Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
Presentations from U.S. Participants
Excerpts from the following presentations:
* Nancy Wohlforth
"They Would Like Us to Forget That 700,000 Workers Have Lost Their Jobs
Since September 11"
* Ed Rosario
"Fighting in Defense of Workers' Gains Means Fighting Against the
War"
* Baldemar Velasquez
"Our Organizing Campaign in the Deep South Can Be a Model For Others to
Follow"
* Julian Kunnie
"We Must Mobilize for May 11 Around the World and Demand that Mumia Be
Free Unconditionally!"
NANCY WOHLFORTH:
"They Would Like Us to Forget That 700,000 Workers Have Lost Their Jobs
Since September 11"
(excerpts from the keynote speech to the Berlin Conference by Nancy
Wohlforth, member of the Executive Board of the San Francisco Labor Council)
Greetings from the San Francisco Labor Council and the 23 members of the U.S. delegation who are
here.
We meet here just a few weeks after what I consider the most horrible and
chilling State of the Union speech ever given by a U.S. president. Bush's
declaration of permanent war was made all the worse by the sorry spectacle of
the Democratic Party cheering at each and every reference to our need to
perpetuate this permanent war against the so-called evil-doers -- whoever they
might be.
But what was the real purpose of his speech? It was to whip up hysteria and fear
among U.S. citizens that their lives are in constant danger and that, therefore,
they must not protest, because to do so would be to aid and abet the terrorists
worldwide. By creating a climate of mass hysteria, Bush and his cronies hope
that Americans will forget some truly horrible facts:
o They would like us to forget the fact that 700,000 workers have lost their
jobs since September 11th and that all total unemployment in the United States
stands at 8 million, 2.5 million more than 1 year ago -- and this does not count
the homeless, or those whose unemployment insurance has run out.
o They would like us to forget the fact that U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft has
basically declared that the government has the right to act in secret without
any ability of its citizens to truly know what is going on.
o They would like us to forget the fact that thousands of people have been
arrested and are being held in secret locations without being charged with any
crimes and without having the benefit of any legal counsel.
o And, of course, they would like us to forget the fact that one of the biggest
contributors to both parties, Enron -- with close ties to both Bush and Cheney
-- bilked the public out of billions of dollars during the energy crisis in
California; made millions for their CEOs and then left thousands of its
employees with no retirement savings; yet it was still able to spend $1.7
million alone in the first half of last year on lobbying expenses to ensure the
deregulation of all energy sources.
Unleashing a permanent war
I want to make it perfectly clear that we in the U.S. trade union movement
do not in any way condone the tragic acts of September 11. But we say that
September 11 was not an act of war; it was a crime -- even though the
consequences were truly horrific -- and it should have been dealt with as a
crime.
As we stated in a resolution that was adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council
on September 19:
"We reject the idea that entire nations should be punished for the actions
of a few. Bombing raids and military strikes will only fuel an endless cycle of
revenge that can only bring the deaths of more innocent civilians around the
world. We also declare our resistance to use September 11th to curtail our
civil liberties. Militarization of our society inevitably leads to erosion of
civil liberties and workers' rights."
Two weeks after our Labor Council resolution was adopted, Bush unleashed the U.S. military power against Afghanistan and in the process has killed far more
non-combatant Afghani citizens than the number of people who died in the World
Trade Center.
And why is the war really waged? Just as in the Gulf War waged by Pappa Bush, it
is the economy that drives this new onslaught or, to paraphrase one of our
politicians, "It's about oil, stupid."
And the war is far from over. In Bush's "state of perpetual war"
speech, he stated openly that, "[f]ar from ending, our war against
terrorism is only beginning."
Bush openly admits that he will not wait on world events to attack. That's why
he is demanding $50 billion more in the defense budget -- the largest increase
in more than two decades.
Financing the war
We must ask: "How does he plan on financing this permanent war?"
The answer is, to raid Social Security and continue to push for its
privatization. This occurs while he is cutting all social-service spending,
deregulating industry and continuing to destroy the environment. He is carrying
out his attacks on Labor, not by simply using Congress and the legislative
process, but also through unilateral administrative fiat in an all-out campaign
to roll back worker protections.
One of his first acts was to overturn an Ergonomics Bill. Since these standards
have been junked, 1.25 million workers have suffered ergonomic-related injuries.
As if to add insult to injury, he has now appointed the wonderful son of the
right-wing Supreme Court Justice Scalia to be the Department of Labor's chief
attorney. This guy wrote that ergonomics is quackery, and now he will be in
charge of all worker health and safety enforcement!
Bush is not simply covert in his actions against unions. This January, he issued
an Executive Order revoking Union representation in the Department of Justice
offices that are involved in law enforcement, intelligence and investigation. He
claimed it was to prevent strikes by federal workers engaged in the war on
terrorism, but current law already prevented these workers from striking.
Further, in what may seem to be a slight contradiction in policy, he bowed to
public pressure and agreed to nationalize the security forces at U.S. airports,
but not without strict conditions that they could not be unionized and that they
MUST be U.S. citizens. At San Francisco's airport, we had just unionized these
workers and succeeded in getting everyone a raise from the $6.75 per hour to
$13.25 plus health benefits. Almost 80% of the over 1,000 union members will now
lose their jobs because they are not U.S. citizens, even though many have been
trying to gain citizenship for years.
I only have time to present one last example of Bush's contempt for workers. He
has announced that he will eliminate the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau
and close its offices. It is this department that enforces the Women's Equal Pay
Program. At the same time, he shut down the White House Women's Initiative
Office.
We can prevail
Sisters and brothers, we do not have an easy task before us. But history
shows us that we can prevail through building international labor solidarity.
We must seize the time to build a massive coalition of trade unionists,
environmentalists, students, and the unemployed, throughout every country to say:
- No to the globalization of the multinationals which calls for freedom of
capital while restricting freedom of the people!
- No to perpetual war and the militarization of society!
- U.S. out of the Middle East!
- No to deregulation and privatization!
- No to the destruction of the national security pension systems in country
after country!
- No to the corporate takeover of our political systems!
- Yes to the preservation of our civil rights and civil liberties!
- Yes to the right of all workers to join unions!
- Yes to the right of all people to self-determination!
- Yes to the preservation of independent trade unions throughout the world!
*********************
EDDIE ROSARIO:
"Fighting in Defense of Workers' Gains Means Fighting Against the
War"
(excerpts from presentation to Berlin Conference by Ed Rosario, member of the
Executive Board of the San Francisco Labor Council and Vice President/Director
of Organizing for Graphic Communications International Union - Local 4N)
Today, the U.S. trade union movement is at a crossroads. President George Bush
and his administration have taken advantage of the crisis of September 11 and
have advanced some of the most Draconian measures ever against the trade union
movement.
Bush, with the complicity of the Democratic Party, has passed legislation
against immigrant workers. He has gained Fast Track Authority in the House of
Representatives -- although not yet in the U.S. Senate -- and now the expansion
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through the Free Trade Area
of the Americas (FTAA) looms in the horizon in the halls of Congress.
The events of September 11 have provided the pretext for the multinational
corporations and governments to go after all labor rights, human rights, civil
rights, and environmental protections -- all in the name of
"patriotism" and "the war on terrorism."
In response, the international labor movement, especially in the United States,
must sound the alarm against the agenda of "free trade,"
globalization, union-busting, racism, xenophobia and war. Supporting Bush's war
in Afghanistan and perhaps soon in the rest of Central Asia and the Middle East,
as too many AFL-CIO leaders have called to do, means abandoning a fightback in
defense of workers' gains.
We cannot accept the fact that when we challenge such policies publicly, we run
the risk of being called supportive of international terrorism.
The real road to fighting in defense of workers' rights and gains during this
time of insecurity was demonstrated when the AFL-CIO supported the Minnesota
state government employees' strike, despite the attacks they had to endure from
the governor of Minnesota, who stated that "the strike was
un-American" and that because of the "war on terrorism," they too
must make sacrifices just like everyone else.
Another key element in the defense of workers' gains and rights is independent
political representation -- free from the bosses' stranglehold. The so-called
"friends of labor" in the Democratic Party do not represent the
interests of the U.S. trade union movement, the working class, or the oppressed.
When their opportunity came to speak out against the austerity measures being
proposed by George Bush in his State of the Union Address, the Democrats offered
no "response" at all. Congressperson Richard Gephardt got on TV and
simply applauded everything Bush has done in this war against the workers and
peoples of the world.
This is why at our upcoming convention of the Labor Party, we can and will
advance the proposition for the Labor Party to stand in defense of all workers'
gains and rights. Only a Labor Party can take such an independent position from
the Democrats, Republicans, and bosses. Only a Labor Party can fight for
immigrants and minority rights, and mobilize against Fast Track Authority and
the FTAA. Only a Labor Party can defend the rights of workers to organize and
strike, as it defends the rights of unions to bargain strong and secure
collective-bargaining agreements.
We in the United States have a major responsibility to help build such a
fighting Labor Party.
For these reasons, we in the United States must never view any workers' struggle
anywhere in the world as separate from our own. It is all one fight; it is all
the same fight. The interests of the working class the world over are the same
-- just as the interests of the bosses are all the same.
The order of the day is for international solidarity against the policies of
austerity, privatization and deregulation. We must unify as a class to organize
and fight. Joined in the spirit of international solidarity, we will find our
answers and gain back our ability to fight against those who deem our collective
rights as "trade barriers." For if we do not, we will be annihilated
as a trade union movement and even as a class.
Victory to the international working class! Victory to the international trade
union movement!
*********************
BALDEMAR VELASQUEZ:
"Our Organizing Campaign in the Deep South Can Be a Model For Others to
Follow"
(presentation by Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee/FLOC AFL-CIO, to the conference plenary session)
<?bigger>Greetings, my brothers and sisters, from the migrant farmworkers
in Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Florida. My friends, I'm going to get
right to the point because the time is short and there is much to do. There is a
time to talk about solidarity, and a time to stop talking and take action.
This last September, our staff in the union exposed information of a grizzly
scene: the decomposed remains of a worker that had been left to rot for two
weeks in the hot, humid sun of North Carolina in a wooded area next to the
cucumber fields where he had been harvesting that morning. By the identification
in his pocket, it was found out to be a man named Urbano Ramirez, an
undocumented migrant worker from the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico.
Urbano was an undocumented worker like nearly 400,000 of them in the state of
North Carolina alone. And every year now, we're documenting more and more deaths
of these compaņeros who we are trying to organize because of the intolerable
working conditions.
Some of the cucumbers that he was harvesting end up in the jars of the Mt. Olive
Pickle Company, the largest cucumber company in the southern United States. This
company also buys cucumbers from as far away as India and Sri Lanka. They ship
them through the ports in Europe. We're trying to find out which ports - it
could be Hamburg or Rotterdam, or it could be in France or Great Britain.
But these cucumbers that are harvested in India and Sri Lanka are harvested by
oppressed workers who are worse off than we are in the United States. This
multinational scheme is what they're trying to facilitate with the World Trade
Organization and the so-called Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue.
So the scheme is very simple, they want to make the whole worker population of
the world serve the increasing accumulation of wealth in the fewer hands of
people. We have in America an economic and ideological deficit because America
says it stands for one thing but does another thing. And I want to tell you that
in spite of this, when I stand here being an American of Mexican descent, that I
am proud to be here to challenge this economic and ideological deficit of our
country because the democracy that we have in the United States is not only for
corporations.
We are concerned about the movement toward a post-democratic era for the
population of the United States. If the World Trade Organization succeeds in
dismantling all of the protective measures we have fought for in our communities
throughout the United States by challenging laws that impede "free
trade," we are going to have less and less sovereignty in our country, and
you are going to have less and less sovereignty in your countries as well.
So the time for action is now close, and let it come because perhaps this little
campaign in the southern United States can be a model for other people. Because
we are going to call on solidarity with the Sri Lankans and the Indian
populations who harvest crops because those brothers and sisters are part of our
community now of the workers in; the same global corporation.
Here we are in Berlin, concerned with the whole game of oppression and the home
of Daimler-Chrysler Corporation. Where are the auto workers of Germany? Why are
they not united and forming one international union with the auto workers of the
United States and challenging that corporation internationally to set new ground
rules that do stand for workers in both countries or wherever else they would
set up operations?
We have a campaign in the United States, a national campaign for our Congress to
ratify certain ILO conventions protecting the workers, workers' rights, women
and children. We must push the Labor Party as the true alternative to Democrats
and Republicans, for those are both parties of the rich. The rich voting for the
rich: They vote for themselves.
We must win this Mt. Olive boycott in North Carolina because it is focal to the
goal of organizing the South. We must forge an alliance with African Americans
because they too have been exploited and oppressed in the Deep South. The Deep
South is the free trade zone of the United States with its
"right-to-work" laws. That's where all the imported businesses are
getting invited to set up their businesses in the United States.
We have much to struggle against in the Deep South, and the Mexicans and
Guatemalans and the African Americans must fight together because we're on the
bottom of the heap down there.
We have launched a campaign with the Black Workers For Justice (BWFJ) in the
Deep South. We are starting workers' schools. We'll teach those undocumented
workers to defend their rights on the job.
And more so I want to conclude with a call to reinstate the ideals that drive
many peoples to struggles and put their lives on the line. When we say belief in
ideals; I have to mention this because it is an ideological struggle.
Also because even the trade unions in America are part and parcel to this
globalization and sometimes run their unions like corporations. We want
investments to work for ourselves, we want jobs for ourselves. We protect
investments in pension funds and the investment of some of those pensions in
places that are questionable.
Where do you think that money is being invested? It's being invested in places
like Mexico through the help of the IMF and the World Bank. Dollars are being
used as muscle to force governments to change their laws and constitutions so
they can privatize, so they can dismantle the social standards of those
countries, so they can make investors more money. To think that our pension
funds are helping them do that! That is a contradiction to the ideals of
democracy and freedom!
You see, people are too preoccupied with concepts of security, shelter and
clothing to the point that they confuse it with gluttony. They go too far. Let
me tell you when it goes too far. It goes too far when you find decomposed
bodies of human beings, not only of Urbano Ramirez but Raymundo Hernandez and
all the other brothers and sisters who've died or are suffering making the
wealth of a corporation. That is gluttony, and that should not be allowed!
So we're calling on solidarity to stop this particular company and set a
precedent for other people to follow. What we will ask of the Mt. Olive Pickle
Company when they sign an agreement is to include an international labor
security clause. Whatever wage increase we win for workers in America, the
company should unilaterally impose that wage percentage increase on workers all
over the world that they buy pickles from -- including Sri Lanka and India.
This will not close the development gap between our countries but it will keep
the wage disparities from getting any worse. The same with other standards: Mt.
Olive must sign a code of conduct honoring labor rights and labor standards and
fund an international monitoring mechanism.
The workers, with the help of the European unions could stop those pickles from
India and Sri Lanka to the United States, and stop them once and for all until
they sign an agreement giving justice to the people everywhere that harvest
those crops for that multinational corporation. The victory would be for
international solidarity!
If we choose solidarity like that, unions with unions across the international
divide, then they cannot have their way with us. We can have our way with them!
<?/bigger>********************
JULIAN KUNNIE:
"We Must Mobilize for May 11 Around the World and Demand that Mumia Be
Free Unconditionally!"
(excerpts from presentation by Julian Kunnie, Director and Professor, Africana
Studies, University of Arizona-Tucson and member of the Black Radical Congress
and the Free Mumia Campaign)
In the United States, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, with
the official employment figure being 8.2 million, a rise of 2.6 million people
over last year. Poverty continues to decimate working class communities,
reaching rates of over 33% in urban African American communities, 75% among
urban Black youth and up to 50% among Latino youth.
On Native American reservations, unemployment rates are as high as 80%, with 50%
of many communities living in poverty. A full 20% of all children continue to
eke out an existence on poverty, and 50% of African American children live in
poverty. Mexican immigrant workers continue to be enslaved as farm workers,
picking up tons of fruit and vegetables for consumers, for starvation wages.
The income equality between rich and poor, largely because of globalization and
intensification of privatization, has resulted in extremes of disparities
between the wealthy and the poor, a 50 -year high. As part of this relentless
assaults on the poor and the working classes, the dismantling of the
welfare-state, with the promulgation of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, what
Bill Clinton termed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act,
unemployment insurance covers less than 40% of the unemployed, and the food
stamp program which was structured to provide food to the hungry now only serves
60% of those in poverty.
In December 2001, 23.3 million people, some 9% of the U.S. population turned to
private charities for food provision. Over 31 million people lived in households
that are "food insecure." Many private food kitchens do not have
enough to go around. Some 3 million people on any day are homeless.
Women and children are always the most adversely effected. According to the
Economic Policy Institute, "many tens of millions of adults and children
live between the poverty level and twice the poverty level." Millions more
people will descend into poverty because of the mandatory five-year limits
imposed by the so-called Welfare Reform law.
Meanwhile, the vulgarly obscene maldistribution of wealth and resources
intensifies at a relentless pace. Today, the top 5% control over 60% of the
country's wealth, and the bottom 80% hold 16% of the assets. The upper-middle
15% eat the rest. In 2000, half of the total U.S. income went to the top fifth
of the population, while the lower fifth received just 3.6% of the income.
There are now 50 million people who are without essential health insurance. Even
though the average worker is now working more than 42 hours per week, the real
gains have been by the richest.
Corporate welfare
The marvelous effects of privatization have been felt only by the wealthy.
For the poor, the dramatic increase in the value of stocks and bonds has meant
compounded poverty, loss of medical care provisions, loss of public education,
loss of job training, and devaluation of already meager incomes.
Corporate welfare, according to Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman in their 1998
book, "Take the Rich Off Welfare," amounts to about $448 billion per
year, through subsidies paid to businesses, disproportionate tax breaks offered
solely to the wealthy and corporations, the government paying higher than normal
market prices for select product vendors, and the state selling assets for a
fraction of their market value.
While the white ruling class attacks the provisions of welfare for the poor,
there is little cry over the fact that corporate welfare for the rich -- amounts
to $448 billion each year.
As a result of such corporate tax breaks, IBM expects to receive over $1.3
billion in tax returns, K-Mart close to $900 million, and General Electric,
about $1 billion. And some people still naively prefer to describe the United
States as a robust democracy -- yes, for the super rich, white ruling class,
absolutely!
Today, half of all steel industries in the United States, including Bethlehem
Steel, are in a state of bankruptcy as a result of the importation of cheaper
steel from abroad. The manufacturing sector in the United States is only 15% of
the economy.
The cost of the U.S. war of genocide against the poor people of Afghanistan has
resulted in over 4,000 civilians dead and thousands of other soldiers killed, at
a cost of $10 billion, with over 10,000 bombs dropped. The military industrial
complex is licking its lips with glee, as Bush raises the military budget to a
whopping $396 billion, including $17 billion for nuclear weapons development,
the largest war budget in history, whose increase of $48 billion from last
year's budget is greater than the military budget of any other country.
A company like General Electric stands of gain up to $200 billion in developing
fighter bombers, tanks, and warships, the bulk of it which will be used to
terrorize the vast working peoples of the world, especially the people of color.
Africa's over 50 wars are being funded through this insane arms procurement, led
by the United States, and supported by the fraternal Western imperialist powers.
The prison-industrial complex
In the United States, the effects of privatization on African people is most
poignantly illustrated in the booming prison industrial complex, which is now a
$40 billion industry and growing, is a direct effect of neo-colonial capitalism
and privatization.
Slavery is being privatized for optimal profits. Incarcerated inmates are paid
4c per hour, to a maximum of 20c per day, as at Angola prison in Louisiana,
where 77% of the inmates are Black, serving anywhere from 20 years to 100 years.
Slavery lives in the prison industrial and military industrial complex.
Over 500,000 Black and Latino school children are now involved in some form of
the JROTC around the country, because they are poor and confined to the inner
city. As a result of Colin Powell urging the system to discipline young Black
and Latino people after the Los Angeles uprisings in 1992, the military poured
in an additional $240 million into the JROTC programs. These young people will
serve as cannon fodder for the United States' ugly and racist wars in nations of
colored peoples.
It is no mere political coincidence that the Bush regime is pushing for the
dismantling of the public school system and advocating the allocation of school
vouchers and the promotion of charter schools, as a way of privatizing the
entire educational system as in the case of Edison Corporation running schools
in Philadelphia and other eastern cities.
The move from the assertion of "the right to education" to the
"best possible education" is one of the ideological slogans of the
stalwarts of privatization and capital. The long-term plan is to privatize all
education as it is with the health care system so that you have
"Educational Maintenance Organizations."
Free Mumia!
The case of Mumia Abu Jamal warrants our special attention, just as does the
case of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, serving a life sentence
for a crime that he did not commit.
We on the West Coast of the United States will be holding a mass mobilization in
San Francisco on May 11, demanding the unconditional release of brother Mumia.
We call upon this conference and all its participants to mobilize worldwide in
an International Week of Action to Free Mumia around May 11.
Owing to the resistance and widescale international protest and demonstrations
for Mumia's release, the racist judge William Yohn ruled against Mumia in his
habeas corpus on December 18, and refused him a new trial, even though Mumia
demonstrated that he had new evidence that would clear him of the charges of
murder of police officer Larry Faulkner.
Yohn's refusal to consider the new evidence, including the taped confession of
Arnold Beverley, who underwent a lie-detector test, that he, not, Mumia killed
officer Faulkner as part of a mob killing, because he says "innocence is no
defense." This judge, more executioner, is willing to order Mumia's
execution, even though he is innocent, on a legal technicality.
This gives you an idea of the perversity and pathology of the U.S. criminal
justice system, which is essentially criminal in character, and intended to
silence the voices of resistance, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, because he was a
former Black Panther Party member and wrote extensively on police brutality
against poor Black people.
Judge Yohn ruled that Mumia needs to be re-sentenced, as his original sentencing
was unconstitutional, and ordered the State of Pennsylvania to hold a new
hearing within 180 days from December 18, or else he would automatically
sentence Mumia to life in prison without parole.
Incredible racist arrogance in the USA--determining the fate of Black people as
if the judge is God! We must mobilize for May 11 around the world, and demand
that Mumia be free unconditionally. The freedom of Mumia is symbolically the
freedom of all Black people on death row, and inevitable for the removal of the
U.S. imperialist, racist, capitalist, and militarist system.
We will win!