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)
Action to Defend Immigrant Workers in Bennington
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