Which Is Better? Prison or Work at China’s Foxconn?
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Stumping for president, Republican candidates have finally figured out that the public cares more about job creation than deficit reduction. But their solutions involve luring corporations back to this country from overseas by eliminating regulatory policies that could make working conditions here a lot more similar to those offshore. A recent Jon Stewart segment shows just what that would entail.
Pointing to recent news reports that describe the slave-like conditions at China’s Foxconn factory, where 800,000 workers make iPhones, iPads, Kindles and most other Apple products, Stewart notes that most Apple products are made in China,
the Communist country where corporations get the respect they deserve.
So, to compete with China, Stewart continues,
we’ve got to make our factories look more like this Foxconn.
At Foxconn, Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Time for Investors to Weigh In on Refinery Safety
Gary Beevers, United Steelworkers (USW) international vice president for Oil Bargaining, sends us this report. Beevers has extensive experience negotiating with major oil companies with the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union (OCAW).
A little after midnight on Good Friday last year, a heat exchanger on a naphtha hydrotreater unit at the Tesoro oil refinery in Anacortes, Wash., catastrophically failed. The unit exploded, setting off a blast that shook homes five miles away and igniting a fire that could be seen anywhere in Anacortes. Three oil workers died in the blast; four others died at the hospital from injuries sustained in the accident.
The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) said the explosion was preventable. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) reported that Tesoro failed to adequately maintain the nearly 40-year-old heat exchanger and that microscopic cracks had built up, making a rupture possible.
Young Workers Can Help ‘Restore Sanity’ Vote by Vote
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On Saturday, John Stewart and Steven Colbert will provide a comic break to the election campaign with their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Tens of thousands of young voters are expected to attend what is being described as get out the youth vote rally just days before the Nov. 2 election.
That same day and through Election Day, thousands of young union members, also devotees of the faux journalists, will be getting out the vote by going door-to-door, worksite-to-worksite and staffing phone banks on across the country
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler says the union movement certainly backs the call to restore sanity in America after one of the most bizarre election seasons in memory. But she also asks young people to marry comedy with action over the next few days.
Eight years of George W. Bush provided comedians with plenty of ready-made material. The radical Tea Party candidates and Republican extremists undoubtedly lend themselves to comedy, but as we saw in the Bush years, that new material comes with a heavy dose of new problems for the real world. Read the rest of this entry »
Laughing at the News: Comedy Writers Speak
Jon Stewart or Katie Couric? Jay Leno or Charles Gibson? David Letterman or Brian Williams? A growing number of people are choosing Jon, Jay and David as their sources for news while the anchor class and newsmakers are turning up more often on the late night sets and in the skits.
On Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) will explore this change in the public’s news consuming habits and the
growing synergy between Washington, Wall Street, the media, and the late night comedy/variety programs.
