expected.

Posted by Nathan at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Track (0)

In the Tank

Ah, breathing free here at The Tank, where I've met a bunch of the street bloggers hiding from RNC delegates :) It's fun meeting the whole crew of Kos, Atrios, Joe Tribbi and other folks. I just got back from the Take Back America labor rally- 10-15,000 labor folks from around the city gathered on 8th Avenue determined to see Bush gone on Election Day.

When Guiliani talked about the heroes of 911, here they were: the emergency workers who responded to the sick and dying, the Ironworkers and other construction trades who sifted through the debris looking for survivors, and the nurses who cared for those who breathed the toxic air.

These were the refugees from Bush's America: the outsourced, the downsized, those who will lose overtime pay, and those having their unions attacked with the support of the federal government.

And they were pissed.

There is an energy I've never seen during elections. Most unions always do turnout for elections in the last couple of weeks before November, but this kind of energy is outside anything in my memory. Folks know this is literally a do-or-die election. If Bush wins, he plans to move beyond the hundreds of thousands of government workers stripped of their union rights, move beyond the repeal of ergonomics rules and of Project Labor Agreements, move beyond his NLRB stripping union after union of recognition. No, we can expect a full-out assault to destroy the labor movement.

They won't succeed even if they win, but they can do damage that will undermine wages and work conditions for tens of millions of workers here at home, and literally billions around the world through trade agreements designed to undermine labor rights.

Which is why you had thousands of unionists on the streets this afternoon, claiming New York for New York working people. You know the media will highlight the tiny handful of labor members -- note no national unions -- endorsing Bush, but this should be a reminder to the press that the hardhats and hippies are united this year in wanting Bush gone.

Posted by Nathan at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track (0)

Police State USA

It was quite a transition. I spent the early part of the evening doing legal observing in Herald Square, where hundreds of police locked down all the corners, blocking all pedestrian traffic, in order to prevent civil disobediance in the streets. They definitely proved that police state tactics work-- having shut down the heart of midtown, including simple access to the PATH train for commuters heading to New Jersey, they blocked the protesters from interfering with traffic.

Of course, they interfered with it a bit themselves, but on balance, their basic tactics worked. I was always skeptical that the direct action folks could have that much impact against the police force likely to be deployed; when confronting police, you either have the vast numbers we saw on Sunday, or the police will largely shut you down.

Which brings us to the RNC and specifically, Arnold's speech. which I watched from the cheap seats in the media section of Madison Square Garden last night, all the better to see the pumping of arms and chants of "USA" from the crowd. Meant to be a sunny tribute to the welcome for immigrants in America, Arnold contrasted it with Soviet actions back home in Austria when the Russians controlled part of town:

It was a common belief that Soviet soldiers could take a man out of his own car and ship him off to the Soviet Union as slave labor.

My family didn't have a car - but one day we were in my uncle's car. It was near dark as we came to a Soviet checkpoint. I was a little boy, I wasn't an action hero back then, and I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I'd never see him again. My family and so many others lived in fear of the Soviet boot.

Such a contrast to the treatment of immigrants in the United States in our post-911 world, as detailed by Human Rights Watch:

The total number of persons detained in connection with the September 11 investigation may never be known. The withholding of the identities of those charged with immigration violations in the context of the September 11 investigation-called "special interest" cases in government documents-makes it impossible to check the accuracy of the numbers released by the Department of Justice, but there are indications that more people have been arrested than the government has recognized. In addition, the Department of Justice has refused to say how many individuals have been held as material witnesses and has stated that it does not maintain records of those initially detained as part of the September 11 investigation and then held on state or local criminal charges.

And add in secret trials and you kind of have the classic police state trial system:

On September 21, 2001, pursuant to direction from the attorney general, Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy sent an internal memorandum to all immigration judges and court administrators detailing special, additional security procedures for certain cases. Under these special procedures, immigration judges are required to close hearings to the public, including family, friends, and the media.

The whole game was to use immigration proceedings to pursue criminal investigations, thereby denying detainees of the right to counsel:

In practice, the FBI has used administrative proceedings under the immigration law as a proxy to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects without affording them the rights and protections that the U.S. criminal system provides.

Most Americans feel the post-911 loss of liberty in small ways-- the roadblocks, the military used as police, searches at airports--but the fear of the knock on the door in the middle of the night is ever present for many immigrants in the US.

Maybe Bush and company can make the case that this is necessary for our security, but they then can't say we are safer and freer than when Bush came into office. For large numbers of people in the US, they live under the exact police state that Arnold described in his speech.

Posted by Nathan at 07:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Track (2)

In the Heart of Darkness

Dick Cheney sat just a few rows in front of me. Thousands of Republicans pumped there fists, yelling "woo, woo, woo" as Rudy Guiliani disgraced the memories of our dead neighbors in his partisan rant-- a skilled rant filled with the lies we've come to expect-- but it was almost a comfort to have any residual positive feelings for Rudy from his unifying role on 9-11 dissolve as he laundered that goodwill into partisan bile.

Having marched with the hundreds of thousands of protesters on Sunday, it was almost surreal to be sitting in the stands at the GOP Convention, courtesy of a press pass from my gig at the Progressive Populist. But heck, it couldn't be stranger than for Michael Moore, who John McCain referred to as a "disengenous filmmaker", leading the crowd to drown him out in roars as they pointed at Moore sitting in the press gallery. Moore smiled and tipped his hat to the crowd, soon leaving for the television interviews that would have to follow.

The lies of the night are that skilled Bushian variety. Any individual sentence is merely exaggerated or bent just a little, but paragraphs are constructed to convey ideas that are complete lies. The classic of the night was of course the endless-- we needed to respond to 911. We had to defeat Al Qaeda, so we had to go to Afghanistan. And of course we had to fight terror by Saddam Hussein, making a link that has been repeatedly proven to be a lie. Or Rudy's comment that Saddam Hussein was himself a weapon of mass destruction, a way to repeat a lie, refuse to apologize for the lie.

Or the man from the Justice Department who defended the Patriot Act. He attacked critics for saying that the Patriot Act allowed searches of peoples' homes without informing them of the search. He said that was untrue, since judges had to issue warrants. That nonsequitor, seeming to refute the charge, of course did nothing of the sort.

It's a testament to how weak their arguments are that the GOPers won't make an honest case. Why not just say they are willing to trade off some civil liberties for greater security? It's a reasonable, defendable position, but one they know they would lose. So they lie.

Or they can't just say it was good to remove Hussein because he was a dictator, a very reasonable position, since they know many will say, but couldn't that goal have been accomplished with less destruction of Iraq?

So we had last night's spectacle. Interestingly, the crowd roared louder when Cheney's name was mentioned. Maybe it's because he was present, but it seemed reasonable that this crowd just feels more of a "red meat" connection to Cheney, who so unapologetically lies on behalf of the Iraq War, refusing to concede a point to reality.

The negative attacks on Kerry are all part of the package. Us "Bush haters" don't have to attack Bush as a person, because we can name policy after policy we disagree with. But th Bush people know that Kerry's real position on the war-- it was neccessary to put pressure on Hussein, but the rush to war without finishing the inspections process and strengthening our alliances was a disaster-- is the position most Americans agree with. So they have to lie about Kerry's position and make him out to have changed his mind.

They can't mention domestic issues, since they know on health care and taxes and jobs, Kerry's positions are more in tune with the country. They can't discuss the environment, since they know Kerry's positions are more popular. They can't mention civil rights given Bush's laxness in enforcement and promotion of antigay policies.

So that leaves lies and the politicization of the 911 dead. Sitting in Madison Square Garden amidst the whoops for that policy, it makes me long to go read Pat Buchanan's new book. Where he hates, it's at least honest hate and bigotry, not the manufactured cynicism I experienced last night.

Posted by Nathan at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | Track (1)

Arnie & Tribes Agree to Casino Unions

It appears that Arnie and the tribes agreed to provisions in the new "compacts" for tribal casinos that allow unions to organize, including neutrality and card check agreements with existing and future casinos involved in the negotiations.

Posted by Nathan at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Track (3)

Courts Slam Bush DOL on TAA Benefits

This gets monotonous. Once again, the U.S. Court of International Trade has condemned the Bush Department of Labor for failing to fairly investigate claims by workers that trade had cost them their jobs, and they therefore qualified for special unemployment benefits under our trade agreements:

Texas garment workers who allege they lost their jobs because their work was moved to Mexico should have their claims for trade adjustment assistance more thoroughly investigated by the Labor Department, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Aug. 20 (Former Employees of Sun Apparel v. Secretary of Labor, Ct. Intl. Trade, No. 04-106, 8/20/04).
Criticizing the Labor Department's failure to initially investigate the Sun Apparel workers' claims, the trade court said DOL should reinvestigate the claims and expand its work beyond the incomplete evidence provided by Sun Apparel's human resources director.

The court explained that although workers filed claims in Spanish and sent them to DOL for consideration, the claims were not investigated. Rather, the department focused on a certification request made by the employer, and DOL never considered the allegations made by the workers.

"Due to Labor's disregard for its statutory duty, the displaced workers' claims were ignored for over three months while the agency completed its investigation into Sun Apparel's petition and issued its negative determination," Judge Jane A. Restani wrote. "The entire investigation consisted of two communications with only one individual."

See this past post where the same court complained about the Bush DOL's repeated failure to respect the law.

Why should anyone take this administration seriously when they say they will take care of workers displaced by trade or outsourcing?

Posted by Nathan at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Track (0)

Bush: Suppress Free Speech

It's quite amazing. Bush refuses to denounce the Swift Boat Ads as slimy politics. Instead, he wants to use them to call for ending all independent ads in the campaign. My purely personal view was always that the McCain-Feingold law was not going to end corporate-dominated politics, but the idea of the law was to at least cut the direct ties of big money campaign contributions directly to candidates to end quid-pro-quo deals.

But the Supreme Court long ago made clear that when people spend their own money independently of political campaigns, they have a free speech right to do so. There may be some regulations that can be imposed-- disclosure and like-minded reforms-- but Bush calling to end all independent political spending is almost totalitarian in its implication, as if there can be no viewpoints expressed other than the annointed nominees of each party.

Of course, Bush doesn't believe his line-- it's just a cynical lie that's useful as an opportunistic statement. In fact, when he signed the McCain-Feingold bill, he made clear that he objected to restricting independent expenditures during elections:

I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.

So Bush is just a flip-flopper on independent spending during elections. But what else is new?

Posted by Nathan at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Track (2)

Bush Lies Again in Olympics Ad

I actually saw a Bush ad on TV last night-- unusual on blue state New York television-- but he may be playing his new Olympics ad on a broad national level.

It's a strong ad and he plays up the most moving reason for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to give their people the freedom to participate in events like the Olympics.

Now, if Bush had left the ad there, we could be debating how much democracy had been achieved in those countries and what the cost was, a worthy debate. But no, Bush had to go and lie again:

"this Olympics, there will be two more free nations, and two fewer terrorist regimes."

Yep, Bush had to once again push the lie that Saddam Hussein was a big backer of terrorism and, by linking it with Afghanistan, a backer of the 911 attacks. He lies and he lies and he lies.

And apparently his unauthorized use of the Olympics may violate federal law. Unlike almost every other trademark, the Olympic Committee has the right to stop basically anyone from using the word or images of the Olympics in advertising, including for non-profit causes. It's a dumb law that violates free speech rights, but the Supreme Court has upheld it as valid.

So Bush is liar and a criminal with this ad, but then that summarizes his Presidency, doesn't it.

Posted by Nathan at 07:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | Track (0)