Bill Clinton, who passed NAFTA during his reign, supports a free trade agreement with Colombia. The agreement would undercut environmental regulations, unions and workers’ rights to fill the pockets of multinational corporations.
Hillary Clinton says she would vote against such a deal and has recently employed a little “historical revision” to her initial stance on NAFTA, now claiming she has always had reservations about it. Will she fire her husband like she fired her top strategist Mark Penn for supporting the Colombian deal?
We’ll see if she sticks to her word. On Monday Bush sent the agreement to congress, which has 90 days to act on it.
And what about the violent oppression of trade unions in Colombia, Bush/Clinton? And NAFTA’s legacy of jobloss and economic hardship for U.S. workers and Mexican farmers?
Fortunately, Mike Michaud (D-Maine), co-founder of the House of Representatives Trade Working Group, says, “The Colombia FTA is dead on arrival.”
If you ever need a taxi in DC, you should call Union Cabs. It is a cooperative of cab drivers who were former union activists at the major taxi companies. So the company is owned by the workers.
“Alexandria’s taxi monopoly has been broken,” said Syed Hussain, a driver and president of the company. “We’re proud owners of our own company.”
Danny Glover is a big union supporter, especially of unite-here’s hotel workers rising campaign. Today he and two unite-here organizers were convicted of trespassing during a rally on Sept. 16, 2006 at the Ontario “Sheraton on the Falls” hotel.
Danny Glover at a unitehere rally in canada; the Sheraton on the Falls hotel.
The result: the unite-here local, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents 60,000 workers–far more than any other union– in Nevada is supporting Obama for the key primary.
And what does Obama turn around and do–he praises Reagan. (more…)
total membership is 12.0%
women is 10.9%
men is 13.0%
represented is 13.1%
women is 12.2%
men is 14.0%
public sector union density is 36.5%
the local public sector is the greatest at 41.9%
the federal is lowest at 27.8%
private sector union density is7.8%
utilities industry is the greatest at 27.4%
food services and drinking places is the lowest at 1.3%, which even beats the 1.4% represented in the finance industry.
“If you look back, slavery created a caste of workers of color who were denied citizenship rights, whose human rights were abused and whose work put them beneath the floor established for free labor,” argues Maria Ontiveros, professor of law at the University of San Francisco. “To a great extent, that’s where the undocumented population is today.” Beyond the Labor Board
“I’d been working at Smithfield for three years when I fell from a ladder. They gave me medication for pain, and told me I had flat feet and that is why I had pain. I went to a private doctor who said I had a very serious problem with the bone, but the company said they’d fire me if I saw him again. They also said they’d fire me if I didn’t keep working every day. I am always in pain, but I have to support three children. Their father died and I have been working 11 years for them. I asked the trade union lawyer to fight this case, because what they are doing is not fair. At the clinic they said I was a troublemaker and they laughed at me. They said, “Fight all you want, you’ll never win!” Justice at Smithfield
Probably based on his experiences during the strike of 1988, Letterman is not going to cross the writers’ picket lines again:
David Letterman stood on the set of “Late Night,” looked out at his studio audience, and experienced a version of the classic Actor’s Nightmare. “We have nothing to do,” the talk-show host said. “The writers aren’t here.” To fill the time, he got a shave on the air.
