DENVER, COLORADO- Yes, Denver's FIGHT FOR FIFTEEN march kept to the sidewalks. When ISO members (organizing the local "15 NOW" group) pushed the boundaries, SEIU marshals criticized them not just for agitating, but for pushing their socialist agenda. Occupy Denver activists held a prominent banner which referenced reigning minimum wage champion Socialist Alternative. Most of the attendees were union members whose representatives have obviously failed to credit the SA party or Seattle Councilwoman Kshama Sawant for the nation's first $15 minimum wage victory. We fielded questions all evening from marchers eager to know if an SA chapter was brewing in Colorado. 42428
Tag: Unions
What unions are really all about?
Here it is in a nutshell... It’s All About Resistance- Without Unions the Bullies Will Win.
Walmart Black Friday Strike Protests
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS- Walmart Express, 3636 N. Broadway, Lakeview
Walmart: Strike you goddamn morons!
Finally, finally Walmart slave-wage workers are marching, on their off hours, picketing their stores. Finally. It's tempting to get out there and hold signs in support, but where were they when we were protesting Walmart ourselves? The pathetic Walmart "associates" couldn't be convinced we weren't jeopardizing the source of their livelihoods. Except their jobs aren't livelihoods. Even as Walmarts in more and more cities face a growing uprising, I'm not convinced that our local workforce can wise up beyond agitating to medicate their lives with pot or jumping at the chance to scab each other's part-time hours.
Still no unions in racist Delano, California and racist management and racist owners get caught there once again for abusing their power
...Despite having over a 2/3 majority Hispanic population, it is the racist Anglo community that still runs affairs in Delano, California. For those youngsters who only dimly know their own country's history, Delano was where the Farm Workers Union tried to organize way back in the '60s and '70s when Cesar Chavez used a national boycott of grapes to publicize how bad conditions were in the fields. Well, there are still no unions much in Delano, California (unless one might count prison guard 'unions' as being real unions, which I personally do not) and here was the news that made the national news today... Filipino nurses win language discrimination settlement 37041
We all hate bad teachers, and so do teachers. Chicago Teachers Strike is about improving education
No one hates bad teachers more than fellow teachers. What a vile media construct to assert the Chicago Teachers Strike wants to force bad teachers on the public school system. The strike is a bid to strengthen the union and public education. Who better to fight privatization, standardized testing and the deliberate mis-education of common students than teachers? 36976
MAY DAY International Worker’s Day
Reformist US labor unions plan to suck life from Occupy movement this spring
Here it is, the big push this spring by 'Labor' to try to suck the life out of the US Occupy Movement and push us all back into the Democratic Party behind Barack O'bomber man and a second term of Republican Lite NOTHINGNESS. The 99% Spring , a big blob of empty rhetoric by the usual Vote Lesser of Two Evils suspects. Americans deserve much better than this and deserve something better than the Democratic Party Right Centrism we always get from this disintegrating Labor crowd.
Why I Occupy Walmart
MY ENDGAME in occupying Walmart is to rally union members to the Occupy Movement. Union members, not unions. Taking the fight straight to Walmart, one of the most despicable, exploitative despoilers of the world's people and economy is something the big unions should have been doing thirty years ago. Maybe their members will finally see that they've been sold up the river by their supposed representatives. That neither local nor national unions are expressing solidarity with us on the sidewalks of these super centers is proof that the only wages and working conditions they've been protecting are their own.
Capital = Job creation, as explained by CenturyLink formerly Qwest formerly SW Bell
and somewhere in there a brief fantasy relationship with Yahoo as an internet service provider and a general screwing to the taxpayers of the City of Irving and Dallas county being thrown in... but I once more digress. CenturyLink "absorbed" Qwest's facilities, employees and corporate debts in a process called merger where all duplicated or "redundant" jobs on both sides of the merger were downsized. Meaning XXX number of real people lost their tech and service sector jobs. That's the way it looks on any prospectus of any merged corporations, in order to convince people to invest more capital in those corporations. In reality the jobs created would be debt collectors and repossession crews and foreclosure agents. BUT that's what they tell the Money People. Those of us who are in the Peasant Majority are told that we should welcome CenturyLink along with the massive tax breaks given on top of the ones they already enjoyed PLUS extras for "Job Creation" in our communities... we're told that these massive layoffs is somehow an opportunity for those "downsized" out of having a living wage job to get a job with a company who has just laid off about 20 percent of their workforce
An 83% Payroll Tax, on the Workers and paid directly to the Corporations
That's what I paid and, everybody who works for a "Slave Market" minimum wage Labor Contractor Service such as Labor Ready, Apprentice, Manpower, Kelly... The "tax" is paid to a Non-Governmental Organization, and is paid before the Worker gets his check. I base the 83% figure on the fact that the workers are paid only 1/6th of what the Parasite Corporation gets for his "product". Under the various manifestations of the "Right To Get Screwed At Work" law, the workers aren't allowed to negotiate wages, working conditions, pensions or Insurance through the use of Collective Bargaining. We're supposed, instead, to go hat-in-hand and beg the employer for a slight fraction more of what is actually owed us. On an individual basis and, under the RTW law, the employer can cut your wages just as quickly as he "gives" them to you. They can take 5 times what we get, producing absolutely NOTHING themselves. We're not allowed to do what the Corporate Masters do, insist on a profit for our product. Nor, according to the laws as interpreted by their Tame Supreme Court, are we even allowed to break even. You can't go to King Soopers or Safeway and buy a $3
Organize, but think outside the school
I love this graphic, it's clever, it's instructional, sort of. It offers at least the illusion of parity in a big fish eats little fish world. Because you know, it's not going to work unless one of the little fishies is packing a spear gun.
Ikea factory workers organized by IAM, who will unionize the retail employees?
Ikea factory workers in Danville, Virginia, voted to unionize. Did they do it alone? No, they joined the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (Upside for Ikea, its customers can pretend their prefab furniture is tooled by rocket scientists). If Ikea retail employees follow suit, maybe there's hope for organizing the poverty-wage employees of America's largest private retailers: Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, so what current retail unions are recruiting their membership to flier offending locations, circulate among the workers and initiate organizing campaigns?
Morons at AFL-CIO say AT&T/T-Mobile merger will benefit union workers
That's the problem with unions. Collective bargaining is key to making capitalists heed the people, but the big unions are co-opted by back- peddling idiots. Aka, counter-revolutionaries. The AFL-CIO praised this merger because the unionized AT&T will absorb the non-union T-Mobile workforce? Yeah, what's left of the jobs. Increased monopolization means streamlined payrolls, more pressure to force concessions, and less leverage. In offering this endorsement of a proposed antitrust offense, the AFL-CIO takes its members for chumps. Remember the UFCW betraying the P-9 meatpackers, or the SEIU taking out the nurses' union? Of course the Democratic Party is chiming in, claiming a merger will help gays, by the same tortured moron math. Americans need their unions, their own political party, and advocacy groups, but they have to start with taking a guillotine to the top. Finding his pro-corporate support uncharacteristic GLAAD members unmasked their leader. This can be a one-strike litmus test. Favor AT&T, mistaken or not, you're out.
Wikileaks- US State Dept ties Haitian aid to acceptance of wage slavery
When the outgoing Haitian Govt insisted on the whopping huge $5 a DAY minimum wage instead of the three dollars a day being offered by the Corporate-owned U.S.A.I.D., their pet sellouts at State Dept, which has been trying to put a stranglehold on who does or does not do business with Haiti since, like, Forever, endorsed a U.S.A.I.D. report that Haiti wasn't as badly harmed by the earthquake and thus, the Haitian people owe the aid money back. Welcome to the Global Plantation. I wonders, yes I does, how much Gov Scott Walker, Rep Paul Ryan, Gov LePage of Maine, Rick GoodHair of Texas, The Chambers of Commerce, and their Local Anti-worker ToolsTrained Monkeys like Paige, Patchsi, Janis Heuberger, Jeff Crank, Malkin, Tancredo, and the entire City Council, the Mayor and County Commissioners have in their own personal stock portfolios on this? Slavery by low wage and high debt IS their main way of doing business. How about it, anti-Union anti-Working Class PUNKS? Sound off on how morally superior and righteous you are in defense of Slavery.
THEY can’t afford feudal serfdom any more than US
Meaning the Corporates. Like Bush and Walker. They've sunk their assets and their asses into the credit economy deep. They broke it and expect US to make all the concessions so they can salvage enough of the system to support their luxury lifestyle. It's gone, gone gone... They'll have real estate without tenants or maintenance, cars without gas or drivers, WideScreen MegaUltra-3D televisions without electricity or audiences. roads that nobody could drive on even if they DID have cars and gas, and no way to pay the Working Class people they've hired to guard their palaces. 23351
Labor Rally In Austin commemorated Fallen Workers
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Recommendations for the Denver rally tomorrow…
Find out if Fox News is finally realizing that their shit ain't flying as well as they thought it would and if they've decided to charter a fleet of Greyhounds to bus in TeaBags for the "grass roots" counter rally, sponsored by Fox and the other Koch-suckers. Then have REAL grass- roots people infiltrate and get a free ride to the rally, courtesy of the Korporate Diktatorship. Tweet and Facebook that around. It's easy to pretend to be a Bagger, just wear one of those stupid "don't tread on me" caps, carry a confederate battle flag and a sign that says "No munky presdnent!" "Unoins are Socalist!" Make sure you misspell every word longer than 5 letters or two syllables. Talk really loud about shooting some more liberals. You'll fit right in. Oh, and don't take a bath first. Make their bus ride as pleasant as possible. The Koch-suckers are now trotting out all their "philanthropic" donations, including to PBS... Remind them that the only reason there's any record of that is because they take every dime of every donation off their taxes. Meaning WE, the worker class, have to pay THEIR advertising budget simply by not cheating on OUR taxes. Finally, Governor Scott
“Invest in America” speak-out at Lame-Bone’s Office Tomorrow
Instead of his lame-ass "town halls" like the Tea-Party ones he held for health care, remember those? The one at a Country Club on the far edge of town that started after the bus stopped running on a Friday evening, no more bus service till Monday morning? Working Class need not apply? Then they filled the hall with a Republican Party strategy session before the "open to everyone" Town Hall? And the Republicans stayed for the "open" Town Hall, making sure nobody else could come in? Yeah... THAT old Pig tactic. This Speak-out is outside his Luxury Office Suite, where anybody with a million-dollar annual income and a campaign contribution check has easy access. Again, Poor people, workers... need not apply. Unless the Punk can prove that he actually does own one square inch more of the streets and sidewalks than any other citizen, there ain't Jack they can do about it. Bring stereo equipment, something with microphones and amps. Make sure every TeaBag sellout who works for him can hear what the REAL people have to say. 10:30 tomorrow morning, Thursday 24 Feb 2011, at Doug Lamborns congressional district office in Colorado Springs. MoveOn.org is sponsoring, and this is an info blurb: 23209
What happens to Outsourced (Steve) Jobs workers…
a Taiwan manufacturer of touch-screens ordered a switch from wood alcohol as a cleaning solvent to n-hexane. Hexane is a petrochemical that's more volatile than gasoline (octane) but won't dissolve plastic and rubber like the in-between number heptane. Think mono, di, tri, tetra, penta, hexa, hepta, octa as one through eight. The reason for using the carcinogenic chemical, brain-cell eating chemical? It dries faster than alcohol. Not much, but some, and made a measurable difference in production. Profit is everything, workers, well, they're a dime a dozen. The iPad markets $459 retail. The 137 workers who had the "side effects" severely enough to require medical intervention, produced thousands of these every day. What percentage of the profit margin did they receive just for their work? Those are the wage and safety issues the Bush-appointed-but-never-revamped Department of Labor Exploitative Practices say are "over regulated" and job killers. As opposed to Worker Killers like toxic chemicals. The Hexane evaporates faster than alcohol and tweaked production by about 20%. Just, you know, at the cost of Human Lives. Which, had the practice continued, it would have been deadly. Apple, in their annual report, did say that they (text below) had ordered WinTek, the company which subcontracted the production, to
Operation Chaos Backfired (also the TeaTard action in Wisconsin)
So, the DumFox leaders became so frightened of the hordes of non-white-anglo-saxons having the majority of the votes, if the representative districts were counted correctly, they thought of a brilliant (in their opinion) plan to skew the results of the census by getting the more ignorant of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant DumFox to boycott the Census, thereby giving them an excuse. Mind you, they're still operating under the fiction that the Republican and Tea parties are somehow separate entities from each other and that NewsCorp is a separate entity from both. The most hard-core TeaBag morons know this, but prefer to lie about it. Now, Bush's anointed replacement as Governor of Texas, Tom DeLay and his ventriloquist dummy Rick GoodHair Perry, forced a redistricting 8 years early after the last census, to insure more Republican dominated districts. They did skew that census, really hard, by spreading a terroristic rumor in minority (but now combined MAJORITY) communities similar to the retarded ones they spread in the Redneck Hoam Skewl Ignorant communities with the current census. GoodHair and Co. ain't barkin' real loudly about redistricting almost a decade early this time. Instead, they're going to make the motion that the Census
“independent counsel” Feinberg says all okay by 2012″
The Gulf of Mexico will have largely recovered from the BP oil spill by the end of 2012, the administrator of the $20bn (£12bn) pay-outs fund has said. Attorney Kenneth Feinberg said that compensation to those who lost revenue from the disaster would be based on this prediction. Meanwhile, a judge has ruled that Mr Feinberg make clear to claimants that he is not independent from BP. The Deepwater Horizon spill was the biggest in US history. The fund was set up by BP in August to compensate those affected by the spill, and has so far paid out about $3.3bn to 168,000 people. 22617
Happy 18th Re-Birthday, to me…
It was 18 years ago last Friday that I woke up as a healthy, badly underpaid and moderately radicalized minimum wage Construction Laborer and 5 minutes before quiting and pay time (they didn't pay me either) was reborn as a badly disabled, even worse paid and definitely Radicalized Ex-Construction worker. The De-Regulated Fully Privatized, Right To Work but No Right To Health Care Corporate Regime that I'm supposed to not even TRY to vote against next week, "Defeat is Inevitable, Resistance is Futile, You will be assimilated" attitude has cost me the use of my feet. In case any of the Tea-bag or Republican Mainstream or other Right Wing Extremist groups wonder why anybody would vote against their "Freedom to Conform and Obey" platform, that's not a complete answer but it's a Really Damned Good Start. Had there been fully socialized health care in America for the past 18 years my right foot would not have died and it would have saved almost a quarter of a million dollars in my case alone. Shove that up your Fiscal "conservative" ummm... left nostril, o ye Stupid Ones, and then line up and take turns kissing my ..errr... right foot. The one
Capital in Action, minimum wage.
Just heard a commercial for a "rent to own" place. One where the payments on a laptop computer totaled two and a half grand for a 450 dollar machine. A 700 dollar (at the high end price) refrigerator, 159 bux a month for two years, 3816 dollars. That's a 400% markup. So, what's the Big Deal about Minimum Wage? Why shouldn't those of us who rent out our labor have to do it not at a profit, not even at a "break-even" rate, but below the actual cost for us to produce our labor? If I were to walk into the Rent-to-own place and demand to only pay $700 for the $700 refrigerator, would I be legitimately allowed to walk out the door, (with a rented dolly and rented pickup of course) with the refrigerator? How about if I only offered $500? Surely he could survive on $20 a month for 2 years. No? What if I got some Publicly Paid Goons to force him to negotiate on my terms, the way Capital always does when they're confronted with the silly-ass demands of Labor that the Workers actually be paid an adequate wage? See, every time this question gets put to the Capitalists, they come
12 credit cards, 12 different names, delivered to same address, same day
Which I witnessed, there’s this relative of mine who, for lack of a better word, is a Thief. To be fair to MasterCharge and whatever Visa’s old name was (I’ll look it up) they DID reject half the applications. He put in 25. He only stayed at our house for a week and a half and with that one scam got about $25,000 which he promptly took to Las Vegas. Gambling is a more expensive vice than any dope. But when I go to a local supermarket there’s a big push on for people to sign up for a 1-2-3 Rewards MasterCard. My usual joke for the past 6 damn years was that even MasterCard wouldn’t be dumb enough to give me a card. All the people there have heard me reject the offer of this credit card. Yet I’m still asked. I know the people, they’re not dumb in any way, Mass Senility seems to be out of the question. So why the Ask? 17978