A poem dedicated to the Steering Committee of the Vermont Workers' Center and performed at the 2nd Annual Burlington Labor Day Weekend Parade & Picnic at Battery Park August 31, 2002.
By James Haslam
All these plant closings keep going down.
Town after town,
These Corporations just ain't foolin' around.
Can you hear the sound, of that last closing bell ringing?
'Cause the fat woman has been singing
Farewell to Kimberly-Clark, Book Press, Ethan Allen, Stanley Tools
And many more that are going down because of these free trade rules.
Stanley Tools, who played Vermonters like fools.
We made them money for 96 years!
Shaftsbury was Stanley's most profitable plant in the Northern Hemisphere,
But they go to China and leave us in tears.
Folks be poaching deers to put food on the table,
And now the strong and the able
Have no means
As a result of these free market schemes
These nightmares that were American Dreams
The Many struggle for bread, but you betcha the Few got their cream.
Doesn't it steam ya, that last year IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano had $70 million dollar payoff
And now they're talking about yet another IBM layoff.
Friends this is way-off
We try to form unions, our own organizations
And we are met with brutalization
Corporations are against civilization.
So let's ask the question
Why - is our economy run as a private tyranny
When we are suppose to live in a Democracy?
We can still all remember that word, right?
Democracy?
When it works for you
And it works for me
It works for us
And we means we.
'Cause if we keep letting the golfing crowd do the math
They'll have us all working in retail sales, as cashiers or as waitstaff
And I don't think we want that to be our epitaph
Because as we feel the wrath of Corporate power
And folks are trying to get by on $6.25 an hour.
In this shower of injustice, this tidal wave of greed
When Corporate profits come before human need..
We can read the writing on the wall
We're struggling now, and even if our victories are small
We're beginning to learn that an injury to one IS and injury to all.
We're beginning to understand that Solidarity is more than just a word, and we can feel it in our bones.
And as this movement grows, we go out on the streets, knock on doors, pickup phones..
And no matter our skin tones, sexual preferences, gender or religion
Together, workers united, damn! We can win!
The Struggle
Vermont's Workers Need to Protect Their Rights
August 2002
By Dawn Stanger, Vermont Workers Center Steering Committee Member
It's only natural for employers to seek concessions from workers. Improvements in working conditions, wages, benefits and Vermont's environment -- all undermine profits.
The only way this system becomes accountable is when workers struggle to get their fair share. We cannot sit back and accept what we're "given." Our profit-seeking system, by its very nature, demands that employers manipulate accounting and throw money into politics, corrupting our "democracy" and getting special favors.
If workers don't struggle against it, the system spits them out, as Enroners and IBMers now see. In a capitalist economy, the people who run it are first and foremost trying to get rich and things like the rights of workers just get in the way.
Historically, there has been only one way for workers to increase their rights and gain power -- uniting and acting together. As workers, when we have the ability to make collective, democratic decisions and act in all of our interests, we can make improvements for all of us.
Bosses call unions "third parties," insinuating outside forces, but unions are really a second party. When we're organized, we have the right to sit down and bargain our conditions, not have them imposed on us. Unions are democratic, and union members have a voice in how they run their organization and they often argue about what is the best thing for them to do. And this is the sort of thing everybody deserves, to have democratic rights in all aspects of our lives.
CEO pay is now a ridiculous 600 times the average worker's pay in the United States. Income and wealth disparity between the rich and the rest of us is the worst it's ever been. Our health-care, with 44 million Americans uncovered and sky-rocketing rates, has hit rock-bottom. If workers' concerns were addressed in politics, we'd already have universal health care like all the other civilized nations do. When corporate excess reaches the present level, and people mistakenly believe that the stock market reflects workers' goals, we've got big trouble.
We're the Vermonters getting laid off and struggling to get by. Rich people might go on fewer vacations, but workers have to make tough choices between things such as clothes for our kids, medication, food and heat. But the fact is we do have to worry about those things, while the rich are still getting richer.
For years there has been an attack on our living standards -- the top 5 percent are ripping us off. They're avoiding taxes, moving companies to other countries, and cheating us out of our old-age money. We need to get over those stupid barriers between workers, white-collar, blue-collar stuff, union, non-union, and get our act together. Employers play hardball and our team has gotten soft.
I write as a member of the Vermont Workers' Center. I load trucks for a living. I've become militant with good reason. I've spoken to hundreds of Vermonters on our Workers' Rights Hotline. There is little fairness in a system manipulated by transnational corporations.
The Workers Center and Vermont's labor unions will not tolerate this disparity in our communities and we are groups of workers fighting back
We invite all workers in Vermont to come celebrate the fact that we all trudge off to work each day, dependably, all year long, to earn a living, making the economic wheels of our state turn. Gathering at 11 a.m. Saturday we're parading from H.O. Wheeler in Burlington's North End to Battery Park, then throwing a free picnic for all who join us.
Vermont's workers need to take back our state from the bosses. Let's start by taking back Labor Day Weekend for workers.
Dawn Stanger is a Teamster who lives in Underhill and is a steering committee member of the Vermont Workers' Center. For more information about the Labor March and Picnic, call 863-2345, Ext. 8. For the Vermont Workers' Rights Hotline, call toll-free (866) 229-0009.
Free Trade Is Bad For Everybody
(That is, except Executives and Shareholders of Mega Corporations)
Op-Ed in Rutland Herald, August 2002
by James Haslam
On August 6th the Rutland Herald ran an editorial "Back On Track" which began "President Bush signed legislation Tuesday giving him authority to negotiate international trade agreements without interference from Congress." The editorial went on to say that, "Because of the benefits that free trade brings to the economies of both the United States and its trading partners, it is good for the president to have that authority. " The people who would most agree with that opinion are the heads of multinational corporations. However, for the majority of people in Vermont, and in the US, and the rest of the world - the "free trade" agreements like NAFTA and Free Trade Area of the Americas are almost entirely destructive.
"Free trade" policies simply allow corporations to freely access cheaper labor markets. Manufacturing facilities are moved to poorer nations - which have miniscule wages, often terrible working conditions and far fewer environmental regulations. Often these conditions result from direct interference by the US government, international financial institutions (such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and/or the multinational corporations themselves.
The idea that President Bush will be able to solely negotiate international free trade agreements - is downright terrifying. What the editorial calls "interference from Congress" is basically the way our country's Constitution is meant to work. Through our elected representatives we have some degree of democratic control on major policies. What Bush and this paper are supporting is almost completely undemocratic.
In Vermont we are fortunate to have a representative in Washington who actually acts in the interest of the majority of Vermonters - working people. Rep. Bernie Sanders has consistently stood up for working Vermonters, and that's a big deal.
Congressman Sanders recently released a report "The Real Cost of 'Free Trade'", which includes statistics that promoters of free trade policies downplay, if not ignore. For instance, the net loss of jobs as a result of these "free trade" policies from 1994-2000 totaled over 6,000 jobs in Vermont and over 3 million nationally. Ask the folks who feel free trade firsthand what they think of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Families devastated by layoffs at Shaftsbury's Stanley Tools, Bennington's Johnson Controls, Orleans' Ethan Allen, Newport's Bogner, St. Johnsbury's Sheftex, and Springfield's Fair-Rite Products, Cone Blanchard, and Fellows Corporation - just to name a few.
Many of these jobs were high paying blue-collar jobs, and as they leave Vermont they are being replaced with low-wage, often part-time service sector jobs. According to a report by the Vermont Department of Employment and Training the three fastest growing occupational titles through 2005 will be waiters/waitresses, retail sales and cashiers. In addition to being low-paying, these positions unfortunately also often come without any benefits. Is this the future free trade offers Vermont?
What we need are trade policies that that make sense for people and the environment. The way they are currently crafted is solely for corporate stockholder profits. The editorial rightfully pointed out the devastating results of "doctrinaire loyalty to the tenets of free trade" in Russia and Argentina. But it also stated "Bush has carried out several shamefully political acts of protectionism". Confusingly enough, it says on one hand Bush supports free trade, which is somehow good unless left completely "free", but on the other hand Bush is wrong for handpicking corporations to protect.
But let's be clear, the corporations that basically run our country have never really wanted "free trade". What they have wanted is to make as much money as possible, whatever the costs. Sometimes this means opening foreign labor and natural resource markets to corporate exploitation under the guise of "free trade", no matter the effect on the populations at home or abroad. But in other instances, making as much money as possible means going completely against free trade policies, for example, by having major domestic industries such as aerospace, computer technology and pharmaceuticals, be highly subsidized by the public while profits go to private shareholders.
The editorial called for something they termed "free trade-plus", which puts some fetters on corporations by including some sort of basic labor and environmental standards. Others call this crazy idea - "fair trade". And fair trade is exactly what Rep. Sanders has been fighting for. The good news is that Vermonters and millions of people around the world are joining him in the struggle to change our economy from one focused on corporate profit, to one that puts people first.
James Haslam is the Director of the Vermont Workers' Center, a community organization committed to fighting for workers' rights. With questions or comments contact 802-229-0009 or info [at] workerscenter [dot] org.