Harold Meyerson

Another day, another display of the dysfunctions of American capitalism.

On Wednesday, some understandably disgruntled investors filed suit in federal court against Facebook and several of the big banks that promoted its stock sale. The lawsuit alleges that the social media giant and the banks “selectively disclosed” to “certain preferred investors” the fact that Facebook’s financial prospects weren’t as bright as the public had been led to understand.

In the days leading up to the company’s initial public offering last week, the Wall Street Journal has reported, the underwriting banks told major institutional investors that Facebook’s share price would be set way too high — the pricing was “ridiculous,” according to one phone call on which the Journal reported. Facebook’s ad revenue, the big-time investors were told, wasn’t keeping pace with its growth on platforms such as mobile phones, which appear to be less ad-friendly than computers. No one conveyed this information to individual investors, however, many of whom rushed to buy the stock last Friday. By Thursday, Facebook shares had fallen 13 percent from their initial price.

Such “selective disclosure” may be grotesquely unfair, but it’s perfectly legal. The law requires corporations and brokers to inform the public of any information that could affect the value of their stocks — except in the case of IPOs, when securities firms are forbidden from reporting such information to the public until 40 days after the initial offering.

This isn’t a widely known law; the Journal called it “one of Wall Street’s best kept secrets.” It seems to be secret even from some U.S. senators with direct jurisdiction over securities statutes. Republican Bob Corker (Tenn.) told The Hill that he’s been focused more on the $2 billion trading-loss scandal at JPMorgan Chase than on Facebook “because we have regulation that it’s going to affect.” Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told the same paper that this was a matter for the Securities and Exchange Commission, not Congress. It is indeed a matter for the SEC, but it should be on Congress’s plate as well.

The Facebook affair provides one more bit of confirmation — not that any should be needed — that our economic system, when left to its own devices and when regulated by rules that powerful interests have shaped, tilts grotesquely toward the rich and their institutions. The JPMorgan Chase debacle has highlighted the fact that chief executive Jamie Dimon sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, his company’s primary regulator. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, the Senate’s sole socialist, and California’s Barbara Boxer (D) introduced a bill this week that forbids such arrangements — a long-overdue reform, as the Fed’s regional banks have always been controlled more by private bankers than public regulators.

Meanwhile, the one thing made clear by the recent debate over the merits of private-equity firms is that those firms’ net effect on job creation and destruction is essentially negligible. Their one undisputed effect — and admitted raison d’etre — is to enrich their investors and, more particularly, the people who work there. The firms’ defenders hail them for creating wealth, though the wealth they create goes chiefly to the wealthy and is often generated by slashing the wages of workers at the companies they take over.

The dysfunction of American capitalism has become the backdrop before which this year’s elections are playing out. Polls show that the American people believe that the nation’s economy has fundamentally changed for the worse, but the two parties are divided over the culprit. Republicans blame government for distorting what would otherwise be a thriving market system; Democrats argue that government must do more to prod those markets to distribute wealth more equitably, thereby increasing the aggregate demand that markets need to thrive.

The United States has not had this kind of fundamental debate over the economy since the 1930s — the last time the economy went to hell and stayed there for many years. But dispirited and bewildered conservatives stayed relatively mute during the Thirties, when Rooseveltian liberalism emerged as the dominant view and socialist critiques of capitalism had more purchase than they do now. Republican rhetoric notwithstanding, no one today — not even Bernie Sanders — is calling for capitalism’s destruction. No, the issues being debated — labor’s power, the rules governing finance, the progressivity of the tax code — concern the nature of our form of capitalism, not its existence. The question is, will it be allowed to continue its drift toward benefiting fewer and fewer of our fellow Americans?

Seniors, people with disabilities and health care workers blocked the front entrance to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange(CME) Wednesday around 9:30 this morning, as well the adjacent Jackson and LaSalle Streets. Police moved in about half an hour later and ordered people to clear the streets or face arrest. Demonstrators were protesting the CME’s parent company (CME Group) which was awarded multi-million-dollar tax breaks while human services were being cut by the State of Illinois.

Most of the demonstrators moved on to the sidewalk, but some continued to block the street by sitting down or not moving their wheelchairs. They were arrested and escorted to an impromptu arrest area next to the CME building, given citations and then released from custody. According to arrestee Jim Rhodes, a total of 15 people were arrested and processed.

The arrests were conducted courteously by the police and without the use of clubs or cuffs, in marked contrast to the rough handling and violence used against anti-NATO protestors over the weekend.

About  200 people gathered in support of the 15 people who sat-in,  all of them victims of Governor Pat Quinn’s proposal to slash $210 million programs that provide home care services to seniors and people with disabilities. March 23rd was  the day when CME Group held its annual shareholder meeting, and protestors called on the company to give back tax breaks that will exceed $1 billion in the coming decade, and are depleting $77 million that would otherwise be available to home care and other crucial state programs this year alone.

The drastic reductions proposed for the home care programs could force 90,000 seniors and people with disabilities into nursing homes, dramatically increasing costs for the state.  Meanwhile, the massive tax breaks afforded to CME come at a time when the company earned $1.9 billion in profits last year and the state treasury is plagued by a revenue shortage.

The “Merc” as the CME is commonly called in Chicago, began as an agricultural exchange in 1898. Today  the Merc trades several types of financial instruments including currency and commodities. It also  trades in more exotic fare, such as weather and real estate derivatives, and has the largest options and futures contracts  of any exchange on the planet. Like its cousin on Wall Street, much of the Merc’s activity is pure speculation, the kind of casino-style gambling that crashed the global economy in 2008 and provides little investment in the “real economy” of jobs and small businesses.

CME Group had threatened to move out of Illinois last year if it did not receive its one billion tax dollar break. When this ugly form of corporate blackmail was approved, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn proposed a budget calling for drastic cuts to child care, home care, and health care services funded by Medicaid. This chain of events outraged people across the state and led to today’s protest.

“We’re here to show CME officials how much it costs the 99 percent when billion-dollar corporations demand tax breaks they clearly don’t need,” said home care consumer Rachel Siler, who participated in the civil disobedience in front of the CME Wednesday. “When the state pampers greedy corporations, it punishes working families.  People like me lose vital services like home care, and taxpayers have to spend more on nursing homes.”

Mike Ervin spoke at the short rally that preceded  the arrests saying,

“It’s time we bust this myth about Illinois being broke.   Our budget deficit is caused by tax policies that let greedy corporations and the rich make out like bandits, while everyone else pays the price.  We need a fair tax policy that ends tax breaks for wealthy corporations and asks the rich to pay more than someone making minimum wage.”

Annette Jones, a 69 year old home care worker with 17 years experience and one of the arrestees, had a direct and simple message to take to the CME Group,” The CME needs to pay their taxes and give home care workers a chance to take care of our seniors who need our help.” Jones fears that without the services that she provides, seniors will be forced out of their homes.

The protest was organized by the Stand Up! Chicago coalition which is made up dozens of community, labor, and faith-based organizations. Stand Up Chicago is also sponsored a mass rally and march later in the afternoon. After having a Peoples’ Shareholder meeting, the assembled union members and community activists voted to divest CME of their tax break and return that money to the working people. The march was a lively parade of singing, chants and lots of dancing down the LaSalle Street financial district to the music of a very energetic band in clown costumes. When they reached the CME, organizers had hoisted two enormous banners, one in front of the The Merc and the other in front of the Federal Reserve. The message was:”Tax the 1%” and “Stop the Cuts”

Stand Up Chicago marched down Lasalle Street’s financial district

Stand Up! Chicago was joined by thousands of Chicago Teachers Union members who had held a mass rally of their own to protest Mayor Emanuel’s attacks on public education.  The teachers union members met Stand Up Chicago at the Mercantile Exchange and continued marching  through the South Loop. Other unions who supported Stand Up Chicago’s actions are  SEIU Local 1, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana, SEIU Local 73 and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

For a time, the streets belonged to the teachers

The May 23 actions were in the same spirit as the National Nurses’ United rally on May 18  to support a global Financial Transactions Tax, which drew thousands of nurses and supporters. Commonly called a “Robin Hood Tax”, it would be small percentage on certain high end transactions, exempting 401k’s and other transactions commonly done by working people. Stand Up Chicago proposed a similar tax on CME Group’s high risk derivative trading earlier this year.

Stand Up Chicago issued an excellent economic plan for Chicago entitled Investing in Chicago Communities: A Jobs Fund for a Future That Works produced in conjunction with the Chicago Political Economy Group. It’s an excellent alternative to what the financial barons of LaSalle Street are planning for us.

Jackson Blvd in front of CBE about 9:30 May 23.

Sources Consulted

Press Release from Stand up Chicago from May 23

Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s golden toilet by Jake Olzen

Stand Up Chicago website

Investing in Chicago Communities: A Jobs Fund for a Future That Works by the  Chicago Political Economy Group

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange website

Nurses Hold Massive Peaceful Rally In Center Of Chicago by Matthew Blake

Bob “Bobbo” Simpson  spent many years as a history teacher on the South Side of Chicago in a working class neighborhood. He is now a social media writer based out of Oak Park Illinois. He works for WebTraxStudio which does work for unions, non-profit groups, social advocacy organizations and educational institutions.  He is also 1/2 of the Carol Simpson labor cartoon team. This post first appeared on his diary at Daily Kos, go there and recommend it.

Mike Elk

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS- Last year, over 92,000 railroad workers represented by 11 different unions agreed to a series of concessionary contracts, while the four largest railroad companies collected $8.5 billion in profits.

The problem: Railroad unions are typically forced into concessions because the federal government holds the power to step in and stop railway strikes. Therefore, individual unions often race to make their own deals, hoping that settling quickly will allow their union to negotiate a slightly better deal with the railroads.

It’s a disheartening situation for union members, which is why, in 2008, several railroad unionists joined to form Railroad Workers United (RWU), a cross-craft association of workers from over 17 different unions. Together, RWU members planned to challenge the often top-down structure of railroad unions, which they felt hindered their ability to fight against rail companies. RWU is a small, volunteer-run organization with a budget of only a few thousand dollars and about 200 members who pay just $50 in annual dues. But despite limited means, RWU members hope that by serving as the voices of dissent in their unions, they can bring about positive changes that will ultimately lead to improved working conditions.

Earlier this month, 40 members and allies of RWU gathered in Chicago for a one-day convention to discuss ways to expand their organization.

Success, of course, requires planning and some bureaucracy. Topics of discussion at the convention included strategies to reach new members and to encourage them to pay dues, methods of distributing the RWU newsletter, “The Highball,” and for placing stickers with RWU contact information on locomotives across the country (which RWU General Secretary Ron Kaminkow considers a highly successful tactic in recruiting new members).

A long part of the meeting expanded on the boring mechanics of running an organization, including a debate about which software to use for the website and a detailed discussion of the procedure for selecting alternate delegates for the steering committee. The discussion may seem mundane to outsiders, but it’s exciting to workers making change from the inside.

“All this stuff about amending the constitution and bylaws may seem boring, but in all my years in the BLET [Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, a 45,000 member Teamsters affiliate], I have never been involved in any of this,” says John Paul Wright, a CSX locomotive engineer from Louisville, Ky. “This is the stuff of forming a member-run organization—writing bylaws—and I am excited to be a part of it.”

Many of the members here are upset with unions they see as top-heavy and out of touch with the needs of members. They say the top-down structures have led the unions to agree to unnecessary, and ultimately harmful, concessions.

“I have had to suffer under a two-tier wage system… [That system] adds lasting animosity among younger workers towards the union for agreeing to it,” says Hugh Sawyer of Atlanta, Ga. “I will hate the UTU [United Transportation Union] forever because of it.”

On the convention floor, members discussed how they could possibly stop the unions from agreeing to those kinds of contracts. They deliberated how to improve working conditions and push back against bosses by forming strong shop floor and safety committees.

Of particular concern is safety, which some workers say the unions have done a poor job of addressing. The railroad companies, workers say, have introduced single-employee crews, which put one worker in charge of handling an entire train. Workers claim single-employee crews are often overworked and therefore more prone to accidents.

To highlight the obstacles to safety, RWU invited Nancy Lessin of the United Steelworkers’ Tony Mazzocchi Center for Safety, Health and Environmental Education to talk about behavioral safety models that often blame workers for safety hazards and penalize them for reporting accidents.

“The Teamsters deducts a tax of one dollar from each paycheck for education, but I don’t get a lot of education. I get a lot of stuff in my mailbox at election time instead,” Wright says. “This here is what unions are supposed to do.”

For their part, the RWU’s safety education efforts have started to affect the railroad industry. A few years ago, RWU called on its members to wear black shirts on the Friday before Father’s Day to commemorate Railroad Workers Memorial Day and workers killed on the job. Unions throughout the railroad industry followed and adopted similar actions.

Now, RWU members are hoping to turn their unions into more democratic organizations to avoid the recent round of concessionary bargaining that pitted unions against each other.

“I always like to say that Railroad Workers United is a little gear that tries to move a bigger gear—the unions we belong to,” says Jon Flanders, a CSX mechanic and member of IAM, based out of Troy, N.Y. ”We were formed to get our unions to do the right thing.”

Mike Elk is an In These Times Staff Writer and a regular contributor to the labor blog Working In These Times, where this post first appeared.

Leo Casey

Over  a year ago, the UFT submitted a Freedom of Information request for emails between Joel Klein and other top DoE brass, on the one hand, and the leaders of the New York City Charter School Center, the New York Charter School Association, Democrats for Education Reform and other leading supporters of corporate education reform. As it does with FOIL requests that do not suit their purposes, the DoE stonewalled the request. (Take note of the contrast with the DoE’s eagerness to release the Teacher Data Reports.) Last month, the UFT went to court, arguing that the DoE’s continual delays amounted to constructive denial of the FOIL law. Facing the inevitable, last Friday the DoE began to release the emails, sending several hundred to the UFT and the news media. Another 15,000 emails are still to come, so keep your eyes peeled on this one.

Here are some of the highlights of the emails just released.

• NYC DoE Chancellor Joel Klein takes a personal interest in UFT charter organizing work. When the UFT announced that it had organized the NYC Charter School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries in the South Bronx, Klein emails Charter School Center CEO James Merriman, “U know what this is abt?” Merriman replies, “Nope. But not surprising.”
• When the UFT publishes a report, Separate and Unequal: The Failure of NYC’s Charter Schools to Serve the City’s Neediest Students, Merriman is sending out a response within hours of its release — not surprising given his role as spokesperson for charter school management in NYC. But two days later, the then head of the DoE’s Charter School Office, Michael Duffy, is sending out another critique, using DoE data which is not in the public realm — somewhat strange for an office charged with charter oversight. (The DoE redacted the names of a number of recipients of Duffy’s critique.) Attached to Duffy’s email is an email from Nelson Smith, then President of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, who is looking for help in bashing the UFT report after a speechwriter of US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reaches out to him.
• Roland Fryer, a Harvard professor who assumed the title of Chief Equality Officer at the DoE for a period of time, emails Joel Klein that he is having problems getting charter school principals to participate in a research project. “The basic idea is to understand what makes charters effective,” he writes. “It can’t just be lack of unions, because none of them have unions and some have amazing gains in achievement while others do not.” (What is remarkable is that Fryer is doing this research on charter schools, and does not know the most basic information, such as the fact that approximately 10% of charter schools nationally are unionized, including a number of the best performing schools.) Fryer wants to offer a $100,000 lottery prize to get charter schools to participate.
• James Merriman writes to Joel Klein, explaining that the briefing paper the Center had provided Mayor Bloomberg on the public financial support for charter schools and for district schools had understated the financial benefits charters garnered from being co-located in a DoE building to the tune of 4 to 5%. (For a synopsis of the funding issue, see this Edwize post.) Klein replies: “Spoke to him (Bloomberg). He’s looking forward but wasn’t happy.”
• Yet Merriman is infuriated when the Independent Budget Office’s analysis of the levels of public support for charter schools and district schools supports the arguments of the UFT on this subject. After revealing that he had been given an earlier draft of the report, where the numbers were actually more unfavorable to the charter school argument, he complains that the final report, which went from charters getting more money than district schools to less money, “was an advocacy brief, including quoting the UFT report. Shame on them.” So much for IBO efforts to satisfy him.
• Merriman and Duffy have a dust-up over the DoE’s initiative to create a common charter school application. “When the law says charter schools are independent and autonomous, it means something,” Merriman writes. “When you high-handedly try to superintend them, they will push back…”
• National Heritage Academies, one of two major for-profit charter chains in New York, was very upset about the provision in the law raising the charter school cap which prohibited new charter schools from contracting with for-profit charter management companies. So, too, apparently was Tom Carroll, head of the Brighter Choice charter schools in Albany and a leading figure in the New York Charter School Association.
• There is a major division in charter forces over the passage of the bill increasing the cap on charter schools. Klein emails DFER’s Joe Williams, with regard to New York Charter School Association leader Peter Murphy, who had gone public in the New York Times with severe criticisms. Klein asks, “Any way to walk him off the ledge?” Williams replies, “We have been trying. This is a mess within our coalition.” As the exchange goes on, Williams writes “I think the issue is one of control.” Klein comes back, “You mean we took it over and have a different agenda?” Williams agrees.  Klein finishes: “Bad for him to be in Times pissing on…”
• Merriman insists that the law must not require charter school buildings to meet public school code: “there is no way private developers can afford public school code.” Of course, public school code is specifically designed to protect the health and safety of students.
• Worried about the bill and opposition from Murphy and NYCSA, consultant Bradley Tusk tells Klein it “may be good for you to call Murdoch.” In another email, Tusk also suggests how to manipulate Arne Duncan: “Joel presumably will get to talk to Arne before the event and want to make sure he plants the right thoughts in Arne’s head and make sure we plant the right questions with reporters so Arne’s comments help take some of the poison pills off the table.” (Poison pills refer to the provisions in the law which require charter schools to educate more high needs students — especially English Language Learners and students with special needs.)
• Klein and Merriman go ballistic when Regents Chancellor Tisch is quoted in Gotham Schools saying that any law increasing the charter school cap needs to also address issues of co-location and saturation. “Unbelievable; gobsmacked and so angry I could spit,” Merriman writes. At another point, Williams says that Tisch (and UFT President Michael Mulgrew) “are going apeshit.”
• Democrats for Education Reform head Joe Williams gets very nervous every time hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, a major charter school backer and DFER funder, is on his own with important political players. When Tilson receives a phone call from Regents Chancellor Tisch, Williams admonishes him to not “commit to anything” and worriedly forwards the email to Klein, wondering what Tisch “is up to.” When Tilson meets with the Daily News editorial board, Williams tells him to “keep it general” and not “get into specifics on NY’s cap lift legislation.”
• Joe Williams writes to Joel Klein and Eva Moskowitz, suggesting that someone ask Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM, to defund the NAACP because of its willingness to work with the UFT and take on Bloomberg and Klein.
• There are a number of email exchanges between Klein and Merriman on a conflict between Opportunity Charter School and Eva Moskowitz over one of her Harlem Success Academies.  The DoE co-located the Moskowitz school in the same building as Opportunity, and with insufficient space in the building for Harlem Success to grow, Moskowitz sets her sites on Opportunity. Merriman emails Klein asking to talk about “Opportunity Charter School siting issue (issue is Eva).” In a subsequent email, Merriman follows up. “Anything on Opportunity. The natives are restless and war council’s brewing. Charter v. Charter. Ugh.” Klein replies; “Keep confi but I think this will work out.” Later Merriman writes that Lenny Goldberg, CEO of Opportunity, has “stood down.” But Eva’s knives were soon out again, and this school year the DoE inexplicably put Opportunity on a list of charter schools that it was considering for closure, despite the fact that over half of the students attending the school are students with special needs and Opportunity graduates them at twice the rate the DoE graduates its students with special needs. In its successful battle to remain open, Opportunity had the support of the UFT and local Community Education Council, while the Charter School Center and the Charter School Association remained on the sidelines.
• Concerned about the debate over Race To The Top, Klein writes to Merriman, “How many parents can we get Tuesday morn midtown to protest — we’ve been too silent.” In an email asking Merriman and the Charter School Center to take the lead in planning this astro-turf rally, Klein’s subordinate, Michael Duffy, notes the antipathy of other charter school networks to Eva Moskowitz: “I think that there are schools that would do it if the Center leads, that won’t if Eva does… Eva will be bringing the most bodies to be sure, but it will hurt us if this is just seen as ‘her’ rally.” There are a series of emails between Merriman and DoE School Safety, asking them to facilitate the rally in a DoE building.
• After an angry Panel for Educational Policy meeting over school closures in January 2010, Merriman emails Joel Klein to commiserate. “Fully aware the anger will move toward us (charter schools),” he says. Then, without the slightest hint of irony, he concludes “Interesting that beeps (borough presidents) instructed their reps (on the PEP) how to vote. What happened to independence.” Of course, the school closures passed the PEP because the Mayor had told his appointees, which are a majority of the PEP, that they had to support them. Klein replies: “Predictible if sad. Almost all UFT, lot of charter anger.”
• Writing on a scheme by Eddie Melendez, the recently indicted CEO of Believe High Schools Network, to pay his students $100 a head to recruit new students to the school, Merriman says “it is sleazy but shrewd all at the same time.”
• Not even the conservative Fordham Foundation gets the Klein-Merriman seal of approval. Unhappy with a Fordham report on inequality in school demographics, Klein writes to Merriman “Why not whack them on their charters — low ieps and ells…”
• These four men — Klein, Merriman, Williams and Tilson — are obsessed with women who oppose their agenda. There are numerous email exchanges centered on Diane Ravitch and Debbie Meier, discussing their writings and public appearances in the most insulting terms. Of Ravitch, Klein writes: “She’s so dishonest and platitudinous, it’s scary.” Tilson writes that Ravitch is a “dangerous crackpot” and “deranged,” and proclaims “I really, REALLY hate Ravitch.” Merriman joins in that Ravitch is a “slippery one.” In response to an inquiry from Klein, asking why New York Charter Parents Association head Mona Davids was opposing co-locations, Merriman trashes her as “unstable,” saying that “she is now in the pocket of the union.” And they discuss plans of how to ambush AFT President Randi Weingarten when she appears on the Morning Joe show and at a Houston event.

Leo Casey is vice president of academic high schools. He is a New York City native and the son of two New York City public school teachers. Leo attended Antioch College in Ohio, the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and the University of Toronto in Canada, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy.

Craig Becker

by Mike Hall

Craig Becker has been named AFL-CIO general counsel, joining General Counsel Lynn Rhinehart in leading the federation’s legal work on behalf of working people. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says Becker, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is:

a brilliant lawyer and creative thinker with deep experience in labor law, litigation and organizing. His combination of legal acumen and experience on the ground is simply unmatched. The strengths of these two extraordinary lawyers, Becker and Rhinehart, are a perfect complement, and together they will lead a powerhouse legal program to protect and promote the interests of working men and women. 

Rhinehart calls Becker “a person of incredible intellect, experience and integrity, and with his leadership, we will be able to expand our work in crucially important areas at a crucially important time.”

Before joining the NLRB, he served as associate general counsel to both the SEIU and the AFL-CIO. Rhinehart was named AFL-CIO general counsel in 2009 and joined the legal staff of the AFL-CIO as associate general counsel in 1996.

Reposted from the AFL-CIO Now blog,

Separate marches and rallies all around Tahrir Feb 18 (photo:C Finamore)

The military was the lone Hosni Mubarak-era institution to survive the revolution that toppled the country’s longest-reigning dictator last year. It remains the real power to this day and is skillfully orchestrating the May 23-24 presidential elections to paint a democratic veneer glossing over that simple truth.

The plan seems to be working.

The elaborate and deceitful military production casting the elections as the best hope to turn Egypt around is only part of the reason. Millions of frustrated Egyptians place their earnest hopes on the elections also because many, clearly exhausted from an economy that continues its downward plunge, are expectantly looking for easy, quick-fix solutions.

It is estimated that 50 percent live below the staggeringly low minimum level of poverty set by the government. Many of these hopelessly impoverished Egyptians watched with great interest a May 10 televised debate between the two top-polling candidates.

One, Amr Moussa, former Mubarak foreign minister and recent leader of the Arab League, is considered a favorite of the U.S. State Department. It did not go unnoticed in the Egyptian press, for example, that U.S. Senator John Kerry met with Moussa and none of the other candidates.

The other candidate leading in the polls is Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, an expelled, former Muslim Brotherhood leader who has an honorable reputation as a fierce opponent of Mubarak’s rule and who has garnered even more support for his declared objective of bridging the Islamic/secular divide.

One notable minority candidate is renown human rights and labor rights attorney Khaled Ali who filed papers the day he turned 40 years old, the minimum age requirement. Ali is an avowed leftist who is most identified as a prominent supporter of the emerging wave of independent unions. These unions are just beginning to get properly organized under very difficult conditions but they already claim a membership of over two million.

If none of the twelve candidates wins a majority this week, a run-off will occur in late June with the military pledging to turn over power to the new president at that time. But this is simply not true, it is pure stage craft. There will be no real turnover of power.

David Kennedy, director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School and a keen observer of Egyptian politics also seems to doubt any real changes will take place with these elections when he recently wrote in Al Jazeera that “after a year, the clamour, the disenchantment, and the resignation – along with the hope that nothing enduring will change – have all grown. At the same time, the ‘transition’ process offers complex opportunities for existing and aspiring elites to jockey for position and struggle to improve their position for the next round.”

In reality, the question of power will be determined in the future, not now, and not by these elections. Any power shift will be determined by how successfully the youth and the growing workers’ movement become politically organized because as of yet, this majority is not represented by the main contenders in the presidential election, a situation we in the United States appreciate is not unique to Egypt.

Who Changes What?

Why is it certain the military will not leave the stage?

Because media, academic and foreign consulate estimates of the military’s control of the economy ranges from a low of 15 percent to a whopping 30 percent. And none of this “militarization of the economy” will be diminished by the presidential elections anymore than the much-ballyhooed November 2011 elections to parliament lessened the military’s power.

The army’s initial coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extreme fundamentalist Salafists was seriously challenged when the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) refused to delegate any genuine power to the Islamist-controlled parliament.

For example, parliament could dismiss cabinet ministers but SCAF exclusively made all new appointments. In addition, SCAF maintained sole control of all military affairs, including their extensive budget and ownership of major portions of the economy – both state secrets.

Under circumstances that limited parliament’s power and because the Islamist parties remained politically committed to defending SCAF against protestors, parliament failed miserably to enact any reforms. Ali Fattouh, a bus driver and independent union organizer with the Public Transport Authority, expressed popular criticisms of the do-nothing parliament published in Egypt Independent on May 1, 2012: “These parties and MPs provide us with no assistance or support during our struggles. Other than lip service, they offer us nothing.”

Thus, suffering erosion of their mass base, the Islamist parliamentary majority clamored in the last several months for more discretionary power.

But SCAF refused. In the most recent embarrassing and humiliating incident, SCAF dismissed the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafist-controlled committee charged with writing a new constitution and, instead, stated that it would write a new interim draft itself.

The proposed interim constitution under consideration reportedly extends extremely broad powers to the military that includes safeguarding national security, maintaining national unity and protecting the constitution and the revolution’s legitimacy.

This just about sums up the complete role of any government.

In addition, the interim constitution will reportedly grant SCAF exclusive powers to discuss and review the military’s internal affairs, including its budget, armaments and military law. The budget can be discussed by parliament’s defense and national security committee, according to the provisional constitution, but only in secret closed-door meetings.

SCAF and Islamist Partnership Frays

The recent disputes between SCAF and the Islamists are more akin to “inside the beltway” jockeying for position as professor Kennedy alluded, than to any real political policy argument. However, even these minor types of conflicts made more urgent the military’s search for more reliable allies among the power elite.

The Islamist organizations were selected as allies by SCAF in the immediate aftermath of the revolution when their mass base was a real asset to a faltering structure. Now, having an ally that will sometimes use their mass base to challenge SCAF, no matter how narrowly limited, has become a liability.

SCAF has urgently devoted resources to reforming the police and security forces, rejuvenating Mubarak’s old trade union federation, and now, reviving old political figures with photo-shopped resumes distancing themselves from Mubarak and attesting support for the revolution.

New parties are being promoted and funded that can more reliably ‘democratize” the status quo with some cosmetic plastic surgery that will polish the rough spots in a post-Mubarak Egypt.

Leading presidential candidate Amr Moussa is a good example. He has already made perfectly clear he will be a reliable ally of the military.

When asked by the U.S. State Department’s Voice of America how he would handle “the military economy,” Moussa reassuringly responded that the “issue should not concern people, because the ruling power will be transferred from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to the elected president. Then, the armed forces…would take care of their own affairs.”

Here we see an experienced double-talking diplomat putting two contradictory sentences together as one thought.

While this arrangement may work well for the generals, not everyone is happy. Zeinab Abul-Magd, assistant professor at the American University in Cairo and Oberlin College, recently reported that “civilians working under retired army personnel show continuous discontent about mismanagement, corruption, and injustice. During the last 14 months, after SCAF took power, numerous major labor strikes and sit-ins emerged in facilities managed by retired generals. In many incidents, the managers called on military police to end the labor unrest.

For example, widespread protests were staged at military factories, the Suez Canal ports, the Red Sea ports, petroleum companies, a cement factory, factories of chemical industries, the Alexandria port, and the Water and Sewerage Company. The SCAF has condemned labor strikes at large, arguing that they harm the country’s economy and ‘stall the wheel of production,’ but the largest of these strikes were staged in places where military managers rule. Labor strikes are primarily harming the military economic interests rather than the national economy.”

The military desperately wants to return to a backstage role where the curtain will shield their vast hold on the economy but their efforts are in vain. But in my view, the real challenge will not come from reinvented politicians, rebuilt parties or refurbished government institutions but from the newly emerging independent unions, from the still undefeated and confident workers’ movement and from the valiant youth under 30 years of age who alone comprise 60 percent of the population and around 85 percent of the unemployed.Ff

For those of interested in following real politics, it is these forces that should receive most of our attention and inspire all of our hopes for a new Egypt.

Carl Finamore is Machinist Local Lodge 1781 delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He was in Cairo only hours after Mubarak was deposed and visited again a few months ago for the one year anniversary. He can be reached at local1781@yahoo.com and his writings viewed on http://carlfinamore.wordpress.com/

The military was the lone Hosni Mubarak-era institution to survive the revolution that toppled the country’s longest-reigning dictator last year. It remains the real power to this day and is skillfully orchestrating the May 23-24 presidential elections to paint a democratic veneer glossing over that simple truth.

The plan seems to be working.

The elaborate and deceitful military production casting the elections as the best hope to turn Egypt around is only part of the reason. Millions of frustrated Egyptians place their earnest hopes on the elections also because many, clearly exhausted from an economy that continues its downward plunge, are expectantly looking for easy, quick-fix solutions.

It is estimated that 50 percent live below the staggeringly low minimum level of poverty set by the government. Many of these hopelessly impoverished Egyptians watched with great interest a May 10 televised debate between the two top-polling candidates.

One, Amr Moussa, former Mubarak foreign minister and recent leader of the Arab League, is considered a favorite of the U.S. State Department. It did not go unnoticed in the Egyptian press, for example, that U.S. Senator John Kerry met with Moussa and none of the other candidates.

One notable minority candidate is renown human rights and labor rights attorney Khaled Ali who filed papers the day he turned 40 years old, the minimum age requirement. Ali is an avowed leftist who is most identified as a prominent supporter of the emerging wave of independent unions. These unions are just beginning to get properly organized under very difficult conditions but they already claim a membership of over two million.

If none of the twelve candidates wins a majority this week, a run-off will occur in late June with the military pledging to turn over power to the new president at that time. But this is simply not true, it is pure stage craft. There will be no real turnover of power.

David Kennedy, director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School and a keen observer of Egyptian politics also seems to doubt any real changes will take place with these elections when he recently wrote in Al Jazeera that “after a year, the clamour, the disenchantment, and the resignation – along with the hope that nothing enduring will change – have all grown. At the same time, the ‘transition’ process offers complex opportunities for existing and aspiring elites to jockey for position and struggle to improve their position for the next round.”

In reality, the question of power will be determined in the future, not now, and not by these elections. Any power shift will be determined by how successfully the youth and the growing workers’ movement become politically organized because as of yet, this majority is not represented by the main contenders in the presidential election, a situation we in the United States appreciate is not unique to Egypt.

Who Changes What?

Why is it certain the military will not leave the stage?

Because media, academic and foreign consulate estimates of the military’s control of the economy ranges from a low of 15 percent to a whopping 30 percent. And none of this “militarization of the economy” will be diminished by the presidential elections anymore than the much-ballyhooed November 2011 elections to parliament lessened the military’s power.

The army’s initial coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extreme fundamentalist Salafists was seriously challenged when the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) refused to delegate any genuine power to the Islamist-controlled parliament.

For example, parliament could dismiss cabinet ministers but SCAF exclusively made all new appointments. In addition, SCAF maintained sole control of all military affairs, including their extensive budget and ownership of major portions of the economy – both state secrets.

Under circumstances that limited parliament’s power and because the Islamist parties remained politically committed to defending SCAF against protestors, parliament failed miserably to enact any reforms. Ali Fattouh, a bus driver and independent union organizer with the Public Transport Authority, expressed popular criticisms of the do-nothing parliament published in Egypt Independent on May 1, 2012: “These parties and MPs provide us with no assistance or support during our struggles. Other than lip service, they offer us nothing.”

Thus, suffering erosion of their mass base, the Islamist parliamentary majority clamored in the last several months for more discretionary power.

But SCAF refused. In the most recent embarrassing and humiliating incident, SCAF dismissed the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafist-controlled committee charged with writing a new constitution and, instead, stated that it would write a new interim draft itself.

The proposed interim constitution under consideration reportedly extends extremely broad powers to the military that includes safeguarding national security, maintaining national unity and protecting the constitution and the revolution’s legitimacy.

This just about sums up the complete role of any government.

In addition, the interim constitution will reportedly grant SCAF exclusive powers to discuss and review the military’s internal affairs, including its budget, armaments and military law. The budget can be discussed by parliament’s defense and national security committee, according to the provisional constitution, but only in secret closed-door meetings.

SCAF and Islamist Partnership Frays

The recent disputes between SCAF and the Islamists are more akin to “inside the beltway” jockeying for position as professor Kennedy alluded, than to any real political policy argument. However, even these minor types of conflicts made more urgent the military’s search for more reliable allies among the power elite.

The Islamist organizations were selected as allies by SCAF in the immediate aftermath of the revolution when their mass base was a real asset to a faltering structure. Now, having an ally that will sometimes use their mass base to challenge SCAF, no matter how narrowly limited, has become a liability.

SCAF has urgently devoted resources to reforming the police and security forces, rejuvenating Mubarak’s old trade union federation, and now, reviving old political figures with photo-shopped resumes distancing themselves from Mubarak and attesting support for the revolution.

New parties are being promoted and funded that can more reliably ‘democratize” the status quo with some cosmetic plastic surgery that will polish the rough spots in a post-Mubarak Egypt.

Leading presidential candidate Amr Moussa is a good example. He has already made perfectly clear he will be a reliable ally of the military.

When asked by the U.S. State Department’s Voice of America how he would handle “the military economy,” Moussa reassuringly responded that the “issue should not concern people, because the ruling power will be transferred from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to the elected president. Then, the armed forces…would take care of their own affairs.”

Here we see an experienced double-talking diplomat putting two contradictory sentences together as one thought.

While this arrangement may work well for the generals, not everyone is happy. Zeinab Abul-Magd, assistant professor at the American University in Cairo and Oberlin College, recently reported that “civilians working under retired army personnel show continuous discontent about mismanagement, corruption, and injustice. During the last 14 months, after SCAF took power, numerous major labor strikes and sit-ins emerged in facilities managed by retired generals. In many incidents, the managers called on military police to end the labor unrest.

“For example, widespread protests were staged at military factories, the Suez Canal ports, the Red Sea ports, petroleum companies, a cement factory, factories of chemical industries, the Alexandria port, and the Water and Sewerage Company. The SCAF has condemned labor strikes at large, arguing that they harm the country’s economy and ‘stall the wheel of production,’ but the largest of these strikes were staged in places where military managers rule. Labor strikes are primarily harming the military economic interests rather than the national economy.”

The military desperately wants to return to a backstage role where the curtain will shield their vast hold on the economy but their efforts are in vain. But in my view, the real challenge will not come from reinvented politicians, rebuilt parties or refurbished government institutions but from the newly emerging independent unions, from the still undefeated and confident workers’ movement and from the valiant youth under 30 years of age who alone comprise 60 percent of the population and around 85 percent of the unemployed.

For those of interested in following real politics, it is these forces that should receive most of our attention and inspire all of our hopes for a new Egypt.

Carl Finamore is Machinist Local Lodge 1781 delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He was in Cairo only hours after Mubarak was deposed and visited again a few months ago for the one year anniversary. He can be reached at local1781@yahoo.com and his writings viewed on http://carlfinamore.wordpress.com/

Large settlement and code of conduct represent biggest victory yet in Focus on the Food Chain campaign to improve New York City’s food processing and distribution sector

New York, NY- After enduring a withering worker-led campaign, Flaum Appetizing, a prominent producer and distributor of hummus and other kosher food products, has accepted a global settlement which will return $577,000 in unpaid wages and other compensation to workers and subject the Brooklyn-based factory to a binding code of conduct protecting workplace rights. The victory comes after the workers’ group, Focus on the Food Chain, in partnership with Orthodox social justice organization, Uri L’Tzedek, persuaded over 120 grocery store locations in New York City to stop selling Flaum products, including its Sonny & Joe’s hummus, until workers’ rights were respected. The win is the biggest yet for Focus on the Food Chain, a joint effort of Brandworkers and the NYC Industrial Workers of the World, dedicated to creating good jobs and a sustainable food system in New York City’s food processing and distribution sector.

“More than anything, I want fellow workers in the food factories and warehouses to know that there is real power in coming together and struggling together,” said Maria Corona, a Focus on the Food Chain member and Flaum worker who had been illegally fired. “We won the respect we deserve and you can too.”

Flaum Appetizing entered 2012 hobbled by the labor dispute. In addition to getting Flaum products off grocery store shelves, workers organized rabbinical delegations and an international day of action to persuade Tnuva, the world’s largest kosher cheese brand, to discontinue its relationship with Flaum. Tnuva, owned by private equity giant Apax Partners, was distributed to New York supermarkets by Flaum and constituted a significant portion of Flaum’s revenues.

In January, the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. ruled against Flaum’s attempt to make discriminatory immigration status allegations against the workers who are from Latin America. The decision set an important precedent for immigrant workers nationwide by erecting procedural safeguards in cases involving the landmark anti-immigrant Supreme Court case, Hoffman Plastic.

“New York City’s food processing and distribution sector could help lift the economy with good jobs and provide healthy, local food with a smaller ecological footprint,” said Daniel Gross, a workers’ rights’ attorney and the executive director of Brandworkers. “Instead, the business model in this critical part of the food supply chain increasingly relies on cutting corners and exploiting immigrant workers of color. With their exemplary victory, the Flaum workers have shown that abusive workplaces in this sector can be transformed through organizing, grassroots advocacy, and litigation.”

Flaum maintained deplorable working conditions for over a decade. Workers were subjected to massive wage theft including a failure to pay overtime and at times the minimum wage, for grueling work weeks as long as eighty hours. Workers faced discrimination and abuse including anti-immigrant insults from senior management. When workers demanded payment in accordance with the law, seventeen were illegally fired. Though Flaum lost an NLRB trial over the firings, it had resisted compliance with cynical and unfounded allegations about immigration status. This global settlement resolves both the NLRB retaliation litigation and a large federal lawsuit over unpaid minimum wage and overtime.

“We are grateful to the grocery stores and Tnuva for standing up for the rule of law and supplier responsibility,” said Rabbi Ari Hart, co-founder of Uri L’Tzedek. “The Torah calls on us to fight for justice. Many rabbis and community members stood with the workers of Flaum and will continue to energetically support an ethical food system. We are pleased that Flaum has done the right thing and are heartened that it has emerged as a better company.”

New York grocery stores and restaurants are increasingly dependent on an industrial corridor of food processing factories and distribution warehouses that hold down wages and safety standards through pervasive legal violations. Wage theft, discrimination, and health & safety hazards are common in the sector which employs 35,000 workers, most of whom are recent immigrants of color.

Focus on the Food Chain challenges these unlawful conditions with grassroots organizing, worker-led campaigns, and legal actions. The campaign is working towards a food processing and distribution sector that provides good jobs and contributes to a sustainable local food system.

Brandworkers is a New York-based non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees. By training workers in social change tools and facilitating member-led workplace justice campaigns, Brandworkers promotes employer compliance with the law and challenges corporate misconduct in the community.

Founded in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World is a grassroots labor union dedicated to member-led organizing and workplace democracy.

On 8 May, around 1,000 shoe factory workers in Dongguan walked out in protest at management plans to cut their monthly bonus from the usual 500 yuan to just 100 yuan. Management refused to talk so one worker posted their grievances on his micro-blog.

China Labour Bulletin contacted the worker and posted an account of the strike on our microblog. This story was then retweeted more than 50 times within the hour and soon five reporters had gathered outside the factory gate demanding to know what was going on. They were refused entry but the very next day the management, under pressure from local government officials to make the story go away, agreed to increase the workers’ bonus to 300 yuan and the strikers returned to work.

While the international media in the last few months has been understandably focused on Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese media continues to cover the burgeoning workers’ movement in China. And this media attention itself is helping to drive the movement.

A glance at China Labour Bulletin’s new interactive strike map clearly shows how strikes have increased over the last six months, and how these disputes have expanded across different sectors and encompass a broadening range of issues. In March, for example, a sudden increase in the price of fuel led to an upsurge in strikes by bus and taxi drivers. The following month, the manufacturing sector once again took centre stage as workers protested low pay and plans by their employer to relocate, merge or downsize.

The growing number of strikes has prompted a lively debate on the key issues currently plaguing labour relations in China. The journal Collective Bargaining Research for example focused on a particularly emblematic dispute at the Korean-owned LG factory in Nanjing. The large-scale strike illustrated all the problems inherent in the current ad hoc model for resolving labour disputes in China in which an isolated incident leads to employees walking out, management panicking and threatening to sack workers unless they return to work and local government and trade union officials rushing to the scene in an effort to “maintain stability.”

The writers pointed out that labour relations at the LG factory were generally quite good and that the losses incurred on all sides as a result of the strike, including the sacking of several dozen workers, could have been avoided if a formal system of collective bargaining had been in place.

To put these recent developments in perspective, CLB published in late March a research report that shows how demographic shifts combined with economic growth and social change over the last decade have given China’s workers more bargaining power, and how a younger, better educated, more aspirational workforce that is more aware of its legal rights has learnt to use that bargaining power to its advantage. Workers are not only more confident in their ability to organize strikes and protests, they are increasingly willing to sit down with their employer and negotiate a settlement on behalf of their co-workers. Indeed, in some factories, workers have already established an embryonic system of collective bargaining.

A Decade of Change: The Workers’ Movement in China 2000-2010 is now available as a downloadable PDF.

“Caterpillar has work plans, processes, policies and people ready to be deployed in the event of any business interruption, whether it is a tornado, fire or a strike.”—Caterpillar spokesperson Rusty Dunn: April 30, 2012

Thanks for nothing, Rusty Dunn. You just equated 780 striking Caterpillar workers to a potentially disastrous tornado or fire. The strike began on May 1 with peaceful picketing by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) Lodge 851. A few days later the union called for a solidarity rally in front of the Caterpillar plant near Joliet IL.

Mr. Dunn, I was at that IAM Lodge 851 strike rally on Friday May 11. I saw a sea of a red union shirts. I heard speeches and I listened to what the striking Cat workers had to say. I walked among people who made Caterpillar a global leader in heavy construction equipment. They are builders, not wreckers. I saw anger, but not rage. I saw quiet determination, but not fury. I saw human beings who work hard and solve complex production problems everyday. They are worth every penny that Caterpillar has been paying them and more. Rusty Dunn, you owe them a heartfelt apology.

Caterpillar had been paying the Joliet area  workers at rates from $13 to $28 an hour depending upon skills and years of service. The “best and final offer” from Caterpillar management would have frozen wages for the next 6 years and allowed Caterpillar to pay market rate for new hires. This means that Caterpillar can slash wages according to its definition of “market rate.” This two-tier wage system divides older workers against younger workers and weakens the labor movement, its obvious intention.

But according to Lodge 851 President Tim O’Brien, the contract offer was so outrageously bad that the strike vote carried by an unprecedented 94%, “Normally in the past, they could buy some votes by making the contract better for younger workers or better for older workers. With this contract though … everything was takeaways.”

The workers even rejected a thinly disguised bribe of a one-time $5000 signing bonus if they would agree to Caterpillar’s demands.

The company offer allows Caterpillar to end health care for current retirees and sharply raise healthcare costs for those now working. Workers would also be subject to arbitrary scheduling so that they can never predict when they will be working. This places a great burden on workers with family responsibilities. While at the strike rally, I observed several Cat workers on their cell phones figuring out today’s complex family scheduling with its unexpected surprises and outright emergencies.

Caterpillar claims its wage, work rule and benefit cuts are necessary to stay “competitive” in the global market. Yet Cat has recently gained market share in the mining industry, especially after purchasing rival Bucyrus in 2011. North American companies are placing orders to replace aging bulldozers and excavators. Caterpillar is rushing to fill an order backlog of $30 billion dollars and some companies will have to wait until 2014 to get their new heavy equipment. As a result, Cat profits posted a  record breaking 29% increase in the first quarter of 2012.

Cat CEO Doug Oberhelman has stated that “We’re seeing strong global demand for most mining products and significant growth in replacement demand for products in the United States, which more than offset slowing in China and Brazil.” Oberhelman’s executive compensation rose nearly 60% in 2011, earning him $16.9 million in 2011.

Caterpillar is competing just fine.

It takes great skill to build hydraulic parts for a bulldozer or mining truck. The job also requires custom work and special modifications. This is the kind of work that the Joliet employees do on a day to day basis.

At the May 11 rally, a Cat employee who works as a blacksmith told me how he runs a hot forge to create individually built tools and parts. He is given a problem to solve, sits down, studies it, makes the drawings, builds what is needed and tests it. With a gleam in his eye, he told me,” Not even the foreman really understands what I do.” Another Cat worker told me about the razor thin tolerances of the parts he makes and the programming that goes into them. Many of these workers have been there for decades.

There is a genuine creativity and artistry that goes into crafting solutions to the problems given to a skilled machinist. It takes experience and a pride in one’s work that has been handed down for generations, going back to the first iron smiths of ancient times.

One cannot simply walk into Caterpillar’s Joliet facility and do these kinds of jobs. As one Cat striker told me, “I wouldn’t trust anything coming out of that plant now that we’re not in there.”

According to some accounts, Caterpillar did  2 weeks worth of hasty  strike preparations, but union president Jim O’Brien still thinks,”They never thought we would walk out. … We caught them with their pants down. The last time we had a strike at his plant was in 1985.”

Because of the technical nature of their work and Caterpillar’s backlog of orders, the machinists do have some bargaining leverage. At the strike rally, both the mayor of Joliet and the Will County executive appeared and promised to help pressure for a fair settlement. Judging by the number of truck, car and motorcycle horns that were blowing in support of the strike as drivers passed the May 11 rally, the machinists have considerable local sympathy.

But no one I talked to said that this would be an easy strike. It is unclear what pressure local politicians can bring upon a global corporation, even one based in nearby Peoria IL. Local sympathy is good for strike morale and can translate into food donations and neighborly assistance, but there is no evidence that the IAM is going beyond this level of community support. There were speeches at the rally about how their Caterpillar union brothers and sisters around the world meant that the strikers were not alone, although exactly what their brothers and sisters might do was left unsaid.

The workers of IAM Lodge 851 did not go on strike May 1 on a careless whim. They clearly believe they can win against a viciously anti-union company. During the the 1990’s Illinois labor “War Zone” when there were several industrial strikes unfolding at the same time, the UAW fought a bitter 17 month strike at multiple Caterpillar facilities that saw in-plant rallies, wildcats and creative publicity tactics. It ended with many UAW members giving up and crossing the picket lines until the UAW leadership ended the walkout. Labor historian Sharon Smith wrote about the aftermath in 1998:

Even a month later, although the contract was accepted by a 54 percent margin, significant sections of workers voted it down  including 71 percent of the Decatur local. Many Cat workers have lost homes and cars and suffered broken friendships and families as the sides hardened over the years. But this has only increased their determination to keep on fighting. “I go to work with anger every day. Most people do,”said Wayne Schmidt, who has worked almost 30 years at the Peoria plant. This was echoed by Mike Moats, who is just one year away from retirement but voted against the contract in February. ‘”I’ll fight Caterpillar till the day I die. I’d love to get my job back, but I won’t settle for this deal.”

The same UAW locals that had fought Caterpillar in the 1990’s accepted concessionary contracts in 2012 rather than risk another confrontation. Last winter, Caterpillar locked out members of the Canadian Auto Workers union when they refused to accept  pay cuts of up to 50% at Cat subsidiary Electro-Motive. Electro-Motive had received $5 million in tax breaks that Canadian PM Stephen Harper announced from the factory floor. This was before Electro-Motive was bought by Caterpillar. The work will be moved to the Muncie plant in the right-to-work state of Indiana. The move stunned Canadians across the political spectrum.

Cat workers know the company’s history. But as Cat worker Jeff Yost explains,”You can only bend people so much until people can’t take it anymore. With the big attacks on workers, like here at Caterpillar, the 99% movement and Wisconsin, everybody is starting to see that unions might have some influence after all.”

Cat workers understand that the company’s attack on them has implications beyond the plant. IAM activist Bill McCarl made this point to me when we discussed the regional impact if  Caterpillar’s offensive is successful. The smaller towns surrounding the plant like Channahon, Morris, Braidwood & even the city of Joliet will be adversely affected. Small businesses need the money that well-paid workers spend. Schools, emergency services and basic social needs depend upon their tax contribution. Mortgages need to be paid to prevent foreclosure and blight. Families will be stressed and parents will miss important family milestones because of forced overtime and arbitrary scheduling.

McCarl also pointed out that if the plant is closed, lower and middle management will also suffer as he doubts Caterpillar would transfer them.

It’s especially shameful that Caterpillar is based in Peoria IL, but has so little regard for the working people of the state. Yes, Spokesperson Rusty Dunn and CEO Doug Oberhelman, there is a destructive force reminiscent of a a fire or tornado loose inside of Caterpillar, but it’s not coming from the workers. It’s coming from Cat’s top management with its socio-pathic corporate greed.

You need to heed the words written by one of the wisest leaders to emerge from the Prairie State, a man known throughout the world for his decency and humanity.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.–President Abraham Lincoln, December 3, 1861

It’s time Caterpillar top management and stockholders showed some respect and humility before the thousands of Cat workers and their families who are the real heroes of the company.

Please send food or monetary assistance for the strikers at Caterpillar to: Local Lodge 851, 23157 S. Thomas Dillon Dr., Ste. B, Channahon, IL  60410

Bob “Bobbo” Simpson  spent many years as a history teacher on the South Side of Chicago in a working class neighborhood. He is now a social media writer based out of Oak Park Illinois. He works for WebTraxStudio which does work for unions, non-profit groups, social advocacy organizations and educational institutions.  He is also 1/2 of the Carol Simpson labor cartoon team. This post first appeared on his diary at Daily Kos, go there and recommend it.

“What’s it all about, Romney?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Romney?
Are we meant to take more than we give. . .”  ~With apologies to Burt Bacharach and Hal David who wrote the original song, “Alfie”

USW President Leo Gerard

As Mitt Romney laughs while “apologizing” for bullying a fellow high school student and mocks NASCAR fans’ plastic rain slickers, he seems unaware that he comes off as Richie Rich’s evil twin.

Part of Romney’s image problem is that he leads not as a selfless Lincolnesque statesman but as an Ayn Rand greed worshiper. Setting the standard for his campaign, Romney gave a high-profile plug to a company owned and run by major donors. His son has followed in those ethically challenged footsteps by using his campaign connections to launch a business. And a campaign adviser benefitted from illicitly leaked confidential government information.

In RomneyWorld, that’s all OK. His answer to the song’s question, “Are we meant to take more than we give,” is a resounding “YES.”  “What’s it all about?” For Romney, it’s about exploiting the 99 percent for the profit of the 1 percent. That vulture capitalist philosophy is bad enough in the business world, but it’s dead wrong for public service. As the head of his company, Romney made so much money that he squirreled it away in the Cayman Islands and secret Swiss bank accounts. But shadiness and avarice aren’t attributes Americans prize in the head of their country.

Romney’s stealth product placement occurred in December. He endorsed the business of donors Bill Heavener, CEO of Full Sail University, and C. Kevin Landry, chairman of TA Associates, the private equity firm that owns the Florida college. On at least two campaign stops, Romney specifically named and promoted Full Sail University, urging students to consider such for-profit colleges to contain the cost of higher education.

Romney didn’t mention that the price of many Full Sail programs is $40,000 a year – thirteen times that of a typical not-for-profit community college. And Romney neglected to mention that Heavener is co-chairman of the Romney fund-raising team in Florida. And that Heavener gave $45,000 and Landry $40,000 to the Romney super PAC Restore Our Future.

How hard would it have been for Romney to say: “By the way, this campaign stop brought to you by Full Sail University, a school with a spotty graduation rate whose CEO happens to love me.” That’s what ethical television anchors do when they broadcast glowing stories about companies with financial ties to station owners.

Movie producers don’t provide such advisories when they prominently place products like Coke or Wheaties in scenes. But filmmakers are selling a product, just like Coke is hawking sugary carbonated water. Little but avarice is expected of them. The likes of news broadcasters and statesmen are held to a higher standard.

When Romney models sketchy behavior, it’s no wonder those connected to his campaign engage in it. Take, for example, the way his son Tagg and his friend Spencer Zwick formed Solamere, a private equity firm. Tagg served as a senior advisor to Romney’s failed 2008 bid for the Republican nomination and Zwick was the 2008 campaign’s top fund-raiser.

After the 2008 race, Tagg and Zwick held something incredibly valuable in their hands. It was the list of Romney’s rich campaign donors. These wealthy contributors were perfect prospects for the pair in pursuit of private profit.

Tagg and Zwick could hit up the rich donors for $10 million each to launch Solamere. While deliberating investment, the rich donors would bear in mind that Romney was considered the likely Republican nominee in four years.

Tagg contends only five of the investors were donors he knew solely from his father’s contributors list. And Tagg and Zwick deny their connection to Romney prompted investors to hand over $244 million to a start-up by two people with no private equity experience.

There was no relationship between the campaign and the firm, they contend, even though Solamere was located in the same buildings as the campaign and later a Romney PAC and Zwick solicited for Solamere at the same time he solicited for the PAC.

And then there’s the case of Romney’s campaign advisor who benefitted from leaked sensitive government information.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Inspector General has determined that board member Terence F. Flynn disclosed confidential information to former board members for their private gain. One of those who got the information is Peter Schaumber, who Mitt Romney selected last September to co-chair his campaign’s labor policy advisory committee. The campaign now says Schaumber resigned in December. That’s the very month Flynn learned he was under investigation for the disclosures.

Some of the information Flynn leaked was so sensitive that, the NLRB has said, the agency would have refused to give it to Congress. The Inspector General has asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether Flynn’s releases to Schaumber violated the federal Hatch Act, which bans public officials from using government access to advance political campaigns.

“What’s it all about, Romney?” For him and those in his campaign, it’s about private gain.

The lyrics of the song “Alfie” admonish against selfishness.

That is a concept, however, that escapes Romney and his supporters. They don’t get it. They don’t understand that Americans don’t really like Richie Rich’s evil twin, his arrogant attitude of entitlement, or his belief in taking more than he gives.

Leo W. Gerard is President of the United Steelworkers and a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger