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Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) President Pat Friend clarifies the Mesaba situation. “Big Oil” draws fire. George McGovern is taken to task. Our AFL-CIO Now readers have lots to say.
Remember, if you have news or comments, send it to us at: blognews@aflcio.org.
Last week we reported that a court decision regarding AFA-CWA members at Mesaba was a “setback.” President Friend sets us straight:
The judge’s ruling was not a setback for the Mesaba flight attendants as you reported. In fact it was a victory for us. Mesaba management had filed a motion in the bankruptcy court to allow them to reject our contract. The judge denied the company’s request. Now we will continue bargaining with the company in an effort to preserve the airline without impoverishing the employees.
Like all of us, Nadia Sindi is outraged at Big Oil, not only for its record profits while we’re pumping $3 a gallon gas into our tanks but about the industry’s pervasive influence in Washington, D.C. From Eugene, Ore., Nadia calls for a “Separation of Oil and State.”
Big Oil is at the core of many of my concerns like the health of our communities, global warming, war, national security and even poverty and developing country debt.
And yet politicians of both parties continue to use our tax money to subsidize Big Oil to the tune of billions of dollars every year. Why? Perhaps its partly because oil companies donated over $25 million to candidates in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign, and they’ve already invested over $5 million in the 2006 congressional elections.
The next step to ending our collective addiction to oil is reducing oil’s influence over our politicians and demanding political independence from Big Oil. We can let the politicians know they are going to hold the oil industry accountable, or we’re going to hold the politicians accountable.
UAW member Jeff Ditz says long-time progressive icon George McGovern has it wrong in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed that is sympathetic to the Delphis and Wal-Marts of the world and is critical of workers who supposedly want “more,” according to McGovern’s misinterpretation of a famous Samuel Gompers’ quote. From Detroit, here’s some of what Jeff told McGovern in a letter he shared with us:
I am proud that the first vote I ever cast was to elect you president; so it was with some disappointment I read your op-ed piece.
You said Delphi Corporation is bankrupt. That’s not quite true. Delphi has declared bankruptcy in the United States and announced plans to close manufacturing facilities in other highly developed countries. Delphi is not bankrupt in the way a normal citizen can be bankrupt. Delphi is not cutting back….Delphi is not shutting down, it is using First World profits to expand Third World manufacturing as it rids itself of First World obligations.
Delphi is taking the money and running from laws protecting workers and the environment.
These are not, as you assert, “some unfortunate and unintended consequences” of [Gompers’] “more” philosophy. These are the intended consequences of neo-liberalism, also known as globalization or “the race to the bottom.” It is a deliberate government and corporate policy to enrich the few and impoverish the many.
Unions must confront the harsh new reality by demanding “more.” More of what the old cigar maker Gompers spoke of a century ago: books not bombs, schools not jails. More of society’s wealth devoted to the welfare of all citizens rather than the few at the very top of the economic pyramid.
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