Bring back the WPA!  Bring back the CCC!  Fight racism!  Tax the rich!  Texas Labor Against the War can get with all of this.  But also: END THE WARS AND OCCUPATIONS–WE NEED THE MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION.

(By Gene Lantz, reprinted from Labor Dallas, 08-31-11, http://www.labordallas.org/jobz090211.htm)

America Grapples for Solution to the Jobs Crisis

Help for the jobless must continue, but real solutions are even more important. As North Texas Jobs with Justice prepares for our monthly jobs vigil (11:30 AM Friday, September 2, 525 Griffin at Young in downtown Dallas) we review some of the proposals now floating around.

A new bill in Congress

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) wants to bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps. Similar ideas have been put forward by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and by Professor William “Sandy” Darity, whose expertise is public policy, African American studies and economics. Darity’s proposal specifically calls for a new and permanent CCC providing jobs at $20,000/year salary plus $10,000/year benefits.

Don’t waste any time

Kaptur explains her bill in a New York Times editorial where she says that the original CCC was up and running, and providing almost 300,000 new jobs, in three months! She also says, “Every dollar of investment in bricks, mortar, infrastructure and environment returns $1.59 to the economy. This is six times more “bang for the buck” than tax credits and other arcane policy options whose economic impact drain through the economy and yield only 30 cents for every dollar expended.”

Kaptur’s bill is styled HR 494 and is listed on-line.

Other bills worth supporting

Representatives John Conyers and Jan Schakowskfy have also put forward bills that are gaining support. Hers, the “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act,” would create 2 million jobs fully paid for through separate legislation that “creates higher tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires, eliminates subsidies for Big Oil, and loopholes for corporations that ship American jobs overseas.” Conyers bill reaches for more jobs and also addresses the racist aspects of the jobs crisis. “Official” rates of unemployment are much higher for African Americans and Latinos. None of the proposals would create enough government-sponsored jobs to replace the 8 million lost in the last crisis, let alone the 3 million more that have become necessary since then, but all of them would help.

Bring back the WPA

Rather than focusing on one special proposal, the simple slogan “Bring back the WPA” will probably mobilize the most people. The Works Progress Administration, which focused on public works projects, employed about 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943, while the CCC gave jobs to 2.5 million unskilled workers. Government-created public works jobs are the only possible solution in the short run. In the long run, reductions in working hours are an absolute necessity. T-shirts like the one shown are available at http://www.printfection.com/BringBackTheWPA.

The “Big Lie” is being used against us

Politicians use the old Nazi “big lie” technique (repetition) to try to convince Americans that “government cannot create jobs,” even though it’s clear they are lying. The government did in fact create millions of jobs to alleviate the last jobs crisis. Some North Texas congressmen, in recent “town hall” meetings, actually repeated this odious lie! On my Monday radio show on KNON, a caller clarified it all when he said, “If government can’t create jobs, Congressman, then you ought to give back your paycheck, because government sure as heck created YOUR job!”

We’re waiting for the President

President Obama is expected to announce a jobs proposal soon. The AFL-CIO, Jobs with Justice, and a long list of at least 70 progressive organizations are organizing a letter to encourage him to come up with a meaningful proposal. The letter is available on-line. The AFL-CIO’s proposal for a tiny “transaction tax” on Wall Street speculations would provide billions for the jobless.

It’s a campaign issue

Proposals for resolving the jobs crisis must be the crux of the coming election campaign. President Obama’s plan may put him over the top, or it may drag him backward. The leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, Texan Rick Perry, has already made his concern clear by flambuoyantly rejecting $555 million in federal funds for the jobless. Mitt Romney wants to raise the retirement age, which would make it even harder for younger workers to find jobs.

What will happen if you don’t take action?

nothing

What if you do?

None of the accomplishments of working people ever happened until they mobilized in public action. There are petitions to sign; vigils, pickets, and rallies to attend, and electoral work just waiting for us to grab them and make them work for us. On this site, we list as many of these opportunities as possible. Please get with us!

Join and/or donate to North Texas Jobs with Justice

Our TSEU union sister and CodePink member, Alice Embree, celebrates the intersection of rallies on two crucial issues. And why does an anti-war website publish this stuff? Well, readers no doubt have no trouble figuring that out: another intersection, war, U.S. imperialism, repression of unions and workers and women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan, money spent on war, not on jobs and education; and sending our working class young people to kill and be killed.

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/alice-embree-spirited-austin-rally-is.html

Hundreds of pro-choice demonstrators marched down Congress Ave. in Austin Saturday, Feb. 26 (above), and then joined with supporters of Wisconsin workers for an enthusiastic rally on the steps of the Texas state Capitol. Photos by Terry DuBose / The Rag Blog.
Rallies at Texas state Capitol:
Pro-choice demonstrators join
supporters of Wisconsin workers

See more photos below.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / February 28, 2011

AUSTIN — Two spirited demonstrations took place in front of Austin’s state Capitol on Saturday, February 26th. The Austin American-Statesman failed to cover the pro-choice rally and carried two paragraphs on the second Austin rally in a larger AP story on nationwide events supporting Wisconsin workers.

Hundreds of demonstrators showed up at noon at the south steps of the Capitol to defend women’s reproductive rights and later marched down Congress Ave. Speakers from Planned Parenthood, Whole Women’s Health, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) Texas, the Lilith Fund and CodePink addressed the crowd. Pink was prominent and bright pink placards read: “I Stand with Planned Parenthood,” “Don’t take away my birth control,” “Don’t take away my breast exams.” Four of CodePink’s Pink Police led the march decked out with their crime prevention badges.

The crowd was mostly young and mostly female. Chanting: “Women’s rights under attack. What do you do? Stand up, fight back!” and “Not the church, not the state, we’re the ones who ovulate.” Placards were both informative and inflammatory. A homemade sign read: “Keep your Boehner out of my uterus.” One woman had lettered: “Get your laws off my body” on her exposed belly. Another woman had constructed a box around her lower body that read: “Think outside my box.”

Marchers split off from the south steps of the Capitol and went down the sidewalks on both the east and west side of Congress, trading sides at Sixth Street as the two lines returned. Passers-by honked and returned peace signs and fists. It was an impressive turnout, organized primarily with word spread through Facebook and listserves.

In some ways, just as impressive was the decision by the pro-choice demonstrators to march up the sidewalk to the Capitol steps and join a 2 p.m. rally organized by MoveOn.org in support of Wisconsin workers. DPS troopers attempted to block the newcomers, but union advocates welcomed them.

A crowd of about 1,000 listened to music led by Bill Oliver and friends. Texas Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett addressed the crowd, as did former Texas Agricultural Commissioner and populist pundit, Jim Hightower. Austin’s demonstration was one of many throughout the country and coincided with the largest turnout in Madison to date. More than 70,000 demonstrators gathered in Madison despite freezing temperatures.

Hightower said: “You are the Koch brothers’ worst nightmare.” The reference is to conservative donors Charles and David Koch who made huge contributions to conservative candidates in the last midterm elections and who, according to Reuters, “are playing an influential role in the drive to strip public employee unions of their rights to bargain in several U.S. states.”

Wisconsin’s newly elected Governor Walker returned the funding favors with over $100 million in tax breaks to corporations in January before he named teachers and public workers in his state as the cause of Wisconsin deficits.

This was the second mobilization by Austin union supporters in one week. A demonstration organized by the AFL-CIO attracted hundreds to the south steps of the Capitol on Monday night.

Austin’s teachers’ union, Education Austin, is calling for a large turnout at the AISD School Board meeting on Monday evening, February 28, where layoffs and school closures are on the agenda. It seems that the aggressive actions of conservatives who feel empowered by midterm elections are prompting nationwide mobilizations to defend rights ranging from the right to collective bargaining to family planning.

On a related front, the Workers Defense Project is convening a march and rally to commemorate the 138 workers who lost their lives while working at Texas construction sites. The March 2 event, a “Day of the Fallen,” begins at 3:30 p.m. at the federal building and ends at the Capitol.

[Alice Embree is a long-time Austin activist and organizer, a former staff member of The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York, and a veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement. She is active with CodePink Austin and Under the Hood Café. Embree is a contributing editor to The Rag Blog and is treasurer of the New Journalism Project.]

Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
Photo by Terry DuBose / The Rag Blog.
Photo by Terry DuBose / The Rag Blog.
Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
Photo by Terry DuBose /The Rag Blog.

In solidarity with the ONE NATION March for Jobs, Peace, Justice, and Education for All ! to be held in Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2010, the Texas State Employees Union will rally at the AFL-CIO (11th & LaVaca) in Austin Friday, Oct. 1, at 4:45 pm.

TSEU calls for:
JOBS
EDUCATION
REBUILD PUBLIC SERVICES
DEFEND PUBLIC EMPLOYEES

In conjunction with our biennial General Assembly, TSEU always has an action the first afternoon of the GA highlighting issues of importance to state/university workers and the provision of state services.  This year our GA is Oct. 1 – Oct. 3, and we want to show our solidarity with all our sisters and brothers gathering in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 2.

We expect there will be a couple of hundred TSEU members from all over Texas here in Austin for the event.  Join us!

For more information call the TSEU office at 512-448-4225

http://www.cwa-tseu.org/

(TxLAW note:  U.S. Labor Against the War played an active role in this conference, partnering with Iraqi union reps in a workshop on what’s going on in the Iraqi labor movement and its struggles with the Iraqi government.  Check out labourstart.org.)

Online Activists Gather from Around Globe to Jumpstart Labor Movement

By Stuart Elliott, from In These Times, July 13, 2010

Benedicto Martinez Orozco marches in support of McMaster University workers during the LabourStart conference, held from July 9 to 11 in Ontario, Canada.   (Photo by Stuart Elliott)

More than 200 people from 28 countries attend LabourStart’s first public conference

HAMILTON, ONTARIO—Sometimes it’s hard to understand the importance of an event or an organization when you’re involved in it. As a volunteer correspondent for LabourStart.org and a participant in its “Act Now”  campaigns, I obviously think LabourStart an important project. But I really didn’t really comprehend its potential until I attended the first public LabourStart conference at McMaster University’s School of Labour Studies in Hamilton, Ontario.

“As unions confront a 21st century global capitalism, which is imposing a race to the bottom to union-free environments, unions must use new technologies to create a new labor internationalism,” said Eric Lee, founding editor of Labour Start. “The mission of LabourStart is to promote those technologies and to practice a consistent internationalism.”

LabourStart is an international labor news and campaigning site, run on a shoestring and powered by nearly 800 volunteer correspondents. Every day  the site publishes links to labor news in 23 different languages, and its news feeds appear on more than 800 union websites. It conducts e-mail campaigns in eight different languages.

There was some trepidation among LabourStart leaders about whether an Internet-based, low budget union news and campaigning site could attract an audience of union activists oustide its most committed corespondents. Particularly since, unlike the recently concluded ICTU conference, this was not a delegated meeting.

But the conference was able to attract over 200 participants from more than 28 countries. Attendees ranged from presidents of national unions, to representatives of Global Union Federations, to local union officers, to staffers, to grassroots activists.

Adam Lee of United Steelworkers International thanked LabourStart for its “tremendously effective” campaign on behalf of Vale nickel miners strikers, who settled a year-long strike just days before the conference began. On the first morning of the strike, which began in July 2009, more than 1,000 emails were sent to the Brazil-based multinational company. Two-thirds were from outside Canada, in eight languages from 80 countries, Lee said, It provided a “real boost” to the workers. And Brazilian workers for Vale were able to win a better than expected contract because the company didn’t want to take on two international campaigns at the same time.

Robin Alexander, director of international affairs for the United Electrical workers union, said that when she got an appeal from workers at PEMEX, Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company, the first place she turned for help was LabourStart.

As Lennon Ying-Dah Wong, a union leader from Taiwan, spoke on a panel about China, I loooked to my left and saw Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo. Michael Eisenscher of US Labor Against the War, Amjad Ali of the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra (Iraq), and Erin Radford of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center spoke on a panel about unions in Iraq. Other panels were devoted to Mexico, Eastern Europe, and Iran.

Unfortunately, some people were unable to attend the conference—but the reasons why are enlightening. A leader of Bangladeshi textile workers union canceled his visit because of a monumental campaign in his home country—more than 50,000 workers there are on strike, protesting the lowest wages in the textile industry.

Representatives of independent unions in Egypt and Algeria were, at the last moment, denied visas by Canada. (AFL-CIO Solidarity Center representatives  ably filled in at a workshop on the revival of unions in those countries.) The ham-handness of Canadian authorities may backire. Derek Blackadder, national representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said that there was so much outrage at the exclusion of the Egyptian and Algerian unionists and so much excitement about their pioneering work that Canadian unionists will be exploring ongoing solidarity work on their behalf.

Of course, connecting disparate unionists, spread across different levels of different unions, to unite in international solidarity is no easy task. But LabourStart’s global network of 800 correspondents and 70,000 Act Now e-mail activists will continue to be a part of that effort, which must be a central component of the future of the labor movement.

RESOLUTION 16

End the Silence on Labor Rights in Iraq

Submitted by Alameda Labor Council (Calif.), San Mateo County Central Labor Council (Calif.), Washington-Orange-Lamoille Labor Council (Vt.) and Wisconsin State AFL-CIO

WHEREAS, after more than six years of military occupation, more than 4,300 U.S.  and as many as a million or more Iraqi lives have been lost and our government has spent nearly $650 billion of taxpayer funds on the military occupation of Iraq, and yet real democracy in Iraq still remains more of an aspiration than reality; and

WHEREAS, one of the fundamental building blocks of a democratic society is the right of workers to join unions of their choice free of government interference, domination, harassment or repression; and

WHEREAS, after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S.  nullified most of the repressive Saddam era legal code, but kept on the books and continued to enforce a 1987 law that Saddam Hussein imposed making it illegal for public-sector and public enterprise employees to join unions or negotiate the terms of their employment; and

WHEREAS, the subsequent Iraqi Interim Governing Authority continued to enforce this undemocratic denial of worker rights, and the newly elected Iraqi government imposed additional restrictions on worker and union rights, including seizure and freezing of union bank accounts and assets; and

WHEREAS, U.S.  and Iraqi forces raided and ransacked union offices and assaulted and detained union leaders, and management of public enterprises, including the oil industry, was directed not to recognize or bargain with unions; and

WHEREAS, a vibrant pluralistic independent labor movement continues to grow in Iraq despite harassment, beatings, kidnappings, detention, torture and even murder of trade union activists; and

WHEREAS, Article 22, Section 3 of the new Iraqi Constitution promises respect for worker rights, foremost freedom of association and calls upon the Iraqi government to enact a law that guarantees the right to form unions; and

WHEREAS, Iraq is also a 1962 signatory to ILO Convention 98 on the right to organize and collectively bargain (which, ironically, the United States has yet to ratify), thereby also imposing a treaty obligation under international law to respect worker rights; and

WHEREAS, the ILO assisted the Iraqi government to draft a basic labor law that conforms to the requirements of the Iraqi constitution and international norms for respect of labor rights and yet the Iraqi government has refused to present that law to the Parliament for adoption; and

WHEREAS, these transgressions of fundamental labor and human rights have taken place for more than six years without a word of criticism from the U.S.  government to Iraqi authorities and it is long past time for the U.S.  government to speak up for the rights of Iraqi workers and unions; and

WHEREAS, respect for and enforcement of labor rights anywhere encourages respect for and enforcement of labor rights everywhere, including in the United States;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO adopt this resolution and urge the U.S.  government to strongly call upon the Iraqi government to live up to the terms of its own constitution and international treaty obligations by:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO shall send a copy of this resolution to the U.S. government through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with an additional copy to the Iraqi government through its embassy in Washington, D.C.; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO urge its state and area labor federations and central labor councils to concur with this resolution and communicate that concurrence to the U.S. government by notice to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Iraqi government through its embassy in Washington, D.C.; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO shall participate in the campaign for labor rights in Iraq by circulating the petition in support of those rights initiated by U.S. Labor Against the War.

RESOLUTION 52

Bring All the Troops and Contractors Home!

Submitted by Alameda Labor Council (Calif.)
Amended by the International Labor Committee

WHEREAS, the 2005 AFL-CIO convention resolved that “Our soldiers…deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly.  An unending military presence will waste lives and resources, undermine our nation’s security and weaken our military;” and

WHEREAS, at the time of that convention, 1,700 U.S.  troops had already lost their lives in Iraq, and today there are more than 4,300 U.S.  dead and more than 30,000 seriously wounded; and

WHEREAS, the nation confronts the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression and as a consequence millions of workers have lost their jobs or suffered cuts in working hours and wages, social programs and government services are being cut or eliminated across the country for lack of resources while our country has spent $650 billion in Iraq already and nearly $900 billion since 2001, including Afghanistan; and

WHEREAS, under terms of the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Bush administration, U.S.  forces will remain in Iraq until the end of
2011, and will continue to engage in combat and suffer casualties as long as they remain in that country; and

WHEREAS, in March 2008, Barack Obama said, “It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future.  As we do, we must serve the memory of all who have died as well as they who served our country, by providing support for their families, caring for our troops and veterans and upholding the American values which our fallen heroes exemplified through their service”; and

WHEREAS, at its 2005 convention, the AFL-CIO called for “rapid” withdrawal from Iraq—and four years later, 130,000 troops and 190,000 contractors are still in Iraq;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Alameda County Labor Council reaffirms its opposition to the continuing military occupation of Iraq and calls for the speedy* withdrawal of all military forces and armed contractors from Iraq; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Alameda County Labor Council calls upon the Congress and president to redirect the resources now squandered in Iraq to meeting the urgent needs of the American people, restoring and fully funding vital social programs and public services, developing sustainable technologies to address global warming, creating quality long-term jobs that provide a decent living, rebuilding the Gulf Coast and our nation’s infrastructure and a host of other needs that will provide our country with real security; and