tagged w/ Labor Unions
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Little did Donna Dewitt know of the wave of troubles and ill will her demeaning and insensitive actions last week would bring upon the nation.
Instead of the intended results of a shower of candy, smacking a piñata bearing the image of South Carolina governor Nikki Haley produced a spill of animosity instead.
But while outgoing state AFL-CIO president Dewitt has had to answer for her completely cruel behavior on national news, it appears that a completely new stick is wildly swinging across the country in hopes of gaining its own sweets and treats.
Today, country music legend Willie Nelson filed suit against a piñata manufacturer for producing stuffed dolls in his image. Joining Nelson are pop star Justin Bieber and Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, whose likenesses are also borne by best-selling piñatas.
http://www.rob-servations.com/1/post/2012/05/dewitts-da-cause-of-propelling-pinata-problems.htmlLittle did Donna Dewitt know of the wave of troubles and ill will her demeaning and... more
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MAY DAY - The American Spring has Arrived. How will you show solidarity with the 99%?
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In a country where the value of labor has been devalued to the point of snuffing out the middle class, it can only be said that this move by Occupy should be supported. The United States has reached a point of income inequality that is absolutely obscene.
http://veracitystew.com/?p=34713MAY DAY - The American Spring has Arrived. How will you show solidarity with the 99%?... more
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Republicans have painted themselves into a corner once again. The party that set out to sabotage and destroy the Post Office, is now confronted by angry 'conservative' constituents in their rural districts that object to losing their mail service, jobs, or the institution itself... Here's the latest...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=34114Republicans have painted themselves into a corner once again. The party that set out... more
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Walker: "And what I’ve tried to do over this past year is even at the moments of the peak of the attacks and the incivility and everything else, to make sure what I did was calm, it was reasoned, and that I was responding in kind.”
http://veracitystew.com/?p=33255Walker: "And what I’ve tried to do over this past year is even at the... more
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ALEC is only one of the many ways the Koch brothers are attempting to change America's social, economic and political landscape. -- You think you know everything there is to know about the Koch Brothers --chief financiers of Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party-- but you have no idea the reach they have in everything from education to prisons. We urge you to take the time to read, watch and SHARE...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=33249ALEC is only one of the many ways the Koch brothers are attempting to change... more
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FINALLY the mainstream media is forced to report on ALEC after the two largest beverage companies in the world are exposed and forced to sever ties with a Koch-backed front group...
In state after state, we have seen almost identical bills popping up on a variety of issues in legislatures across the country, and while ALEC has been a somewhat shadowy operation up until now, more and more people are becoming aware of their influence as these laws begin to roll out. Additionally, despite a mainstream media blackout, Progressive bloggers –Veracity Stew among them– and journalists have been sounding the alarm for some time over the organization and people are now starting to listen.
http://veracitystew.com/?p=33223FINALLY the mainstream media is forced to report on ALEC after the two largest... more
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Read more here: http://unitehere.org/detail.php?ID=3542
National AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is in Las Vegas today to pledge his support for Station Casino workers involved in the country’s largest private sector organizing drive.
Since the 2007, management-led buyout allowed thirteen insiders to take $660 million out of the company, workers at Station Casinos have not had a raise, have had the cost of their health insurance increased, and have seen the loss of thousands of jobs.
Michael Wagner, a bartender at Green Valley Ranch, explained by saying, “All workers in Las Vegas should have job security, good wages, and solid healthcare. I want Stations to respect me and my right to organize.”
Read more here: http://unitehere.org/detail.php?ID=3542Read more here: http://unitehere.org/detail.php?ID=3542
National AFL-CIO President... more
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Should we be concerned or is this just making a mountain out of a mole hill?
http://veracitystew.com/?p=32384Should we be concerned or is this just making a mountain out of a mole hill?... more
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If Republicans do succeed in destroying the USPS it’s hard to see how it will be profitable for FedEx, for example, to deliver daily mail to places like Fargo, ND and Spavinaw, OK at comparable rates.
Then there’s the matter of absentee voter ballots handled each election by the USPS. When they’re gone, will we really feel comfortable that our votes are being handled by corporate entities like UPS and FedEx, which are allowed to influence candidates and policy with large financial donations?
http://veracitystew.com/?p=30934If Republicans do succeed in destroying the USPS it’s hard to see how it will be... more
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The Chamber of Commerce ads are blatantly anti-worker, attacking progressives like Wisconsin Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin for her stand against Koch-funded anti-union measures, or Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is a leading advocate for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Then there are the ads supporting Republicans who support the Keystone XL pipeline...
http://veracitystew.com/2012/02/09/no-friend-to-workers-chamber-of-commerces-10-million-ad-buy-video/The Chamber of Commerce ads are blatantly anti-worker, attacking progressives like... more
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Class warfare is only as real as the People make it. Coalescing as a single voice we have the power to divest the Corporatists of the Ill gained position they currently hold. This is not a Patriarchy or a Monarchy – rather it is WE the People governing for the People and it happens by the People.
http://veracitystew.com/2012/02/07/2012-election-whats-it-all-about/Class warfare is only as real as the People make it. Coalescing as a single voice we... more
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There is a movement in the United States that is slowly taking shape. This movement is made up of people of every gender, color and creed. This movement was started basically by young people of a working age that are unemployed. They believed that if they follow the rules deemed by society that they would be rewarded-but in this era of selfishness- this is not the case. So this group, the 99 percent are occupying Wall Street to show the powers that be- what their selfishness and greed are doing to the common person.There is a movement in the United States that is slowly taking shape. This movement is... more
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CNN...
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The Blood and Sweat Behind Labor Day
By Kenneth Davis, Special to CNN
updated 10:56 AM EST, Fri September 2, 2011
PHOTO:
Scores of boys worked at the Breaker Pennsylvania Co. coal mine before child labor was finally outlawed in 1938.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Ken Davis: Today, labor under fire. But war for workers' rights was long, deadly struggle
There was child labor, 12-hour days, 6-day weeks, low wages, no sick days, holidays
Soldiers, militias, private armies used deadly force to break 19th-century strikes
Labor Day born in 1894, he says, but reform didn't come till FDR's fair labor laws
Editor's note: Kenneth C. Davis is the author of "Don't Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition" and "A Nation Rising." His website is www.dontknowmuch.com.
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(CNN) -- A small boy, perched on an open catwalk in a candy factory, falls to his death. No, it is not a macabre moment out of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." It is a true story told by social reformer Jane Addams, who founded Chicago's Hull House in 1889.
Addams also described little girls who refused sweets as Christmas gifts that year. "They could not bear the sight of it," Addams wrote. "We discovered that that they had worked from 7 in the morning until 9 at night, and they were exhausted."
These Dickensian scenes lasted in America from the late 19th century until 1938, when child labor was outlawed under the Fair Labor Standards Act. They are a sobering reminder of why the nation marks Labor Day.
To most Americans, the first Monday in September means a three-day weekend and the last hurrah of summer, a final outing at the shore before school begins, a family picnic.
But Labor Day was born in a time when work was no picnic. As America was moving from farms to factories in the Industrial Age, there was a long, violent, often-deadly struggle for fundamental workers' rights, a struggle that in many ways was America's "other civil war."
It was a war fought when 12-hour days and six-day weeks were routine. Wages were low; there were no sick days, pensions or holidays. There was certainly no unemployment insurance. Any attempts at organizing were met by the combined wrath of business and government. The business of America was business.
That conflict, a period in which thousands of workers died in America's unsafe and unsanitary factories and mines, and hundreds more died in riots and pitched battles over workers' rights, is the little-noted history behind this holiday.
The first American Labor Day is dated to a parade organized by unions in New York on September 5, 1882, as a celebration of "the strength and spirit of the American worker." Their goals were simple: decent wages, an eight-hour workday and the right to organize. The September date was selected to provide a respite for workers and their families midway between July Fourth and Thanksgiving Day. By all accounts, the first Labor Day was a peaceful affair that drew tens of thousands of workers and their families to the city's Union Square Park.
But the path to a national Labor Day holiday was no walk in the park. The federal Labor Day was created 12 years later, signed into law by President Grover Cleveland during his second term in 1894. It's not that Cleveland was a great friend of labor. In fact, he had just sent out troops to break a strike.
During the economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, workers for the Pullman Car Co., one of the country's largest manufacturers, walked off their jobs when Pullman tried to cut wages, fire workers and evict them from their company-owned homes. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of workers in a nationwide walkout. Facing a strike that would shut down America's railroads, Cleveland dispatched 12,000 federal troops on the premise that the strike interfered with the U.S. Mail. In the ensuing violence, at least 13 strikers were killed.
This was not the first time troops had been used against American workers. Federal soldiers, state militias and private armies, often from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, had used deadly force to break many 19th-century strikes. Some of these strikes had become pitched battles, like the Homestead strike of 1892 in Pennsylvania. There, men on both sides armed with rifles and cannons died fighting over keeping a union at a steel mill, a union that owner Andrew Carnegie and manager Henry Frick were determined to break.
After crushing the Pullman strike, Cleveland thought that granting workers a Labor Day holiday was a sop that would appease them as he sought a third term. (It didn't work; he was denied the Democratic nomination in 1896.) Politicians and labor leaders were content to keep the holiday in September, far from the growing popularity of May Day as a commemoration of the "Martyrs of Haymarket Square," a group of union leaders executed -- unjustly, it was later proved -- after Chicago's deadly Haymarket Square Riots in May 1884.
For unions, Labor Day proved a hollow victory. Most of the reforms they sought did not come about for nearly half a century. The Depression-era fair labor laws that were passed under Franklin D. Roosevelt finally set standards like the eight-hour day and an end to child labor.
This history is worth remembering on Labor Day. But at a moment when American workers are battered by high unemployment, the Great Recession, a technology revolution in the workplace and globalization, there seems to be little to celebrate.
And these economic forces are only part of the relentless pressures faced by America's work force. There is also a renewed war over labor in this country. It is being fought in battleground states including, most notably, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Florida, where mostly Republican governors are wrangling with public employees over pay, pensions and more fundamental issues including the right of collective bargaining.
Their sharp anti-union rhetoric has increasingly found receptive listeners who have been convinced that "spoiled" unions and public employees -- the people who fight our fires, teach our children and pick up our garbage -- are at fault for our budgetary woes and the sorry state of the economy. The fight has been vitriolic but well short of the violence of America's "other civil war."
With that in mind, it is worth recalling President Abraham Lincoln's words during the dark early days of the real Civil War. "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed," he told Congress in December 1861. "Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration,"
Today, the first Republican president's words would count as heresy in the GOP. But they are a sharp reminder that working men and women built this country and fought its wars. And their labors are worth more than a Monday holiday or the mean-spirited contempt they now face. They deserve, as Lincoln said, "the higher consideration."
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kenneth Davis.
.CNN...
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The Blood and Sweat Behind Labor Day
By Kenneth Davis, Special to... more
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- ( because JACK LONDON rules ! )
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab.
A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.
When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.
more at LINK - - -
http://dawn.thot.net/scab.html- ( because JACK LONDON rules ! )
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,... more
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I was thinking of leaving Sprint (Verizon) after 10 years. Buckeye Bill informed me that Sprint is owned by Verizon which, as you know is anti-union and trying to steal from its workers. So, after seeing Credo mobile ads for years. I checked them out. Sprint, as far as I know still gives to the Sierra club legal defense club for me. Unless that changed and they didn't tell me. I asked two years ago when I renewed and they said yes. But the link above says Credo is non-union. Well, isn't that interesting. Now let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, they do some good. But according to the DSA labor network, ATT is a better option if you support unions and for that matter, causes.I was thinking of leaving Sprint (Verizon) after 10 years. Buckeye Bill informed me... more
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Dave Jamieson
dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com
Posted: 8/17/11 10:14 PM ET
WASHINGTON -- Three Pennsylvania labor leaders were detained by police Wednesday during a protest of working conditions for foreign students at a Hershey distribution center in Palmyra, Pa.
Labor activists said that the students had to pay between $3,000 and $6,000 to come to the United States on J-1 travel visas for the summer, and that after deductions for housing they’ve been earning a mere $40 to $140 in exchange for working 40-hour weeks. Stephen Boykewich, a spokesman for the National Guestworker Alliance, an advocacy group for guest workers in the U.S., said that the students were recruited in their home countries, mostly in Eastern Europe and Asia, and were offered the opportunity to visit America and improve their English.
Boykewich said that roughly 400 students were working at the plant and that the "vast majority" of them have walked out.
Workers at the facility in Palmyra package Hershey’s candies to be distributed to stores. Kirk Saville, a Hershey’s spokesman, said the foreign workers were not directly employed by the candy giant.
“Beyond that, I can say that the Hershey Company expects all of its vendors to treat its employees fairly and equitably,” Saville said.
Saville referred The Huffington Post to Exel, Inc., the third-party logistics company that oversees the distribution center. A spokeswoman for that company said that the student workers were not directly employed by Exel, either.
“We’re not trying to pass the buck,” Exel spokeswoman Lynn Anderson said. “It’s a bit of a layered situation.”
Anderson said that although Exel does run the distribution center, in this case the company had contracted a temporary worker company, which had in turn supplied the foreign workers to Exel.
She added that the guest workers wound up at the Hershey plant to supplement the full-time staff during a busy summer season.
“We require a lot of extra workers for a short period of time, and we use temporary labor for that,” Anderson said. As for any alleged exploitation at the plant, she said “we absolutely have standards and expectations” for our contractors. “If our supplier isn’t meeting our expectations, then we’ll take the necessary steps.”
Anderson directed The Huffington Post to SHS Staffing Solutions, the temp company that she said supplied the workers. But Sean Connolly, an SHS spokesman, said that while SHS did handle their payroll, the workers were actually supplied by a different agency.
“We just handle the payroll,” Connolly said.
He referred any questions about the foreign workers’ employment to the Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA), which he said supplied the workers to SHS.
On its website, CETUSA calls itself a “global exchange organization dedicated to helping people from different cultures develop more compassion and understanding for one another.” The nonprofit also says on its website that it helps foreign students obtain J-1 visas. Such visas are typically issued to foreigners interested in cultural exchange or business training in the U.S.
CETUSA officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
According to Boykewich, those arrested outside the Palmyra plant were Rick Bloomingdale, AFL-CIO Pennsylvania state president; Neal Bisno, an SEIU official; and Kathy Jellison, president of SEIU Local 668. The protesters had allegedly disrupted work at the facility.
"It's an entire labor strategy," Boykewich said of putting foreign students to work at facilities like the one in Palmyra. "Companies get extraordinarily productive workers for a fraction of what they used to pay."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/17/student-guestworkers-at-hershey-plant_n_930014.htmlDave Jamieson
dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com
Posted: 8/17/11 10:14 PM ET... more
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In the early 20th Century---coal mine operators had become so blatantly abusive and exploitive that they were even doing things like hiring private armies of mercenary thugs to intimidate labor organizers. In several cases they even murdered people indiscriminately in areas where labor organizing activities were taking place. This is when the word "thug" came into common use, after a group in India that murdered people by strangulation----paid assassins.
-------" Throughout the early 20th century, West Virginia coal miners attempted to overthrow this brutal system and engaged in a series of strikes, such as the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912, and which coal operators attempted to stop through violent means. Mining families lived under the terror of Baldwin-Felts detective agents who were professional strikebreakers under the hire of coal operators. During that dispute agents drove a heavily armored train through a tent colony at night, opening fire on women, men and children with a machine gun.[8] They would repeat this type of tactic during the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado the next year, with even more disastrous results.[9]"--------
Blair Mountain is the site of the largest armed conflict in the United States outside of the Civil War. As many as 130 people were killed in battle with Logan County sheriff's deputies and paid strike breakers from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.
Now, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, in moves that only highlights its well known and well paid position of bought and paid for by wealthy industrial interests-----not only wants to destroy the environment which they are supposed to be protecting, they also want to destroy our history as well by allowing the mountain top removal mining of Blair Mountain. Destroy the environment, destroy the people who have to work in the mines(WVDEP allowed violations that led to the deaths of 29 miners last year at a Massey Energy mine----and countless others)-----and now, they want to destroy our history as well. By erasing the memory of miners who gave their lives trying to make better working conditions.
Tom Clark---the director of WVDEP called the efforts to end the mountain top mining destruction of Blair Mountain---and preserve the site of one of the most significant pieces of the history of the the United States---"frivolous".
I suspect he calls anything that doesn't show a profit and put money in his pocket frivolous.
Please lend your support to stopping the destruction of Blair Mountain---and lets do what we can to preserve this site of an important piece of US history as a national park. Send letters to your congressmen and let it be known that you don't want our environment, our history and a piece of who we are destroyed to the profit of a few industrialists.In the early 20th Century---coal mine operators had become so blatantly abusive and... more
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Wetdog
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10 months ago
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We're taking a look at some of the most popular stories from the Current community, and we've rounded up some highlights from to share. Check them out and add your two cents:
Anthony Weiner's Leaked X-Rated Photo Adds Pressure for ResignationSubmitted by letsliveinpeace
After an X-rated photo of Rep. Weiner surfaced online, some senior Democrats are calling for his resignation.
"This picture puts it over the limit," former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told MSNBC of the explicit image that appeared online. "He has no choice but to resign."
AFL-CIO's Trumka Calls for Labor Movement Separate from Parties: 'I've Had a Snootful of This Shit!' | Common DreamsSubmitted by kennymotown
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has called for a labor movement that is separate from both political parties.
“We want an independent labor movement strong enough to return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation,” declared Trumka, who in recent months has been repositioning the AFL-CIO as a force that will hold Republicans and Democrats to what he describes as “a simple standard: “Are they helping or hurting working families?”
GOP Politician Tells Students "Go Back Home" After They Protest Rising TuitionSubmitted by lmzadi
A Republican lawmaker told Iowa students to go home during a state senate committee hearing on the state's budgets. The students were protesting increases in tuition costs.
State Senator Shawn Hamerlinck listened to to the students describe how their tuitions were being affected by budget cuts. He then let the students know exactly how he felt about their appearance at the meeting.
"I do not like it when students actually come here and lobby me for funds. That's just my opinion. I want to wish you guys the best. I want you to go home and graduate. But this political fear, leave the circus to us, OK?" Hamerlinck stated, according to the Des Moines Register.
Join the discussion -- or head over to the News group for more popular stories from the community.We're taking a look at some of the most popular stories from the Current... more
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