Fired Latino Workers at Pomona College Fight Back
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Sarah Seltzer writes for Alternet and other online publications and sends us this.
When a group of longtime food service employees of Pomona College in California—a prominent liberal arts school—lost their jobs due to their immigration status, it got an already tense campus talking. This wasn’t an ordinary firing, or even an unfortunate casualty of the nasty wave of anti-immigration sentiment. To people on campus who had been helping the workers speak up for their rights, it felt like union-busting. The terminated workers had been employed on campus for years, but only after they began a drive toward unionization with UNITEHERE! was their immigration status investigated by the college.
Because the internal investigation, which led to their dismissal, was self-initiated and not due to any government agency or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) interference, the timing made many on campus and elsewhere cry foul. Indeed, 16 of 17 employees whose jobs were taken from them happened to be food services workers—the very group trying to unionize. Read the rest of this entry »
iSlaves: Forced Labor Key to Apple Profits
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More horrors out now from the Chinese serf-labor system involved in creating Apple products like iPads and iPhones. It turns out many of the workers churning out millions of the devices in unendurable conditions at Foxconn and other factories are also forced laborers as young as 16.
The Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) says, “Legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products,” according to Alternet. One study found in some Foxconn factories, which employ 1.3 million people in China, up to 50 percent of the workforce were students.
SACOM and others report that schools teaching journalism, hotel management and nursing threatened students with failure if they did not take a factory position. The Chinese government-owned Global Times noted that “automotive majors at a vocational school in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, were also forced to serve as interns for Foxconn before they were given their diplomas.
Apple’s formula for mammoth profits, which topped $13 billion last quarter, depends upon a steady supply of forced laborers who are put through a torturous training to accustom them to the factory working conditions. Read the rest of this entry »
Why the Tucson Ethnic Studies Ban Matters
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
Hundreds of high school students walked out of their Tucson, Ariz., schools Monday in a coordinated protest against the banishment of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program. This from Common Dreams:
In recent days, administrators and board members have issued a series of conflicting and inaccurate statements and carried out the extreme actions of confiscating books in front of children.
Last week, a recently hired assistant superintendent from Texas told Tuscon students to “go to Mexico” to study their history–nevermind that most of their families have been in the United States for decades.
If you are not familiar with the Tucson Mexican American Studies saga, Sunday’s New York Times
editorial summarizes the current situation nicely and says in part:
The Tucson Unified School District has dismantled its Mexican-American studies program, packed away its offending books, shuttled its students into other classes. It was blackmailed into doing so: keeping the program would have meant losing more than $14 million in state funding. It was a blunt-force victory for the Arizona school superintendent, John Huppenthal, who has spent years crusading against ethnic-studies programs he claims are “brainwashing” children into thinking that Latinos have been victims of white oppression.
More background and a disclosure: I ran (sadly, unsuccessfully) against John Huppenthal for State Senate in 2006. That was also the year Republican Tom Horne was reelected to his second term as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. Killing the Mexican American Studies program – often referred to as MAS or “ethnic studies” – was really Horne’s crusade from the beginning.
It all started in 2006, when famed labor organizer Dolores Huerta addressed a Tucson high school assembly. Huerta is known for being feisty and pulling no punches – ideal qualities for a labor organizer – and in her characteristic style at the assembly she made the blunt observation that “Republicans hate Latinos.” Read the rest of this entry »
NYC Marchers Want an Economy ‘for All Working People’
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On a brisk and sunny day in New York City, Christy Thornton stood at the corner of Broadway and 31st streets.
“We’re facing the same issues as everyone else…high unemployment, mountains of debt and a lack of opportunity,” said Thornton, a doctoral student in history at New York University. “I’m here to stand in solidarity with the labor movement and all working people.”
Thornton is a member of the NYC Student Assembly, which formed this fall when students came together at Occupy Wall Street in lower Manhattan.
Standing in the shadow of the Empire State Building, Thornton mixed with an assortment of New Yorkers—union members from the Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the UAW, as well as three retired men who reminisced about strikes back in the 1940s. Read the rest of this entry »
Poll: Economic Security the Highest Priority for Young Workers
Emmelle Israel, an AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, is taking part in the Next Up Summit and sends us this report.
A poll among young people attending the 2011 AFL-CIO Next Up Young Workers Summit shows their highest priorites are economic security, job security and government action to improve the nation’s economy.
More than 800 young workers, students and activists took part in poll in the days leading up to the Summit which is taking place now through Sunday in Minneapolis. The poll was conducted via text message and the results were published this afternoon.
Some 67 percent of participants say they value economic security over economic opportunity
(33 percent), and 41 percent of those surveyed value job security over benefits (32 percent) and wages (27 percent). Read the rest of this entry »
Shuler: Fresh Generation of Activists Needed to Turn America Around
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The economic and social problems, the hate and the fear we see around us today can only be solved by a fresh generation of committed, smart, tireless and creative activists, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told the nearly 800 young workers, activists and student at the Next Up Young Workers Summit today.
“And—I’m going to go out on a limb here—but I think you are those people,” she said.
In her keynote address to the conference, which opened today in Minneapolis, Shuler said the situation in the global economy is dire. Massive change is needed to turn it around. Young workers are being told to “suck it up” and live in a world without jobs, she said.
We’re being told that America can’t afford teachers—but we can afford CEO tax cuts. We’re being asked to accept a society that rewards wealth and punishes work. A society that makes it harder for young people to go to college. A society where hate is growing and targeting people of color, people of different faiths, people who are LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer], immigrants–it’s shameful.
Shuler urged the participants to create coalitions back home to build a movement to take back the American Dream. Read the rest of this entry »
National DREAM Youth Activist Shackled, Targeted for Deportation
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Jennifer Angarita in AFL-CIO Field Mobilization sends us this report.
From marches to teach-ins, activists across the country have mobilized around the DREAM Act, a common-sense immigration bill for students who were brought to the United States at a young age and who serve in the military or attend college for at least two years. Many have even risked deportation and detention to raise awareness of their cause. Matias Ramos is a prominent DREAM leader and UCLA graduate who was detained last year by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) while traveling.
After his regular check-in with ICE, Matias was shackled with an electronic monitoring device and given 14 days to leave the country, his only home. Matias was brought to the United States as a child, was raised here and considers himself American. Despite having his electronic shackles removed, Matias still faces deportation.
He says:
Today, I am confronted not only with the uncertainty of my situation, but also with knowing that I am not the only one caught in Obama’s deportation dragnet.
A Teacher’s Eye-View of Ohio’s Job-Killing Law
Nicole Gentile, a teacher with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and an AFT member, wrote this message to Ohio working families about the job-killing ramifications of S.B. 5, a new law that attacks the collective bargaining rights of workers seeking to maintain a middle-class living. Together with thousands of Ohioans, Gentile is working to repeal the law in the November elections.
I just got home from Marion-Sterling Elementary School. I might not be there much longer.
Walkerville Day Two: Respect K-12 Teachers and Students
Jill H., a graduate student at UW-Madison, brings us this “Walkerville” update (cross-posted from Defend Wisconsin).
As the daughter of lifelong public school educators—my mother in elementary special education and my father as a high school health teacher—I wanted to be sure to visit Walkerville today to find out more about the proposed budget cuts to grades K-12 education in Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-2013 biennial budget.
The budget proposal put forth by Republicans reduces funding for each student by five and a half percent, for a total reduction in revenue for K-12 education by $1.68 billion over the biennium. State aid alone is slanted for an 8 percent decrease, amounting to $834 million. The budget also cuts programs that provide aid for at-risk children, advanced placement courses, class-size reductions and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.
The Triangle Fire: Still Burning Before Our Nation
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We hope you will share this special AFL-CIO Now feature on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire with your friends, family and co-workers as a way to recognize America’s workers, past and present, who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice so much to improve the lives of all workers.
When word got out two weeks ago that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had ordered the windows of the state Capitol building bolted shut during the ongoing protests against his attacks on public employees, it was a chilling reminder of a similar action by the employers of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.
Nearly 100 years ago to the day of Walker’s order—which he rescinded after public outrage—146 workers, mostly young immigrant girls, jumped to their deaths from the 10-story building, unable to escape a fire because factory foremen had locked all the doors. The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, worried the workers would steal from the company.
