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Tentative Settlement between EGT and ILWU
Gov. Gregoire announces tentative settlement between EGT and ILWU
 
From Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office:
 
For Immediate Release: January 23, 2012
 
OLYMPIA – Gov. Chris Gregoire today announced that EGT and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union reached a tentative settlement on pending legal issues surrounding labor disputes at EGT’s grain export facility in Longview.   Read more here.
America Isn't a Corporation
January 13, 2012

America Isn’t a Corporation

“And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.”

That’s how the fictional Gordon Gekko finished his famous “Greed is good” speech in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” In the movie, Gekko got his comeuppance. But in real life, Gekkoism triumphed, and policy based on the notion that greed is good is a major reason why income has grown so much more rapidly for the richest 1 percent than for the middle class.

Today, however, let’s focus on the rest of that sentence, which compares America to a corporation. This, too, is an idea that has been widely accepted. And it’s the main plank of Mitt Romney’s case that he should be president: In effect, he is asserting that what we need to fix our ailing economy is someone who has been successful in business.  Read more here.

McEllrath on EGT
ILWU Pres. McEllrath: ‘Prepare to take action when EGT vessel arrives’
January 13, 2012
 
Brothers and Sisters:
 
We are currently engaged in a labor dispute with one of our employers, EGT, in the Pacific Northwest. EGT continues to refuse to return to the negotiating table with Local 21 after walking away from nearly two years of direct contract negotiations over the terms of employment for the longshore workers that EGT would be employing at its new facility in the very location on public port property that longshore workers have been performing longshore work for decades.  Read more here.
 
See IBU President Alan Cote's comments regarding this issue in his "Year in Review" report here.  Download a printable version of McEllrath's letter below.

Download: 01-03-12-McEllrath-Memo-to-All-Longshore-Division-Locals-Re-EGT-in-the-Pacific-Northwest.pdf
Occupy Wall Street World Map

Trumka On Occupy Wall Street

For Immediate Release                Contact: Jeff Hauser 202-637-5018


Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

On Mass Arrests of Peaceful Occupy Wall Street Protests
October 26, 2011


It is a tremendous dishonor to America when the voices for the powerless are suppressed by the powerful -- the top 1%. We are extremely alarmed by the increasing number of arrests of peaceful protestors across the country and call on elected leaders to stop ordering the police to make these arrests. The Occupy Wall Street movement has elevated the national conversation by shining overdue attention on the struggles of the 99% for whom the economy is broken. When people can't raise their voices around pervasive inequality, there is a fundamental problem with how we're functioning as a nation.

Mayor Bloomberg of New York City listened to reason from the community and did not forcibly disband the original Wall Street protestors at Zuccotti Park. We urge all elected leaders across the country to enable peaceful protestors to continue to exercise their most American of rights.

The Gap Widens

Obama's Job Act
September 8, 2011

Setting Their Hair on Fire

First things first: I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.

Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition. Nor is anything else likely to happen that will do much to help the 14 million Americans out of work. And that is both a tragedy and an outrage.

Before I get to the Obama plan, let me talk about the other important economic speech of the week, which was given by Charles Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve of Chicago. Mr. Evans said, forthrightly, what some of us have been hoping to hear from Fed officials for years now.

As Mr. Evans pointed out, the Fed, both as a matter of law and as a matter of social responsibility, should try to keep both inflation and unemployment low — and while inflation seems likely to stay near or below the Fed’s target of around 2 percent, unemployment remains extremely high.

So how should the Fed be reacting? Mr. Evans: “Imagine that inflation was running at 5 percent against our inflation objective of 2 percent. Is there a doubt that any central banker worth their salt would be reacting strongly to fight this high inflation rate? No, there isn’t any doubt. They would be acting as if their hair was on fire. We should be similarly energized about improving conditions in the labor market.” Read more.

Trumka Slams Politicians!

AFL-CIO's Trumka Calls for Labor Movement Separate from Parties: 'I've Had a Snootful of This Shit!'

By John Nichols, The Nation

The following article first appeared in The Nation magazine. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent his strongest signal yet about the labor movement’s frustration with the dysfunctional politics of the moment—where Republicans go to extremes on behalf of big banks and multinational corporations, Democrats compromise and working families are left out of the equation.
 
Speaking last Tuesday to the National Nurses United conference in Washington, where more than one thousand nurses from across the country rallied to begin the push to replace the politics of setting for less with a unapologetic demands for a new economic agenda, Trumka found a plenty of takers for his agressively progressive message.

“We want an independent labor movement strong enough to return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation,” declared Trumka, who in recent months has been repositioning the AFL-CIO as a force that will hold Republicans and Democrats to what he describes as “a simple standard: “Are they helping or hurting working families?”  Read more.

Are Low Wages & Job Loss Inevitable?

Dear Dr. Dollar:

The main narrative that I hear in mainstream press is that U.S. workers are being undercut and eventually displaced by global competition. I think this narrative has a tone of inevitability, that low wages and job loss are driven by huge impersonal forces that we can't do much about. Is this right?
— Vicki Legion, San Francisco, Calif.

Yes, that is the main narrative. But, no, it’s not right.

Globalization, in the sense of increasing international commerce over long distances, has been going on since human beings made their way out of Africa and spread themselves far and wide. Trade between China and the Mediterranean seems to have been taking place at least 3,000 years ago. (We know this through chemical analysis of silk found in the hair of an Egyptian mummy interred around 1000 BCE; the silk was identified as almost certainly from China.) The long history of long-distance commerce does cast an aura of inevitability over globalization.

But the spread of international commerce has not taken shape outside of human control. Globalization takes many forms; its history has variously involved colonial control, spheres of influence, and forms of regulated trade. Read more.


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January 28, 2012
  IBU Member 2012 Photo Contest  
 

ENTER CONTEST

WIN PRIZES

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Action Center
  Action of the Week  
 
Demand a
Responsible Budget

Today’s CEO-backed Republican politicians—from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner—have swung too far toward favoring corporate America at the expense of the rest of us. They are directly attacking poor and middle-class Americans.

House Republicans have passed a scorched-earth budget that raids Medicare, Medicaid, education and more to reward corporate CEOs with massive tax cuts. We need your help to block this radical Republican Robin Hood in reverse plan.

Urge your U.S. senators and President Obama to pass a fair, responsible 2012 budget.

     
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