Many thanks to Workers Center members who rallied in support of the 170 Barre teachers during their eleven day strike. We know that unionized firefighters, municipal employees, state employees, electrical workers, UVM and state college employees -- and of course many, many teachers and school support staff -- joined the picket lines, brought food and made contributions to the BEA strike fund.
Details of the settlement still await ratification by all parties, but we've heard that the terms are considered to be a very fair and respectful compromise.
Here at the Workers Center we made outreach calls and sent Action Alerts to support the Barre strike, as we do for every struggle where community support is needed. We were saddened to see that some of our subscribers expressed negative reactions to this strike and want to offer a perspective which may help place this in a broader context:
Most union negotiations now, for all workers, are fighting off concessions: Nearly every unionized worker must fight hard these days just to maintain health insurance benefits, fair wage structures and other job protections that they'd won long ago. The globalized economy is in a "race to the bottom" and pushing everyone down. The health insurance crisis is just one symptom of a economy that is punishing all working people, and rewarding only the corporations and those who profit from them. All workers want to fight off concessions... but only certain workers, with the strength of a powerful union and community support, can fight back against concessions. And it is only this fight-back that slows the "race to the bottom."
We're not better off if we're all sliding to the lowest level: Some disgruntled people complain that "I don't have health insurance at my job, so teachers shouldn't either." By this logic, a downward spiral of ever-lower wages and ever-weaker health insurance benefits is exactly what we should all expect. But of course that's ridiculous. How can we fight for a high standard of wages and benefits for everyone if that standard no longer exists for anyone? Should it only be CEO's that have good benefits? Shouldn't we be joining hands to demand that all workers -- regardless of job or union status -- get what teachers have fought for?
Why are teachers be singled out? A lot of venom sometimes get unleashed at teachers because they are public employees whose salary is paid by local taxes. However, there are so many myths and holes in this that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. First, here in Vermont, the local property tax has been replaced by a much fairer system that is based in large part on ability to pay. No one making less than $88,000 in household income has to pay more than about 2% of their income for school taxes. But beyond that, just consider that taxpayers are already paying for the health insurance of nearly 60% of all those who have health insurance -- those on Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, current members of the military, all federal employees, all state employees, all municipal employees, all elected officials... the list goes on and on. And wouldn't most people prefer to see their tax dollars spent on a good school system than on another nuclear weapons system? The point is that tax dollars for schools is the best social investment any of us can make.
Teachers are no different from all workers. Teachers have special work conditions, just as all workers do. Only electric line workers have to get out of bed in the middle of the night during ice storms to repair downed lines. Only nurses must be compassionate and skilled at the beds of seriously ill and dying patients. Only teachers have to shoulder responsibility for hundreds of diverse demands every hour of every day from students, parents, administrators and their communities. But what makes all workers the same is their universal need for wages comparable to others doing their job, for working conditions that allow them to do a good job, and for economic security and dignity.
United we stand, divided we fall. Ultimately, this is the most important point. Who benefits when workers criticize other workers? No one really does. We can all only benefit when we recognize the common cause we have as workers, and when we stand together to defend any worker who's in a brave fight against the race to the bottom.
Barre Teachers Strike: The hard, necessary, fight against concessions
Vermont workers recount injustices to rights panel
Shay Totten
Vermont Guardian
December 21, 2005
BURLINGTON — A panel of legislative and ecumenical leaders heard testimony from dozens of Vermonters about the challenges they face with low pay, a lack of job security, no health care for their families, and how many employers work against their efforts to form unions.
For many of the 12-member Worker's Rights Board, chaired by U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, the stories are nothing new. Worker after worker testified Dec. 10 under three broad themes: livable wages and good jobs; the right to organize and labor rights; and the right to health care.
The board was comprised of several Democratic lawmakers, one Progressive legislator, a student leader from the University of Vermont, a retiree, and several Burlington area religious leaders.
The panel, whose members were appointed by a coalition of labor organizations, has no strict mandate. In the coming weeks, however, the board will discuss specific actions it could take, or encourage others to take, as a result of the testimony it heard at the hearing, said James Haslam, director of the Vermont Worker's Center, an event sponsor.
The event, on the Trinity Campus of the University of Vermont, was held on International Human Rights Day to link the economic struggle of workers to the broader discussion of human rights, said Brady Fletcher of the Student Labor Action Project at UVM, one of the event sponsors.
"Human rights refers to many things and we don't associate, as we should, the issue of human rights with economic rights," said Sanders in an opening speech to the crowd. "To my mind, if someone cannot find a job that pays them a wage so that they and their family can live in dignity, that is a violation of human rights; if there are people across the street from here who work 40 hours a week but cannot find a doctor or dentist because they cannot buy health insurance, that's a violation of human rights. If people are living in poverty in the richest country in the world, that is a violation of human rights."
Given the location of the event, UVM's administration took the brunt of criticism from participants, many of whom are support and clerical staff members who are attempting to form a union.
"For years, UVM said that while their salaries weren't great, their benefits were," said Jennifer Larsen, a lab technician who has worked at UVM for 16 years. "Then they turned around and said that the benefits we get would bankrupt the university in 10 years, and they then gave us a large cut in our health insurance, and [no] salary increases.
"In the past five years, I have seen a 495 percent increase in premiums and that has not been matched by a salary increase — and in this academic-gone-corporate environment we have no power to speak out," Larsen added.
Two weeks ago, hundreds of students, UVM alumni, faculty, and staff, along with construction workers and community members rallied outside a UVM board of trustees meeting to call for fair labor standards on campus.
Lester Gockley, a UVM maintenance worker and member of the United Electrical Workers Local 267, said a lot of skilled jobs are going by the wayside at the university. "There is a blatant attempt to subcontract a lot of work," he said. And without a union in place to fight against this move, more jobs may have been lost by now.
"Since the arrival of UE at UVM, our organization has led an attempt to promote a livable wage, and UVM has fought this every step of the way," he said.
A UVM spokesman said the school does not openly work against union activity, as evident by the fact that four employee groups are unionized, and strives to ensure that all employees are cared for.
"Our approach with union organizing is that we simply want to make sure that our employees are in the best position to make a well-informed decision as to whether union representation is in their best interest," said Enrique Corredera, a UVM spokesman. "We also recognize the importance of well-compensated and well-cared for employees, whether they are faculty or staff as they are critical to the success of the institution and our ability to fulfill our vision."
Other than UVM employees, former employees at Wal-Mart and IBM, as well as staff members from the Community College of Vermont and Verizon, testified about the challenges they faced trying to form or maintain unions.
Haslam called the event an important step in bringing the real-life struggles of working families to the attention of people who have the power to make change.
"What we saw today was regular people coming together who have the audacity to say that we should have livable wages and good jobs, the freedom to organize, and that health care should be a basic right available to everybody," said Haslam. "And even though we are told that these things are not politically possible ... together we can change what is politically possible. This event was a step in that direction."
Teachers strike highlights health care crisis, need for unions
Times Argus Op-Ed
By James Haslam
The teachers' strike in Barre is just a dispute over who will shoulder more of the health care costs directly, the teachers or the school board. This was the heart of a two-week long strike of teachers in Colchester in October. Like most union members, for decades the teachers have given up wages in negotiations to protect their health insurance. Now, they are also being asked to give up this affordable health insurance benefit. The board wants to boost the health insurance premium co-pay to 20 percent over four years with no cap, for teachers. The Barre teachers have said they will accept more moderate increases — from 12 to 14 percent over four years — but want to keep current language that caps their obligation at a percentage of salary.
It is not helpful to anyone to have one group of workers lose health insurance benefits and for people with affordable health care to be dragged down into the unaffordable health care mess that most experience. That doesn't make it easier or cheaper for anyone else to get health insurance.
In fact, taxpayers are already paying for perhaps as much as 60 percent of all health care costs. Our taxes pay for school employees, state employees, municipal employees, the armed forces, veterans, federal employees, Medicaid and Medicare recipients. The problem is that many of us pay the majority of health care costs through our taxes, and still don't have any health care unless we pay our own premiums or just do without health insurance. That is what is unfair and that is a problem that is not fixed by teachers paying a higher co-pay. It is fixed by making health care a right to everybody.
Teachers in Barre, and many other union members, actually have what most workers want and need: an ability to have a say in how they are treated and negotiate what is fair and not have higher costs imposed on them. We should use them as a model and work towards a day when all workers have that same power in their own workplaces. The power of a seat at the table.
It is plain and simple: It is now time for health care reform. It is time that we make health care a basic right available to everybody and lift everyone up to the level where Barre teachers and other union members are. By eliminating profits and waste we can save enough money to have a universal system that covers everybody and takes health insurance out of the middle of contract negotiations. That way, the spiral is upward rather than downward.
James Haslam is the director of the Vermont Workers' Center — Jobs With Justice, which is working in a broad coalition to launch a statewide grassroots campaign to fight for universal health care.
What teachers' strike teaches us
Op-ed in Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press.
By James Haslam
The Colchester teachers strike was Vermont's largest and longest strike in recent memory, a big-impact event that provoked wide-ranging discussion all over the state. After taking time to talk and think about this with many different people, I want to share some things I've learned.
One thing that was apparent in Colchester was that teachers are respected and valued for their important work with students. What was less widely understood was that the teachers' union directly contributes to the professionalism and high quality of the work force. The teachers' union has made it possible for people to choose this profession because it promises a stable, though modest, career. And though strikes are dramatic episodes, the union works year after year to provide good working environments for teachers which are, after all, the learning environments for their students.
Almost every single public school in Vermont has a teachers' union (all but one are local affiliates of the Vermont-National Education Association). There are almost 200 separate contracts negotiated by teachers. Since these are generally multiyear contracts, probably about one-third, or 70, are negotiated each year. The labor relations law for teachers has been on the books since 1969, so it's safe to say that perhaps 2,500 contracts have been negotiated in Vermont with only about 20 of those negotiations ending in a strike. That tells me the law works well and results in negotiated settlements — without a strike — 99 percent of the time.
It's clear that strikes are hard. They are hard on the workers, their employer and also the "clients," which in the case of a teachers' strike are students and their parents. But they are a legal, peaceful and reliable way of settling differences. In terms of disruption, a teachers' strike doesn't eliminate teaching days for students, but just delays them. The reports I've heard about returning Colchester teachers is that the re-entry with students was very successful and calm. Everyone got right back to the job of teaching and learning. Students are curious, and may learn something about legal ways that adults resolve their differences; a much better lesson than they "learn" about war, violence, and terrorism from the news every day.
The Vermont labor relations law for teachers lays out a long and formal process for contract negotiations. Every step has to be followed in a time line, including good faith bargaining, mediation and fact finding. The whole idea of the law is to help the school board and the teachers put forward their legitimate concerns, be treated with respect by the other side, and bargain back and forth until an acceptable compromise is reached. The very last step in the law allows the school board to impose its last offer on the teachers, and at the same time, allows the teachers to go on strike. This is in the law to balance out the power between the two parties. Without it, there are two bad choices: Either the negotiations go on and never end, or one side has unequal power over the other. Strikes are challenging, but they are a reliable means to create compromise; a very democratic method.
The sticking point in most contract fights is health care. Colchester teachers have paid 20 percent of their premiums for the last 10 years — significantly more than other school employees in Vermont — but the school board wanted to shift even more cost to teachers. This increase would have wiped out any raise in wages. The strike allowed them to work out an acceptable compromise. Without a union, workers have no equality with the employer, and health care costs just continue to pile up on the workers. The health care crisis is not solved by this approach. Until Vermont finally adopts a universal, publicly financed health care system, the struggle we saw in Colchester will be repeated over and over again.
James Haslam is director of the Vermont Workers' Center.
Op-Ed on Community Standards at UVM
By Colin M. Robinson '06
The University of Vermont is in a time of both transition and great success. It is a time when national attention around the academics, the student body and the "Vision" of the University is at peak. The administration has aspirations which would lead UVM back to the days of "Public Ivy" status and once again find its place among the top institutions of higher education in America. They also have aspiration to make the University not only the premier environmental University but also a leading institution for social and economic justice. President Fogel at his convocation address specifically mentioned UVM's need to "walk the walk" when is comes to issues of social and economic justice. However, currently this is not a reality.
The reality is that while UVM is in a time financial health and record enrollment, the workers that make this University tick — the faculty who teach us, the staff who help us, and the construction workers who are building the "vision" — are not all being given community and family sustaining wages and benefits. The full and part-time faculty union, United Academics, have both reached contract impasse with the University over these specific issues. They are being offered salary increased which do not keep up with the cost of living and rollbacks in benefits. This directly affects the Universities ability to attract and retain high quality faculty and thus OUR education.
The United Staff campaign to organize the 1,800 staff workers at UVM is battling against the University to give the staff collective bargaining rights to guarantee quality benefits, safe work places, and community sustaining wages. The University is using anti-union web pages and worker intimidation to make sure this is not a reality.
Furthermore, we need to make sure that the 9 million dollars in student fees which will go into the new Dudley H. Davis Student Center is not only being used for environmental sustainability but also community sustainability. This is to say that we must make sure that the workers building UVM make enough money to pay for their own children to come here. We must make sure the ideals of social and economic justice are literally built into the construction of the University, not just those of environmental justice.
As members of the University community and customers of the University — the ones paying for this University — it is impetrative that we make sure we are offering all workers at UVM livable wages, fair contracts, and freedom to organize. As we make strides towards being a "Public Ivy" we need to make sure the ideals of social justice are not lost in the national rankings. We must follow the lead of prestigious institutions of higher education like Georgetown University who as of fiscal year 2006 implemented "A Just Employment Policy" which gives livable wages to all employees and the ability to freely associate and organize. Students must show their support and solidarity with those who make the University of Vermont work — the faculty, the staff and the construction workers. Students must make sure social and economic justice at UVM is not just language but a reality; we must make sure UVM "walks the walk".
Join other students, staff, community members and faculty for the "Rally for Fair Faculty Contracts at UVM", Friday, September 23rd at 5pm to march from the AFL-CIO state convention at the Sheraton in South Burlington to the steps of the Royall Tyler Theatre. Make social justice a reality.
Colin Robinson is a student at UVM and a member of the Student Labor Action Project
Labor movement gives all of society a lift
By James Haslam
When we celebrate Labor Day, we celebrate the contributions of the hard-working families who get up every day to make society run. Postal workers deliver our mail, iron workers construct our buildings, firefighters and health care workers save our lives, educators teach our children, retail clerks pour our coffee with a smile, and countless other people spend most of their waking lives collectively making society happen.
Labor Day is also a time to celebrate victories won by the labor movement: the weekend, the eight-hour workday, employer-funded health care, a more humane workplace, and Social Security. As these gains erode, the need for a new labor movement based in our communities, workplaces, and homes is increasingly important.
Too many of us work in unhealthy and demeaning jobs and receive too little in return. At work, we leave our constitutional rights at the door. The values we cherish most as Vermonters — freedoms of speech and assembly, a fair trial — apply at work only when we organize and win as workers. Unions are not only important for those workers who negotiate a contract with their employer. When nurses at Fletcher Allen Health Care organized a union and bargain wage increases, their peers at other hospitals often get big raises as a result.
But it's more than that. The corporate system has its own vision for society. It thrives when we are insecure, disposable, interchangeable, caught up in a war of all against all. Native Vermonter and union activist Pattie Russell knows this all too well. In her 18 years of working at Burlington's Specialty Filaments plant, Russell's neck was injured by a steel pipe, and she was also forced to undergo shoulder surgery from repetitive motions. For her hard work and dedication, Russell was offered a mere two weeks of severance pay when a venture capital firm decided to close her plant, eliminating more than 100 good jobs. Russell and her union joined with the Vermont Workers' Center to wage a campaign to fight back and win a fair severance.
Many unionized manufacturing jobs are leaving Vermont — affecting 8,000 families in the past four years alone — and are mostly being replaced with low-wage, mostly non-union service and retail jobs.
A strong labor movement is essential to the health of a society. The labor movement has its own vision for a society based on solidarity, civil rights, healthy families, and sustainable communities. A strong labor movement also looks beyond its own self-interest, to the rights of workers throughout the world. This is why the national AFL-CIO voted unanimously to bring the troops home as quickly as possible from Iraq at their July convention, and why the Vermont Workers Center opposed the Iraq War before it began. We support our Iraqi counterparts who are organizing unions to improve their communities and risk their lives to democratize the new Iraq.
This past year in Vermont, we saw how the labor movement can be dedicated to broader social uplift. The Vermont AFL-CIO, Vermont-NEA, and Vermont State Employees Association joined others to help lead the fight for health care as a basic right and for a publicly financed universal health care system. The Fletcher Allen nurses and other health care unions are working together on a special campaign to create safe staffing laws to improve conditions for patients and nurses at health care facilities throughout Vermont.
This Labor Day, let's honor the fact that there are people in Vermont and around this country in the labor movement dedicated to fighting for the rights of all working families.
The stakes are high, and we all need to get involved. So we're asking you not only to join us to celebrate Labor Day, but to help us create the improved society that we all deserve.
James Haslam is the director of the Vermont Workers' Center/Jobs With Justice
Why Montpelier's downtown union drive ended
By James Haslam - Published: July 15, 2005
Montpelier Times-Argus
For several years, there was a steady flow of calls to the Workers' Center's Workers Rights Hotline from workers in downtown Montpelier. All kinds of workers in all kinds of workplaces had complaints and questions about being treated unfairly at work. Unfortunately, as many people know from firsthand experience, it's often difficult or impossible for one individual worker to solve problems on the job. Workers have very few individual rights, under our labor laws.
In June of 2003 the Vermont Workers' Center – Jobs With Justice began partnering with United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) to pioneer an innovative response. Jointly we committed ourselves to help workers in Montpelier learn about collective action and organize a citywide union. Immediately there was a lot of interest amongst workers, people working in shops, markets, theaters, restaurants, and bars. And now — after almost two years of struggle — this month the UE and Workers' Center decided to end the Downtown Union campaign.
The high turnover in this low-wage industry, combined with the retaliation against some high-profile leaders of the union, has made it difficult to recruit enough active leadership. Looking back, the Downtown Union experienced lots of challenges, but also unexpected success.
Every day, the Workers' Rights Hotline receives calls from workers all over Vermont who have experienced unfair treatment on the job. Favoritism, discrimination and disrespect, and unjust firing are all common in Vermont's workplaces, and all are perfectly legal. The law protects workers against discrimination based on race, gender, and a handful of other protected categories – though the legal process is slow, and discrimination often difficult to prove – but for the most part, the only way for American workers to have enforceable rights on the job is through a union contract.
For workers in small retail and service establishments, organizing one small shop at a time is simply not possible under current American labor law. Furthermore, some issues, such as the lack of livable wages and healthcare, can only be addressed on an industry-wide basis, or require political solutions to protect small businesses from the predatory practices of big-box stores. This is why Montpelier downtown workers sought to organize a city-wide union. As they started gathering together they realized there were issues they would like to address. The idea of a Downtown Workers in Montpelier gradually took hold. Often expressed as: "If business owners have their employer association, doesn't it make sense to have ours?"
Many downtown employers were not as thrilled about the possibility of downtown workers having their own organization. When the conflicts that happen every day in some workplaces were brought out into the open, the union was sometimes accused of causing polarization. In fact, the union was often just bringing these long-standing problems out of the closet and into the light of day. But this process does involve conflict, and sometimes it made some residents of Montpelier uncomfortable. A memorable example is that of the conflict with the Bashara Corporation, which operates J. Morgan's Steakhouse. After the majority of workers at the steakhouse signed up for the union in a span of a few weeks, the Bashara Corporation responded in a Wal Mart-style illegal union-busting campaign. Nearly 30 charges of Unfair Labor Practices against pro-union employees were filed against the Bashara Corporation. These included charges of people being fired and having hours cut. The National Labor Relations Board investigated, a settlement was reached and workers received back pay. But the intimidation had worked. The workers who had previously signed-up for the union became scared of losing their jobs. Bashara Corporation was allowed to undermine their workers union despite the overwhelming support the workers received from the community. Unfortunately this was another sad example of the failure of labor law in this country.
The Montpelier Downtown Workers Union did not succeed in its ambitious goal of establishing basic standards for working conditions in downtown Montpelier, let alone being able to enforce them through a union contract, but there also was success. There were workers who initially opposed the idea of the union, but then experienced unfair treatment themselves and seeking the help of the union stewards. Some of these folks themselves became vocal union supporters. The union assisted workers throughout downtown Montpelier, from both small stores and corporate employers, in resolving numerous problems, ranging from discriminatory application of store rules to receiving back wages or settlement checks as a result of wrongful firings and sexual harassment.
But perhaps the single greatest accomplishment was bringing attention to the rights of people working in this industry. As one union activist put it in an interview last summer, "We're not invisible any longer. That's a victory." Since this campaign started, some workers have told us that their employers have been on their best behavior. The concept of organizing in an industry which is not a traditional place for people to have unions has been raised.
Many union organizing campaigns take a few rounds to succeed. The Fletcher Allen Health Care Registered Nurses voted against the union twice, and a few years later reconsidered and voted in a union by a 2-to-1 margin. The faculty at UVM had three union elections over a 20 year period before they succeeded in establishing their union.
In many ways the energy of the campaign is continuing in new forms. Workers at Vermont Center of Independent Living who joined are now becoming associate members of UE Local 221, which represents workers who work for non-profit organization across the state. Some former Downtown Union members and others are attempting to start a union chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as something different and separate from the UE and Vermont Workers' Center.
At the Vermont Workers' Center we have learned a great deal from supporting the efforts of the Downtown Union campaign and are committed to continuing the campaign for workers' rights. Whatever form that campaign takes, we will be there to support workers who are organizing for good jobs at livable wages, decent healthcare, and dignity and respect on the job.
James Haslam is director of the Vermont Workers' Center – Jobs With Justice. More information available at www.workerscenter.org. The Vermont Workers' Rights Hotline is 802-229-0009.
Taking a trip to nowhere
Brian McGrory
Boston Globe
July 5, 2005
Their journey should have ended far better than it did.
Last week, a group of Vermont bristle factory workers who are being dismissed from their jobs with a mere two weeks severance pay decided to come to Boston and make their plea to executives from the private capital firm that is shuttering their plant.
They wanted to ask for more severance pay, given that some of them have worked for Specialty Filaments for more than 30 years. And they wanted to ask about the status of their pensions, because the management hasn't provided any information about them in the last several years.
I had high hopes. I thought maybe Robert C. Ammerman, the founder and managing partner of Capital Resource Partners, would invite the factory workers up to the office for bagels and juice.
They'd sit around a table and Ammerman would ask each of the workers about their jobs, their families, their long history with the century-old company. They'd talk about their pride in seeing an Oral-B toothbrush with bristles that they helped make. They'd mention the injuries they suffered in the plant over the years. They'd describe how this plant was the only job some of them had ever known.
And in the end, Ammerman would announce that they could forget about their severance pay. They could forget about it because he would keep the plant open so the 100 proud workers could continue doing what they've always done so well. Everyone would hug and applaud.
Yeah, right. As the Hertz ads say, "Not exactly."
Oh, the Specialty Filaments factory workers journeyed to Boston all right. They journeyed here, about eight in all, in a three-car caravan 3 1/2 hours through lush Vermont valleys and over verdant hills. And when they arrived at Capital Resource Partners on Merrimac Street, they were met with a locked door.
It didn't seem to bother them. Jim Lamore, a worker for 34 years, carried a fishing rod, saying he was "hoping to land the big one." Patricia Russell -- think Carla on "Cheers," only sassier -- brought along the X-rays of the plates and screws in her neck because of work injuries. Others carried signs that read, "CRP has the goldmine and we got the shaft."
Eventually, they talked their way into the lobby, then onto the elevator, and into CRP's offices on the second floor. Impressive offices, too, with soaring ceilings and a backlit stained glass collage of Boston sports teams, and a pair of chairs from the old Boston Garden.
But before the Vermonters took two steps, a building manager who refused to give his name cut them off and said CRP was closed. Closed? It was early Thursday afternoon. Phones were ringing. People could be seen and heard in their offices. Guys, they're factory workers, not morons.
After the group was escorted to the sidewalk, Chuck Hall, a plant worker for 19 years, grabbed the megaphone and led a chant of "How do you spell greed? CRP."
A few passing cars honked. The blinds rustled in one CRP office upstairs. A smattering of onlookers gathered across the street. And that was pretty much that.
I left messages for Robert C. Ammerman and Alexander "Sandy" McGrath, both managing partners of Capital Resource Partners, but they didn't call me back. When I called CRP's chief operating officer, Jeffrey W. Potter, the man who answered the phone said he wasn't there.
OK, so Robert C. Ammerman, Alexander "Sandy" McGrath, and Jeffrey W. Potter aren't going to answer the questions of lowly employees and reporters. Perhaps the Massachusetts or Vermont attorney general will make an inquiry about the pension fund and leave them no choice but to respond.
Meantime, if you see any of these clowns from Capital Resource Partners around, you might want to ask why they'll only give two weeks pay to men and women who poured their lives into a factory, and why they wouldn't even give those workers two minutes of their time. I'll keep you posted on how this plays out.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His email is mcgrory@globe.com
Action to Defend Immigrant Workers in Bennington
By Eesha Williams | Special to the Vermont Guardian
BENNINGTON — Three Latino men at a gathering of about 40 supporters in Bennington Thursday said a Pennsylvania-based construction company had refused to pay them for weeks of work. Only one of the men spoke English. They said they and at least 10 of their co-workers on the site where a new Hampton Inn Hotel is being erected were owed thousands of dollars in wages from work performed more than a month ago.
"We don’t even have money to buy food," said Jose Villanueva, one of the workers. "We came here all the way from California because they said they would pay us $15 an hour."
A Montpelier-based labor union, Ironworkers Local 474, last week hired a lawyer to sue the workers’ employer on their behalf, even though the men are not union members, said union spokesman Patrick Long. "An injury to one is an injury to all," Long said. "I don’t care if these men are legal or illegal immigrants, union members or not union members. They were wronged and so we’re helping them."
Both workers told the Guardian they do have proper documentation that allows them to work in the United States.
Full article available at the Vermont Guardian website (requires paid subscription)
Iraqi labor leader visits Vermont, calls for troop withdrawal
From the Montpelier Times-Argus:
Published: June 19, 2005
Adnan Rashed spent years in exile when labor unions were outlawed in his native Iraq. The 56-year-old was a prime mover in the Workers' Democratic Trade Union Movement, which was a giant thorn in the side of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Rashed returned home shortly after the end of Hussein's brutal regime — which murdered thousands of workers — and promptly got to work organizing fellow laborers. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, on whose executive council he sits, is now 200,000 strong, with workers from all walks of Iraqi life.
It's an impressive accomplishment in an occupied country brutalized first by a madman dictator and now, for three years, by the ravages of war. Organizing labor in a country where 70 percent of the workforce is unemployed, and in which unions had been outlawed for nearly three decades, is a daunting task.
Rashed was in the United States last week to talk about what he and fellow workers face in Iraq.
But, more importantly, his planned visit to Vermont — he was expected to attend a potluck supper in Montpelier on Saturday night — should give us pause about the state of labor worldwide and about the delicate thread by which most of the world's workers hang onto a sustainable livelihood.
"The state of labor has only gotten worse," said Dawn Stanger, vice president of the Vermont Workers' Center, a member of the Teamsters union and a 16-year employee of United Parcel Service. "Someone else has used the line, 'trade unions are the canary in the coal mines.'"
And the canary is dying. In Iraq, the signs are obvious and not wholly unexpected.
According to Vermont Labor Against the War — the workers' center is part of the group — the war and occupation have brought on "the illegalization of their unions, the imminent threat of the privatization of most of the public sector by foreign corporations and a 70 percent unemployment rate."
The signs are obvious here, too. Union membership is at an all-time low in this country, driven in part by hard-line bargaining by multinational corporations who routinely decide that workers are expendable "assets."
Promised pensions are being yanked, wages are stagnant and government is increasingly hostile to workers.
A perfect example of that right here in Vermont is the recent fight over the elimination of an early retirement program that had been a part of the benefits package promised to full-time faculty at the Vermont State Colleges.
In addition to losing a retirement option — a disturbing and far-too-common trend in American businesses — the professors bore the brunt of name-calling by Gov. James Douglas.
He suggested that professors were receiving a too-generous benefit that was no longer affordable. He called them "big labor" and "special interests." And he excoriated their political benefactors for having the temerity to stand up to the eradication of worker security.
On a national level, the current political leadership is indifferent to labor most of the time, and, when it comes to issues such as wages, benefits and trade, it is downright hostile.
In Iraq, Rashed and his fellow workers are living under the shadow of Washington-forced economic and political policies that are not bringing stability or security to vast swaths of people.
To Stanger, Rashed should not be fighting against the interests of America and its multi-billion dollar corporations. She said, unions should be exploited for what they are best at fostering: a democratic lifting of their members' economic boats.
"I think we've given the troops in Iraq an impossible mission," Stanger said. "You can't push democracy, it has to rise from within. Trade unions are an effective way of doing that."
I think the reverse also is true. In America, ignoring the plight of workers can only serve to weaken our own democracy.
Darren Allen writes weekly about Vermont issues, people and events. You can reach him at darren.allen@timesargus.com.
From the Burlington Free Press:
Adam Silverman
Burlington Free Press
June 20, 2005
U.S. assistance has helped Iraq build a democracy, but troops should leave now so a truly free, self-governing Iraq can emerge, Iraqi union leader Adnan A. Rashed told a crowd Sunday in Burlington.
Speaking through interpreter Maher Elhashami, the 56-year-old Rashed was the featured guest at a rally following an anti-war march along Church Street to City Hall Park. About 70 people marched, chanted and listened to Rashed, an executive officer with the Union of Mechanics, Printing and Metals Workers.
"Our job right now is to right the equation in Iraq," Rashed said. "We demand for our freedom and sovereignty as Iraqis."
Rashed is one of six leaders of Iraq's emerging trade-union movement who are spending two weeks touring the United States, a visit coordinated by U.S. Labor Against the War. Vermont labor groups organized two local stops, one Saturday in Montpelier and the other Sunday in Burlington.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein outlawed unions in the 1970s, a move that forced labor organizers into exile or underground, according to U.S. Labor Against the War. Rashed spent 2 years in hiding in Iraq, and another 2 years in exile in Syria, he said. Hundreds or thousands of fellow labor activists were killed, he said.
After U.S. forces toppled Saddam's regime in 2003, trade unions regrouped and exiled leaders, including Rashed, returned. He lives in Baghdad, he said, where he works as part of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions.
Sunday's event started at noon outside the Unitarian Universalist church at the top of Church Street. The crowd began marching toward City Hall.
"No justice! No peace! U.S. out of the Middle East!" people chanted.
Curious Church Street shoppers and diners looked on as the group, including Rashed, marched past. One man carrying an obscenity-laced sign referring to President George W. Bush drew applause and disgusted rebukes from onlookers.
Mayor Peter Clavelle greeted the marchers at City Hall Park and welcomed Rashed. Two city police officers watched the proceedings.
Rashed said that truly representative government and fair labor practices in Iraq can occur only after the U.S. military leaves. The United States has helped democratic government emerge in a country once ruled by Saddam's "most horrible regime," Rashed said.
"Your support is very important so as to help us be a free country," he said.
Vermont union leaders also spoke, voicing their opposition to the U.S.-led war. Labor leader Ellen David Friedman said the anti-war viewpoint is shared by a majority of Americans. Jonathan Kissam, secretary and treasurer of the United Electrical Workers of America Local 221, said U.S. unions are in solidarity with their Iraqi counterparts. That support, Kissam said, is necessary because of an expanding corporate culture.
"We are facing enemies with a global vision of privatization and endless war," he said.
Rashed praised the relationship between Iraqis and Americans.
"We will stay friends," he said, "no matter how many tanks in Iraq and how many people get killed."
Adam Silverman is a Burlington Free Press staff writer. Contact him at 660-1854 or asilverm@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
Speech for Iraqi Trade Union Tour (Jonathan Kissam)
By Jonathan Kissam
We are living in an era when the United States government, both at home and abroad, has committed itself to defending the fortunes of a very small group of people. The result of this is exorbitant military funding and the substitution of military force for peaceful diplomacy. The result of this is ruthless budget-cutting of public services -- schools, health care, and, ironically and appallingly, services for veterans. And the result of this is that well-established public institutions and essential government services -- like Social Security -- are not seen by our government as a common treasury for all, but as potential profit centers for their corporate cronies.
When public services are privatized, the most common way for the privatizers to make money is to fire all of the public employees who used to do those jobs, often at decent wages and benefit levels, and replace them with low-wage, no-benefit, often part-time or temporary jobs. They pocket the savings in payroll, while our communities suffer the loss of decent jobs. Furthermore, privatization, with its motive for profits, compromises essential government services. Privateers forced to choose between quality services or higher profits invariably take the money and run, leaving the public with the worst of all worlds: poorer services at higher costs. And privatization cuts at the very heart of democracy itself. Public services are created through the democratic process; they are the collective decisions we make about how to meet our own needs as a society. When they are turned over to unaccountable private corporations, we give up control, we give up the very "rule of the people" which is what democracy means.
Privatization can be beat, as when school district workers in Barre, with the assistance of the Vermont Workers' Center and other community activists, turned back a privatization plan almost ten years ago, or when service and maintenance workers at UVM, members of UE Local 267, worked with students to fight off a plan to privatize the shuttle services. It requires struggle, but this should be no surprise. Our standard of living, our rights of free speech and assembly, our civil rights, our democracy itself are not gifts from benevolent governments and corporations, they were won through struggle.
This is why we are in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the Iraqi trade union movement, because, just as working people and the labor movement have been an essential part of making our own country live up to its democratic ideals, the Iraqi trade unions are the best hope for a democratic and peaceful Iraq. But more than that -- we must stand in solidarity with our trade union sisters and brothers in Iraq, and everywhere in the world, because we are facing enemies with a global vision of privatization and endless war. Only with global solidarity can we have a democratic and peaceful world.
Jonathan Kissam is Secretary-Treasurer of UE Local 221 and a member of the Vermont Workers' Center Coordinating Committee
Speech at Iraqi Trade Union Tour (Dawn Stanger)
By Dawn Stanger
I'm Dawn Stanger. I'm a Teamster who works up at United Parcel Service in Williston. I'm also vice president of the Vermont Workers' Center. My fellow activists and I hope you will join our struggle, and there are sign up sheets on our table. The Workers' Center and affiliated unions and community groups joined the national group US Labor Against the War-USLAW, in 2003 and the Vermont State AFL joined us, creating Vermont LAW and we organized this leg of the tour. Without financial help from the Champlain Valley Labor Council, it was impossible, so a tip of the hat to them. USLAW has more than 4 million union members who opposed attacking Iraq, and we wanted you to hear from these union leaders. There are officials touring the Midwest and the West too, 25 cities in all, and it's cost big, so we'll be looking for some help. Burlington has spent 16.3 million dollars already "freeing" Iraq, but donations today will be better directed toward democracy. There are USLAW donor cards circulating and we hope you'll be kind enough to chip in to help us cover costs and help the Iraqis.
Sure I know, most of you turned out here to hear Adnan Rashed talk, and Vermont union folks are a bit of a distraction from the "real" story. We're proud in USLAW that Iraqi unionists will even talk to us after we devastated their country. We want to share information, tactics and money to help them attain democracy from within. And we know they can help us confront some problems here. Vermont's trade unionists are speaking today because the "real" story has been ignored for far too long. Workers are under siege worldwide, not just unionized workers like me who are down to 8% in the U.S. private sector, and public workers like Marty who make up the other 4%, but all workers. Corporate greed is driving U.S. foreign and domestic policy. I'll read you the USLAW Mission Statement because it lays it out well:
"We're living in an era in which the government has manipulated our nation's fear of terrorism to launch wars, destroy our economic security, undermine government services, erode our democratic rights and intensify divisions among working people…Under the mantle of National Security, the present Administration seeks to reverse decades of victories won by working people to regulate corporate conduct, protect the environment, strengthen the rights of workers, defend civil liberties, end racism, sexism and discrimination, and provide an adequate social safety net. But democracy as we know it is under threat. The USA Patriot Act threatens our fundamental rights under the Constitution. This crisis is aggravated by the government's policies of military intervention abroad and attacks on working peoples' rights at home. Only corporations and the wealthy have benefited. Our nation faces a domestic calamity - unemployment, declining wages and benefits, de-unionization of the workforce, privatization and reduction of public services, crumbling health care and educational systems, underdeveloped communities, cuts in veterans benefits, escalating public debt and decreased economic, social and personal security…We cannot solve these economic and social problems without addressing U.S. foreign policy and its consequences. The foreign policy of the Bush Administration, with the consent of Congress, is based on military aggression and the threat of force. It has weakened, rather than strengthened security in the U.S., creating enemies around the world and alienating friends. This policy has done immense harm to innocent civilians abroad and to our friends and family members in the military. The policy of Permanent War has been based on lies and false promises to the American people and lucrative contracts to large corporations. This is coupled with a strategy of unbridled economic globalization with so -called 'Free Trade' Agreements aimed at exploiting workers, controlling natural resources and destroying jobs and communities. War has become a strategy for advancing the interests of US corporations in international markets."
USLAW pretty much sums it up. Union activists are particularly well placed to frame this mess. We were the first targets in the corporate shooting gallery. Corporations had to crush unions. Unions help workers keep up standards their grandparents fought for in the labor movement; 40 hour a week jobs, pensions, weekends, social security, public schools, health insurance, and wages high enough so only one wage earner was necessary per family. But those standards are pretty much gone. The attacks have been relentless. Unions are the canaries in the coalmine of democracies. And it has become almost impossible to organize unions here in "supposedly" the greatest democracy in the world. When the Vermont AFL joined USLAW in September of '04, their resolution called on the governor to release from duty and return to Vermont all our Guard personnel. In DC, John Sweeney invited the Iraqis to attend their convention in July. And we're working to get the national AFL-CIO to call for the end of the occupation. But we know the fix isn't in Iraq. We gotta get the corporations out of our government.
They're wrecking everything. Look all around in the news. Look at Enron, Social Security- look at United's pensions. This is how we're treated? Corporations contract by law to pay for certain things, in lieu of wages, and then won't comply. And taxpayers are forced to bail them out. Have you seen the movie, The Corporation? It's called "externalizing" costs. The "real" story is that corporations run the world. Working families need to become just as "ruthless" and just as global in our support for each other. Working class solidarity must reach beyond borders and the distractions of corporate politicians and misguided union leaders.
To Vermont labor activists, it is only natural that Iraqis call for the profits from their oil to be devoted to Iraqis. We're glad to hear that Iraqi workers chased Kellogg, Brown, and Root from the oil fields and defeated lower wages. We're psyched to hear that port workers expelled Mersk shipping company and ejected Stevedoring Associates from Um Qsar. Labor victories are rare for us here. Worldwide, people catch on faster because things are worse. We're heartened by the recent EU votes, the rebellion in Bolivia, where Bush has referred to the workers and farmers as "terrorists", and the rejection of 'free trade' by workers in Central and South America. We're proud of Specialty Filaments' workers in Burlington who refuse to go quietly while their company tramples them. The task ahead is huge though, and we need everyone engaged. When I hear neighbors dissing teacher's benefits, saying how they should be less because taxpayers don't get healthcare, I think, oh my god, the working class here is so far from where it needs to be.
Bush just gave big tax cuts to the rich and corporations. In 1945, corporations paid 1/3 of all taxes collected. By 2003, their share was 7%. 3/5ths of corporations paid no taxes at all between '96 and 2000. Given huge tax cuts, they free-traded our manufacturing away. Huge tax cuts to the rich and our president proposed 5.3 billion in cuts for veteran's medical services by 2010. Huge tax cuts, while productivity increased, but real wages dropped, and families only kept up by working ridiculous hours. Every Vermont tax dollar: 30 cents goes to defense spending. 19 cents goes to paying old military debt and 3 cents goes to veterans' benefits, an expense no citizen begrudges. But that's before Iraq's costs are tallied. 205 billion has been spent, so far. And that means less public service for every worker who falls through the cracks.
And what is the state of Vermont's democracy? Union folks here are just sick about the occupation and our friends, relatives and coworkers suffering. Many people don't want to question the military at all. Some are uncomfortable talking about it as if, for their kid's sake, they just want to cross their fingers and parrot Bush's rhetoric about freedom. Their kids in Iraq are confident they can "win" democracy, and they're afraid to "undermine" that. But we desperately need to talk about all this because we have given their kids an impossible mission. Democracy has to rise from within. No democracy has ever been created under occupation. And union activists know that the last thing Bush's cronies want anywhere is democracy. The Iraqis would immediately boot us out, our 17 military bases and all our damned corporations too. Sure Iraqis want investment, but no Iraqi citizen agreed to wholesale looting. Iraqis need the right to organize to fight corporate vultures. The U.S. should enable democracy, help these secular, progressive organizations, but we aren't. If fact, we kept Saddam's anti-union law specifically to keep a thumb on Iraqi labor. See, despite Bush's vow to promote freedom and democracy, U.S. arms sales policy tells us the real truth. Most major recipients of our arms sales in the developing world are undemocratic, as defined by our own State Department. And U.S. supplied weaponry is present in a majority of the world's active conflicts. Does this benefit us? No, it makes more danger. But it does benefit corporations.
And our democracy is being squashed. 52 Vermont towns voted to have the legislature study our National Guard's involvement. We petitioned because it's logical to contact your representatives if you care for your soldiers and your country's moral ideals, and sense both going down the wrong road. Our legislators were blackmailed, you might say; the military insinuated they could take away our air base in Colchester, and our citizen legislators caved and tabled the discussion. And it's desperately needed. This was not a defensive war. The guard are defenders. Vermont's working class soldiers signed up to protect fellow citizens, not corporations. These kids are deployed in areas of Iraq where there's depleted uranium. DC Democrats are wisely talking about mandating testing for returning troops, but under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency, that same EPA that allowed all our union brothers and sisters in NYC to go back to work before the air was fit to breathe, so they could get Wall Street up and running. And now 11 of Vermont's sons have been buried. 53 others carry scars. Workers, soldiers, and our ideals must not be sacrificed for corporate profits.
We need to examine our own democracy, right away. And we have to help Iraqis achieve democracy, but from afar. We should assume Saddam's debt. He was our guy. Resources should be redirected from the military to things workers really need, while providing adjustment assistance for those displaced. In the end, the best way to support our troops is to make sure they don't fight wars that shouldn't be fought, wars for oil and empire, wars that don't serve working class interests here or elsewhere. We must repudiate bullying foreign policies, comply with international law, dismantle our worldwide military bases, and renounce offensive wars. Otherwise we will only send more loved ones to die for no good reason in a world made more dangerous by the arrogance of our government. We want our troops home now.
Dawn Stanger is a Teamster and Vice-President of the Vermont Workers' Center
Brushed off in Vermont
Brian McGrory
Boston Globe
June 17, 2005
If you ever wonder how it is that big business has earned such a bad name these days, look no further than a Boston-based venture capital company by the name of Capital Resource Partners.
First, CRP, as it's often known, decided to shutter a Vermont manufacturing plant it has owned for a few years that has been in operation since the 19th century. The plant, part of Specialty Filaments Inc., makes bristles for hairbrushes, brooms, and Oral-B toothbrushes. If there's anything more American than a northern New England bristle-making factory, I haven't seen it.
CRP summoned the plant's hundred or so workers to a downtown Burlington hotel last month and hired some outsourced human resources types to give them the cheery news. Police stood at the edges of the room. The announcement lasted less than five minutes. The officials left without taking questions.
Good going, guys. Good going.
But maybe, just maybe, you can chalk that up to overseas competition, maybe a change in oral hygiene habits. Possibly people are suddenly sweeping less since CRP bought the company.
But that's not the bad part.
No, the bad part is what happened a few days later. A few days later, Capital Resource Partners told the plant workers that they would each get two weeks' severance, regardless of their tenure at the plant. The worker who had labored at the plant for 20 years would get two weeks' worth. Thirty-year veterans, two weeks. Forty-year veterans, well, you get the picture.
And that's not all. According to the union, Capital Resource Partners told the workers that they could not guarantee that severance would even be paid. On top of that, if a worker found a new job within that two weeks, they forfeited their severance pay.
You read that right: Men and women making maybe $15 an hour who had dedicated their working lives to a bristle manufacturing company might have to give their paltry severance back to the multimillionaire Bostonians who are shutting down their plant. Hold on: I've got Charles Dickens calling on Line 1.
Actually, it was James Lamore on the phone. He's 57 years old. He's worked at the plant for 34 years. He remembers the days that don't seem so long ago when it was the number one bristle manufacturing operation in the world. And now he gets two weeks severance maybe.
"We are devastated, let me tell you," he said.
Of special concern is his pension. He and a couple of dozen other longtimers had a pension under the plant's old owners, the EB & AC Whiting Co., but no one under the new regime will tell them where the money is, or if it still exists.
I gave Capital Resource Partners a call. The kind receptionist referred me to the chief operating officer, Jeffrey W. Potter, who didn't call me back. I called him again and again; no call back.
Maybe Jeffrey W. Potter was busy looking for the factory workers' pension, so I sent an e-mail to Robert C. Ammerman, the CRP founder and managing partner. He did not reply. I called his house in Beverly Farms last night. No response.
I won't take it personally. US Representative Bernard Sanders of Vermont told me yesterday that he's called Robert C. Ammerman three times in the last month, and Ammerman has not called back. He's probably so worried about these employees that he can barely talk about them. Right.
"When people work for 15, 20, 25 years, you have to treat them with a little bit of dignity," Sanders said. "Giving them $1,500 and telling them to have a good life doesn't do it."
Admittedly, for all I know, Robert C. Ammerman and Jeffrey W. Potter of Capital Resource Partners in downtown Boston might be the most philanthropic guys in town. They might be great businessmen. They might be kind to kids and dogs. But they've caused a whole lot of pain for a whole lot of hard-working people who deserved a whole lot better than what they got. And for that, they should be truly ashamed.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His email is mcgrory@globe.com
Speech at Anti-War, Anti-Budget-Cuts Rally
By Dawn Stanger
Hello. I'm Dawn Stanger and I'm a Teamster. I work up at UPS in Williston. And I'm here representing folks from the Vermont Workers Center, and U.S. Labor Against the War - USLAW. The Workers' Center is a coalition of trade unions, community groups, and individual workers pushing for economic justice. We are also Vermont's only Jobs with Justice chapter. In January '03 the Workers' Center affiliated with USLAW, the union group opposed to attacking Iraq, and in September '04, I'm proud to say that Vermont's AFL-CIO joined millions of union workers across the U.S. in opposing the occupation. Over the last two years, major national unions and state labor federations have demanded the troops home now.
So USLAW has built ties with Iraqi trade unionists and some will tour the U.S. soon. Hopefully they'll visit Vermont. Their labor movement has a proud history, including resistance to British occupation with strikes suppressed at gunpoint. Unions were outlawed then, and then again by the Baathists after a general strike in '68. And Saddam executed union activists. Since Saddam's overthrow, the Iraqis worked quickly, organizing unions in 12 industries. They organized a union of the unemployed, 150,000 strong, and marched and demonstrated for survival payments. They held a 45-day sit-in across from American headquarters. In Basra, Iraqis stopped working 2 days after British troops arrived, demanding the right to organize. Refinery workers struck demanding better wages. Leather factory workers stormed out of work and marched to the Labor Ministry. Though they've been imprisoned by the U.S, and tortured and killed by the resistance, Iraq's union folks are the single most important force fighting for a democratic, multi-ethnic Iraq. In recent coverage of the Pope's death, we saw how he helped Labor in Poland leading to the overthrow of a repressive government. Unions help create and maintain democracy. We condemn all attacks on Iraq's trade unionists.
When WTO protestors like me look at the U.S. plan for Iraq, we see the same old free trade. There's the privatization of public services, ownership rights for foreign firms, repatriation of profits, a 15% flat tax, opening banks to foreign control, structural adjustment programs, and national treatment for corporations. Trade barriers have been eliminated. Iraq will join the WTO and sign MEFTA , the Middle East Free Trade Area announced last May. But Saddam's law that barred union membership and representation - that was not changed. War makes privatization easy. First you destroy society. Then you let corporations rebuild it. And we're busy building and maintaining 14 military bases in Iraq with your hard-earned tax dollars.
On the home front, thousands of workers were de-unionized in creating the Department of Homeland Security; the Bush administration felt their unions a security threat. Now our president proposes new rules called the "National Security Personnel System" that would tear up union contracts and eliminate protections our federal workers have against political pressures. Whistle-blowers and critics could simply be transferred away. When the shipping firms locked out the Longshore Workers, the Attorney General declared commercial shipping a matter of national security, and got an injunction so the President could send troops to work the docks. Yet today, cargo containers are still uninspected. Three Republican governors have now negated their state workers' right to bargain and 9 million dollars of the first 87 million for Iraq was used to arm police in Miami against free trade protestors, union folks, while U.S. chemical plants are still unsecured. Our nuclear plants are vulnerable. You just gotta ask "Who's really being protected?"
Corporations squash our collective interests. Watching the fake Social Security crisis, it occurred to me that privatization and deregulation are most often not done at gunpoint. Here, after trumpeting decades how government is bloated and wasteful and how privatization and de-regulation work, corporate politicians have convinced many Americans that government programs are bad. This way Wall Street can sneak in and rob us of the safety net that our grandparents in the labor movement struggled years to build after economic downturns forced families to the breadlines. Workers' Center folks are increasingly alarmed about our nation's priorities. We live in a country where the top 1% has more income each year than the bottom 100 million people combined.
Look at the bankruptcy bill if you want a nutshell of our system. The credit companies made 30 billion last year, charging people outrageous interest rates to compensate for their risk. And 90% of bankruptcies were caused by lost jobs, death in the family, divorce, or medical bills. But no longer will a judge be allowed to look at your case and say, ah, oh yes, we'll forgive your debt because you were forced into this by your kid's diabetes or your husband's death. No way. This bill makes judges ignore your circumstances and set payments, creating debtors for life, doing at home what the World Bank has done overseas for years. Yes, the corporate politicians will teach us responsibility 'til it hurts. Media deceives, but workers can't miss the connections over time.
In the wealthiest country in the world, huge tax cuts combined with military expenses make debt for our grandchildren and cuts in our services. But we have needs. We need retirement security; half our grandparents would live in poverty otherwise. We need insurance so if we get killed and can't work, our children are protected. We need medical care that keeps folks healthy, separate from jobs and paid for collectively and progressively. If we had proper preventive care in Vermont, we wouldn't have a third of our soldiers returned home for medical reasons. We need our government to help solve real collective crises like childcare costs, healthcare, and fossil fuels, but political donations cannot be the deciding factor. This is supposed to be a democracy. And taxing the rich is never discussed. We're the ones who sacrifice. It's a neo-con game.
And neo-cons are not working for democracy, either here or in Iraq. Unions increase democracy. Unions indicate how well workers are doing overall, and unions are now down to 11% here. This means American families are hurting. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants… It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 … This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Eisenhower got it. But in 1945, corporations paid 1/3 of all taxes collected. By 2003, their share was down to 7%. 3/5ths of corporations paid no taxes between '96 and 2000. Given huge tax cuts, they free-traded our manufacturing away. Huge tax cuts given while real wages dropped since the 70's and families could only keep up by working ridiculous hours. Huge tax cuts to the rich, and they dare to come back to us now to pay for their war. The military consumes 50% of our taxes and corporations and the rich pay even less now. The wealthiest country in the world and we are continually trying to stave off cuts. And we know what rending our social fabric means. It means less food stamp eligibility, less FDA inspections, less highway improvements, less health care, less small business assistance, less for veterans, less foster care, less Medicaid, less Medicare, less for poverty, less for farmers, seniors, students, cops, veterans, the homeless, and the hungry. All so the rich can have more money.
Vermont's soldiers are our co-workers, neighbors, friends, relatives, and our children. Yes, they're volunteers, but most are economic draftees looking for a better life. Turned down at Wal Mart, Jessica Lynch went to Iraq. This war betrayed soldiers' faith that their government wouldn't deceive them. This was not defensive. Vermont's soldiers signed up to protect people, not corporations. And to those who say this is not a local issue, I say this; we pay for the war here. We're buried here, and we'll all live here with Vermont vets and any ghosts they bring home. At the Workers' Center we're urging workers to stand and fight. The workers who build the wealth are under attack. The Iraqis struck at gunpoint. Who dies in wars? We do. Who pays? We do. Who mourns? We do. Who profits? Not us. This folks, is class war and it's fought locally, with wages, taxes, jobs, retirement, healthcare. Our working class soldiers are fighting for a system that is stacked high against them, there and here. We stand here today demanding justice, a society of our priorities, not those pushed down from the 5% at the top of the economic ladder. "Never have so few taken so much from so many for so long."
Our troops should not be sacrificed to make the world safe for corporations, or to distract us from economic disaster brewing at home. Resources should be redirected from the military to things workers really need, while providing adjustment assistance for those displaced. In the end, the best way to support troops is to make sure they don't fight wars that shouldn't be fought, wars for oil and empire, wars that don't serve working class interests here or elsewhere. We must repudiate bullying foreign policies, dismantle our worldwide military bases, and renounce offensive wars. Otherwise we will only send more loved ones to die for no good reason in a world made more dangerous by the arrogance of our government. We want our benefits and we want our troops home now.
Dawn Stanger is a Teamster and Vice-President of the Vermont Workers' Center