The lobbyist and spin doctors against the working American have launched all sorts of anti-union websites, one of their newest is using the "stop unions" phrase. So here's a nice little spot on Blogger where I can test some nice widgets for my own site Joe's Union Review
"We have some of the best employees in the state of Texas, and we're looking forward to working together with this contract for the next three years." - Paul Perez, VP Lufkin Industries
The last time they went for a contract, in 2002, there were only 700 union employees at Lufkin Industries, unfortunately there was no room for a bargain, so the workers struck for 13 days over health premiums and retirement benefits. Since then the 106 year old company has expanded widely.
Lufkin Industries[LUFK] is now one of the largest employers in Lufkin, TX., and employs roughly 1800, with about 1200 who are represented by a union 1. Cited as the the 16th. fastest growing company in the energy sector, and 39th. overall by Fortune for the year ending 20072, Lufkin Ind. is a healthy company who's wares include tractor trailer boxes, power transmissions for industrial uses and their most well known item, the giant oil pump3.
As of Friday, Oct. 10th., the union workers and Lufkin Ind. have agreed to a 3 year contract that will carry them all to 2011, according to an anonymous worker the new contract includes an 11% wage increase over the course, unfortunately that will be nullified by a 15% health care increase over the same period, a catch 22 in today's world of free market health insurers.
Taken off the table were the companies initial idea of a 4 day 12 hour per work week, with a 4 day layover till the next work day. The union workers rejected that last Sunday.
"We do have work and plenty of it and that's why the company wants us," the worker said. "I think most people are happy."1
Union workers have accepted the new contract offered by Lufkin Industries, ending the possibility of a strike by the employees.
Machinist Business Representative Terry Taylor announced the decision after votes were tallied Thursday evening at the Deep East Texas Council of Labor AFL-CIO building on Old Gobblers Knob Road. All union members will return to work as normal.
Taylor said the members made a three-year agreement with Lufkin Industries that includes improvements in wages and benefits. No specifics were released, but working hours were not mentioned as part of the changes.
Lufkin Industries Vice President Paul Perez said he was pleased with the results.
"Lufkin Industries is very pleased with the show of support demonstrated, and we're anxious to begin working under this three-year contract," Perez said.
Union workers had rejected an initial contract offer from Lufkin Industries on Sunday, but agreed then to continue under the previous agreement for at least another week. The extension was set to expire at midnight Sunday, Oct. 12.
Union workers easily beat that deadline with the approval of the new contract offer.
"This is a strong show of support," Perez said. "We have some of the best employees in the state of Texas, and we're looking forward to working together with this contract for the next three years."
"The Toyota You Don't Know" with Charlie Charles Kernaghan and Barbara Briggs, National Labor Committee
Toyota, may be known for environmentally friendly cars, but that "sensitivity" hardy extends to its treatment of its workers in Japan, U.S. , Burma and the Philippines. Building Bridges previews a new expose, "The Toyota You Don't Know" a study in abuse.
What's Driving the Price of Oil? With James Paul, Ex. Dir., Global Policy Forum
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said Sunday, at a high-level oil summit that Saudi Arabia is willing to pump more oil if customers need it - will this stem the skyrocketing price of oil at the pump? Is the price of oil driven by speculators, the high fuel taxes in consuming countries and increased oil consumption in developing economies? Is the price of oil driven by the record profits of the oil companies and lack of conservation especially in the U.S?
Atlantic City Casino Workers Want to be Dealt a Fair Hand With Ed Little, dealer at Trump Plaza and Sharon Masino, dealer at Caesar's Palace
Casino dealers, slot technicians, keno and simulcast workers won six U.A.W. union representation elections at four major Atlantic City casinos. While the owners make huge profits, casino workers wages, health care benefits and working conditions have deteriorated. And, despite the overwhelming pro-union majorities in the elections, casino operators are playing Russian Roulette with workers seeking a contract.
"Statistics are one thing, however, and real life is another. The responses that I received describe the decline of the American middle class from the perspective of those people who are living that decline. They speak about families who, not long ago, thought they were economically secure, but now find themselves sinking into desperation and hopelessness." - US Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont
On his website Democratic US Senator Bernie Sanders asked his readers to send him an E-Mail of what life has been like with todays economic climate, he received over 700 responses, you can read many of them here(PDF), heres the first one:
By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture.
I am a single mother with a 9 year old boy. We lived this past winter without any heat at all. Fortunately someone gave me an old wood stove. I had to hook it up to an old/unused chimney we had in the kitchen. I couldn't even afford a chimney liner (the price of liners went up with the price of fuel). To stay warm at night my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I'd hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway and we'd sleep right there on the floor. By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it in the tub. I'd like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the capital building...we are certainly a country in distress.
There are lot more, letters from working people and those who have retired who can't make ends meet.
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Labor union officials, who blame the nation's mortgage mess in part on runaway executive pay, are calling for Congress to adopt a "say on pay" bill that would let shareholders weigh in on CEO compensation.
Chief executives at Countrywide Financial (CFC) and Washington Mutual Inc. ( WM) were paid "obscene amounts" even when their company's performance faltered as subprime borrowers defaulted on home mortgage loans, AFL-CIO Secretary- Treasurer Richard Trumka said at a press briefing Monday. The bad loans devalued mortgage-backed securities tied to them, leading to large write-downs in assets at a number of financial firms..
Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo, Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger, former Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC) CEO James Cayne, and former Citigroup Inc. (C) CEO Charles Prince were among those rewarded lavishly for betting on risky loans, according to labor officials. Mozilo and Cayne are also chairmen.
"When the house of cards fell, they didn't pay for it, we did," said Trumka.
But is Barack Obama really an elitist as his opponents claim? Well of course he is -- he's running for president of the United States! He wouldn't have gotten this far in life if he'd spent the past 20 years driving a truck or moonlighting as a fry cook at Arby's. Like every other successful politician in the United States, Obama is a member of America's political ruling class, which means that like every other presidential candidate in recent memory, he is typically insulated from the lives of ordinary people. Does Obama really have any idea what it's like to live like a "Real American?" Of course he doesn't, and neither do John McCain and Hillary Clinton! Does any rational person out there believe that Obama, Clinton and McCain spend their free time away from the campaign trail hanging out at Jimmy Ray's Chicken'n'Beer Depot playing darts with the common folk?
In theory, this point should be fairly obvious. Even before getting elected, most politicians made a good deal of money in their careers as lawyers, doctors, actors or oil tycoons -- you know, real salt-of-the-earth sort of work. But for reasons that have long confounded sane people everywhere, our national millionaire press corps gives positive coverage to political candidates who are the most adept at lying about their ability to connect with regular folks. And because it apparently takes too much work for our press corps to sift through the candidates' policy positions to figure out what each of them is actually offering blue-collar voters, we don't even get rational assessments of politicians' working-class cred. Instead, we get piles and piles of anecdotal evidence.
President George W. Bush will soon host what has become an annual “Three Amigos Summit.” The leaders of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be gathering in New Orleans on April 21 and 22. What do you suppose is on the agenda? A rational response to immigration, perhaps? A thoughtful renegotiation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement? Lessons from Canada’s affordable medicines program?
No. No. And no. Rather than putting their heads together around pressing issues such as these, the three leaders will be advancing a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). And while that may sound well and good, this initiative, begun in 2005, is unlikely to produce either security or prosperity. That’s because the partnership is only with big business.
The chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron, and 28 other large corporations are in on the closed-door negotiations, while members of Congress, journalists, and ordinary citizens are excluded. And the secrecy is not just around the presidential summits, but also the meetings of about 20 SPP working groups that carry on negotiations over the course of the year.
What’s on the table? Not much is public, but we do know that the executive powers of the three countries are hammering out regulatory changes that they claim do not require legislative approval. And given who’s in the room, it’s a safe bet that these changes will favor narrow corporate interests over the public good.
Media around the world are currently feeding off the increasing price of food everywhere. The World Bank chief has joined in with the prediction that starvation is a distinct possibility for many of the weaker nations, leading to political turmoil.
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) chief says only 14 percent of available water is used in Asia, 2 percent in Africa, with the rest flowing into the oceans each year. If this is the sorry state of affairs, what do our political leaders and their henchmen do at the office every day?
The instinctive urge to shoot the messenger is of course misdirected energy. But when you put the disparate pieces of our puzzling world on the table, the emerging picture is embarrassing indeed.
A kilogram of rice costs more than US$1 and a barrel of oil costs over $100. One influences the other. The subprime loan crisis will cost more than $1 trillion and the Iraq war will cost the United States alone as much as $3 trillion.
Different problem, same instinct. Many pundits will argue none of this has any connection to global hunger, as if these colossal costs aren't real and do not affect the common man.
It is all too easy to throw stones at our politicians and bureaucrats. But those of us in business would do well to spend a minute pondering the glass houses we go to work in.
The altar of the shareholder has become the convenient excuse for inexcusable conduct. The voracious appetite for dividends and stock prices has allowed CEOs to hold boards and investors alike to ransom.
Systemic deception has become acceptable culture in too many boardrooms, with nothing more than a wink and a nod required down the chain of command. When it gets to a point that an accountant is unable to explain complex new financial instruments and their equally befuddling acronyms, disaster cannot be far away.
Not even a decade ago, the Internet bubble exploded with disastrous consequences, ripples felt around the globe. Everybody who then believed the lessons were learned have been proven wrong not even a decade later. For every errant CEO who has gone to jail, there are hundreds who have made millions in severance pay alone. Regulators and lawmakers appear not to be troubled.
It seems as if the profit motive is no longer an adequate driver of business today. Unbridled greed has taken over, a global corporate culture spreading like a cancer unchecked.
Washington - The Senate proclaimed a fierce bipartisan resolve two weeks ago to help American homeowners in danger of foreclosure. But while a bill that senators approved last week would take modest steps toward that goal, it would also provide billions of dollars in tax breaks - for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries, as well as home builders.
The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.
It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients' interests.
This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.
In the Senate bill, the nation's biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.
"This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986," said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association's members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.
Supporters of the bill, including Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, say it represents sound tax policy carefully focused to help stimulate the lagging economy. But the White House opposes the Senate bill, and Democratic leaders in the House not only have promised to provide more relief for individual homeowners, but have also dropped the corporate tax provisions from their version.
Downtrodden automakers - Ford and General Motors - were especially dogged in securing a tax break that would let them collect alternative minimum tax credits, also known as the A.M.T., that would otherwise be out of reach because they did not pay enough taxes in recent years to claim a rebate.
If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.
A Ford spokesman, Mike Moran, said he was aware that Ford would benefit from the tax credit in the bill passed by the Senate. But Mr. Moran said that the credit applied to a range of industries, not just automakers. A General Motors spokesman could not be reached.
Domestic airlines and manufacturers other than automakers would be eligible to claim the A.M.T. break as well. One lobbyist said that the companies that had sought the tax breaks in meetings with lawmakers included Ford, General Motors, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
Companies could claim only one of the new tax breaks, which in all, are expected to cost $6 billion through 2018. The jockeying among industry groups, including Realtors, home builders and bankers, is certain to intensify in coming weeks as lawmakers move to reconcile the Senate bill with a more ambitious package of housing legislation now under way in the House.
Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.
From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books), Michael Klare, Tomdispatch's energy expert, has long been ahead of the curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we've been and where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in transition and on a road to nowhere pretty. Check out as well the latest Tomdispatch brief video (produced by TD's Brett Story) -- in which Klare discusses key issues in his new book -- by clicking here. Tom
By so unabashedly embracing the most glaringly failed U.S. president ever, McCain has surrendered the right to be considered an independent candidate, judged on his own merits and personal history. A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.
Too harsh? Then consider just how tight the space is between the rocks of our failed Mideast policy and the hard place of our impending financial disaster. The sudden out-of-control spike in the cost of oil—the key short-term market variable, the specter that stokes inflation fear and limits moves to avoid recession—is not a natural disaster or in any realistic way the result of inefficiency in the use of energy. What more than doubled the price of petroleum in the short run was not that too many of us bought Hummers, but rather that the political stability of the region that contains the bulk of that oil was deliberately and recklessly roiled.
In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.
Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed U.S. financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush’s vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.
There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney’s old company profited enormously from ripping off U.S. tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the U.S. banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners.
It’s just the sort of egregious betrayal of the trust of the taxpayers that Sen. McCain would have gone after, before he sought to don the soiled robes of the Bush presidency.
Graham Wynne, chief executive of the RSPB, said: "The volume of biofuel that can be genuinely described as sustainable is at present very small indeed and is nowhere near enough to warrant the 2.5 per cent obligation. The impacts of biofuel production on forests and wetlands are already being seen worldwide. It is a tragedy that customers' money is going to be spent on driving this destruction."
The World Bank and the UN have, in recent days, expressed concern about the impact of biofuels on world food prices, sparking riots from Haiti to the Philippines. Gordon Brown, who has put the issue on the agenda at the forthcoming G8 summit, has also voiced concerns at EU level about deforestation and loss of habitats caused by biofuel production. And Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, raised the issue at the weekend's G7 meeting in Washington.
Why support oil from the Middle East if you don't have to? The EIA: Energy Information Administration publishes official information on US oil companies that purchase their oil from that region. Sunoco and Shell get none from the region, while Citgo gets a mere 1%. Here's a partial list.
Bush, partisanship, no extension for unemployment insurance, housing crisis history, largest oil profits ever, impudent congress, and Firestone. It amazes how horrible a partisan House and Senate can be in this country, I mean what a bunch of drones, all ganging against one another when a bill to help working class people comes along. It certainly makes it hard to defend Republicans to the average person. Obviously we need a new party of free thinkers who can stand on their own two feet.
The most pressing data in the latest jobs report is this: The number of people who were unemployed for six months or more as of January was 1.38 million.
The last time the numbers looked that bad — when the nation was mired in joblessness after the 2001 recession — Congress extended unemployment compensation for people who had exhausted their initial 13 weeks of benefits. This time around, unfortunately, Congress may fail to include those much needed benefits in the upcoming economic stimulus bill.
The White House is wrongly insisting that lawmakers stick with a bill it negotiated with House leaders before the new data was released. That version omits jobless benefits and centers instead on — what else? — tax cuts. In the Senate, which may vote this week on its own stimulus bill, Republicans are blocking a Democratic push for jobless benefits. Their objection: Extended unemployment benefits encourage idleness.
Enough. Lawmakers should trim the less effective stimulus measures under discussion: tax rebates for the rich in the Senate version and corporate tax breaks in both bills. They can make room for more effective jobless benefits in the legislation’s final version.
As the slowdown continues, Americans will be looking to the government for relief and, ultimately, reform of the economic and labor policies that have led to this point. Congress should start by extending unemployment benefits in the stimulus package.
I suggest you read that entire article, and have a look at the Mike Hall article about it at the AFL-CIO Blog for more information, such as:
The economic stimulus package is stalled in the U.S. Senate. Senate Republican leaders—backed by the Bush White House—threatened a filibuster against efforts by Senate Democrats to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the millions of jobless workers who will run out of benefits in the next several months.
The bill, approved Wednesday by the Senate Finance Committee, improves on the House-passed stimulus package by adding the UI extension and also providing tax rebates to more than 20 million low-income senior citizens and veterans.
Along with the UI extension, the AFL-CIO has called for the stimulus bill to include a temporary increase in food-stamp benefits as one of the most efficient ways to pump money quickly into the economy. The Bush administration and Republican leaders strongly oppose both the UI and food-stamp measures. Says Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.):
"I can give you their own speech on unemployment compensation and food stamps. They don’t believe in them, O.K? So there was no way to agree when they don’t believe food stamps are important, when they believe that if you extend unemployment benefits, it only keeps people looking for a job, which is a little hard to comprehend."
When the Senate returns to the stimulus bill next week, Republicans likely will engage in a filibuster that requires 60 votes to overcome, again blocking action on the Finance Committee bill with the UI extension. If so, Democrats are expected to offer UI and food-stamp amendments to the House bill.
Why on earth are we adding corporate welfare into this bill and not taking care of the people? While our country is enjoying the fruits of our labor, a recession, big oil has posted it's largest gains ever, according to the World Socialist website:
Amid growing fears that the US economy is sliding into recession, accompanied by both mounting layoffs and an increased assault on the living standards of the working population, the big oil companies once again posted record profits.
ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil conglomerate, announced Friday that it had broken its own previous record for the highest corporate profit ever, raking in a staggering $40.6 billion last year, up 3 percent over 2006.
The profit taken in by this single company amounted to more than the gross domestic product recorded in two thirds of the world’s nations, placing the company midway between Ecuador and Luxembourg, while its total sales—more than $404 billion—top the GDP of 120 countries. It is more than the entire amount spent by the US federal government on K-through-12 education.
Nice, more corporate welfare, and our displaced workers haven't a leg to stand on. What about the mortgage crisis, heres a bit of history from Michael Collins from his writings on The money Party (see links at bottom of post) at Scoop.co.nz:
...Then Greenspan showed his supposed genius with this advice to home buyers and owners:
"American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home." Understanding household debt obligations, Federal Reserve Board, Feb. 23, 2004
The message was clear. Get an ARM!
Here's the back story. Greenspan got first rate analysis in 2001 from Ned Gramlich, a widely respected economist and Federal Reserve Governor. Gramlich warned, "that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford." Greenspan dismissed this advice and other warnings that followed. Predatory loan offerings; not to worry. It's all good.
The New York Times reported this epitaph of the Greenspan housing boom from a 2006 Gramlich speech to the Federal Reserve:
“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself - the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.” New York Times, Dec, 18, 2007
Why? Because that's what they do. It's their nature. The Money party just can't get enough and it will get it anywhere it can in any way it can.
So we're in a situation where a false housing boom was created by sticking the least qualified home buyers with very risky loans. The big banks and Wall Street got together and created securities and bonds based on "subprime" mortgages along with hedge funds and other schemes based on commercial real estate in order to profit from this madness.
But, I guess all is ok, even though Congress deemed it illegal for US Tax money to be spent on building military bases in Iraq, Bush just signed the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, which provides the means for his office to completely ignore Congressional Law, with his John Hancock his Presidency gets to bypass according to ThinkProgress.org:
One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistleblowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and for any action that exercises U.S. control over Iraq’s oil money.
So glad that we can elect people to create laws, so they can be ignored, what a hand job. We cannot help our own citizens who are unemployed, but we can give out corporate welfare and build military bases to control oil which had the biggest gains ever. Oh and did I mention that Firestone, the sponsor of the halftime show isn't bothering to negotiate with the workers in the fields of Liberia. For 81 years the workers were under a company union, they ousted them and now have their own, according to James Perks at AFL-CIO Blog:
Workers at the plantation, located in Harbel—named for the tire maker’s founder Harvey Firestone, and his wife, Idabelle—earn a little more than $3 a day, and then only if they meet a burdensome quota. They are forced to carry heavy loads of rubber in metal pails on their backs and walk for miles to weighing stations. They live in shacks with no electricity, no running water or sanitary bathroom facilities. Their children have no access to a high school education.
The coalition, which includes U.S. and Liberia-based human rights, labor and environmental groups, is calling on Bridgestone Firestone to stop exploiting workers and the environment and to negotiate a fair contract with the newly elected union leaders on the plantation.
Lufkin Industries[LUFK] is now one of the largest employers in Lufkin, TX., and employs roughly 1800, with about 1200 who are represented by a union 1. Cited as the the 16th. fastest growing company in the energy sector, and 39th. overall by Fortune for the year ending 20072, Lufkin Ind. is a healthy company who's wares include tractor trailer boxes, power transmissions for industrial uses and their most well known item, the giant oil pump3.Union workers have accepted the new contract offered by Lufkin Industries, ending the possibility of a strike by the employees.
