Home

2 Comments

1. JerryWells on 02.02.2010 at 10:49 (Reply)

   It is hard to say how “successful” these two tentative settlements will end up being. Plant consolidations, in one case shutting a plant in Alabama, means that in Alamabama, the lowest paid employees will be losing their jobs.

   This inability of unions to seriously protect even organized workers, let alone unorganized workers, has a long dismal history. Globalization has taken millions of jobs overseas. Entire industries have disappeared as capitalist investors, forever seeking to maximize profits, have moved capital away from investment labor intensive industry. They have placed their money into corrupt and speculative “financialization” that has resulted in the complete collapse of the capitalist economy.

   Working people are being driven into impoverishment as Obama and the Democrats have taken billions away from the needs of the people in order to “bail out” Wall Street bankers and to restore the wealth and profit. Obama has continued to expand the wars in the Middle East, to further the profit of the “military-industrial complex”, causing vast death and destruction to innocent people. When natural calamities occur, over compounding long existing conditions of poverty and neglect, such as Katrina or Haiti, there is amazingly “no money left” to provide adequate relief.

   The social services now critical essential for working people and their families are being methodically destroyed as the wealthiest in society want to forever maximize their own wealth by minimizing or eliminating any and all taxes.

   Here is yet a recent story from New York as an example:

   ================================================================
   New York City: In the face of intense opposition, Bloomberg closes 19 public schools
   By Sandy English
   30 January 2010

   At 2:40 a.m. Wednesday morning, at the end of a crowded and angry nine-hour public meeting at Brooklyn Technical High School, New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) voted 9-4 to close seven middle or elementary schools and 12 high schools.

   http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/nycs-j30.shtml
   ===============================================================

   The AFL-CIO and organized labor, understanding very well the extreme conditions now facing organized and unorganized working people, contiues the failed strategies that have rendered the organized labor movement completely powerless. They have not only remained silent under such destruction but are complicit in implementing the destructive corporate policies. The union officials and administration, with their “middle class” salaries and benefits, carry on “business as usual”.

   The simple trade union philosophy of only struggling for union contracts with employers has facilitated this destruction of working people. The conditions of labor and of capitalism have so radically changed that the strategies of organized labor must change radically.

   Thus again this repost of changes now essential:

   Here are some ACTIONS that the trade unions need to make, after listening and understanding, based on the needs of the working class today:

   1. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports Obama’s “Health Care Reform” in any form, and is supporting the legislation for “Medicare for All” single payer health care.

   2. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports neither Republican nor Democratic Parties, as both are consumed with corrupt corporate money and interests. Neither party represents the economic interests of working people, organized or unorganized. Both corporate controlled parties have betrayed the vital economic needs of all working people, organized and unorganized.

   3. The AFL-CIO realizes now that the simple strategy of trade unionism, the economic struggle for a contract with an employer, is now an inadequate strategy to meeting the needs of organized workers.

   4. The struggle for economic betterment of organized working people must now be greatly expanded into a political struggle. Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage legislation, OSHA mandated safety conditions, “Section 8″ housing support programs, government backed retirement pensions, NLRB labor protections etc. are all now secured and protected through government legislation at federal, state and local levels of government.

   5. Therefore, the AFL-CIO, along with other union organizations, under these dire economic and political conditions, is calling for a founding convention of a new political party dedicated to promoting the economic and social interests of all working people, organized and unorganized. The new party, refusing all corporate money and agendas, will involve millions of working people in democratic political struggle to secure the vital needs of the people.

   6. The the economic and social needs of working people never find any expression in the corporate owned mass media nor even in the corporate controlled public media such as NPR and PBS. Thus we announce a new effort to secure a democratic expansion of mass media that gives a voice to the economic needs and social concerns of all working people. We demand “equal time” on mass media, with daily and weekly programing on weekdays and weekends. Working people desperately need easily accessible information and education to overcome the complete corporate suppression of working class perspectives on current affairs.

   7. These steps above will complement and enhance the struggle of unions to organize workers and secure union contracts.

   1. citizen4 on 04.02.2010 at 19:31 (Reply)

      JerryWells:
      Makes sense to me, I’m behind this plan all the way.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

      Go to aflcio.org
      Blog Archives
      Link to Us