Al Franken takes a stand pro WI unions !!

Dear Virginia,

We were all shocked by what happened in Wisconsin Wednesday night.

Eighteen Republican state senators broke faith with the people who elected them. They broke their word. They may have even broken the law.

They wanted to bust public sector unions -- the last line of defense for the rights of teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses, and other public servants -- so badly that they were willing to cheat the system.

Let’s be clear: They did this in the hopes that, with the bill passed, the crowds would dissipate and we’d let this go.

But they were wrong. We’re not going to let this go. We’re going to help the people of Wisconsin fight this bill -- and the illegal power grab it took to pass it -- every step of the way. We’re going to help them hold accountable the elected officials who sold out workers and subverted democracy.

And, most of all, we’re going to make sure that this is the end -- not the beginning -- of the right wing’s attempt to destroy the middle class. It took a power-hungry, corporate-backed governor and 18 senators with no respect for the law or the struggle of working families to bring this issue to national attention. But the fight to stand up for the middle class against corporations and the politicians they own has always been a national fight.

It’s up to us to make sure we win that fight for the working families whose voices -- whose livelihoods -- are at stake.

Thank you. And please stay tuned.

Al

Que. Wal-Mart unionists get their day in top court

Que. Wal-Mart unionists get their day in top court

SCOC agrees to consider whether retail giant broke labour laws

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service

Published: Thursday, August 07, 2008

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada will weigh in on a high-stakes dispute between retail giant Wal-Mart and former employees at a store in Jonquiere, Que., which shut down in 2005 after workers secured the right to unionize.

The closure drew attention continent-wide because Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and the Jonquiere outlet, located about three hours north of Quebec City, was one of the first in North America to be organized.

Former clerks Gaetan Plourde, Johanne Desbiens, Ingrid Ratte and Claudine Beaumont will have their day in court to argue that Wal-Mart violated labour laws in union-strong Quebec by shutting down during negotiations for an inaugural collective agreement.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer with more than two million workers, has been in and out of courts nationwide challenging union drives. The case of a store closing in Quebec after it unionized is headed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Adrian Lam/ Victoria Times Colonist

The former employees contend that they were sacked because of their union activities, which they say also violates freedom of association guarantees in the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights.

"This could have an impact on other employers who want to close their stores when employees are trying to unionize,"

said Nicolas Charron, one of the Montreal lawyers representing Plourde and Desbiens.

"It's a question of national importance that we think has not been clearly answered by the Supreme Court."

The employees are bringing their case to the Supreme Court after losing in the Quebec Court of Appeal, which concluded that the permanent closure of the Jonquiere store met the provincial labour code test of having "good and sufficient reasons" for terminating employment.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, with more than two-million employers worldwide, has been fighting unionization in various Canadian courts in recent years, but it is the first time the Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to tackle the issue.

By convention, the court gave no reasons for granting two separate applications from the workers, one from Plourde and one from Desbiens, Ratte and Beaumont. The appeals will likely be heard in 2009.

Wal-Mart has maintained that it closed the store, located in Quebec's union heartland, because it was struggling financially.

At a time when the Jonquiere store was on its death bed, the union demanded that the company hire another 30 employees as part of the first collective agreement, said Andrew Pelletier, spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. Almost 200 "associates" worked at the store when it closed in May 2005.

About six of 300 or so Canadian Wal-Marts are union certified, but none have collective agreements in place, said Pelletier. In the U.S., where the union movement is weaker, no Wal-Mart stores are unionized, he said.

Pelletier charged that the United Food and Commercial Workers union has taken advantage of "loopholes" in labour laws in some provinces, particularly Quebec, that permit unionization without a secret-ballot vote, provided enough workers have signed union cards.

A spokesman for the union could not be reached.

What's happening at Tyson Foods, Shelbyville, Tennessee

Hi All! This might be a little off topic, but I think that it is
important enough to share with the group, because it seems to be an
issue that affects everyone!

Have you heard about the debacle at the Tyson Foods plant in
Shelbyville, TN? The company's management and the union have agreed
to eliminate the Labor-Day holiday, and in it's place put a Muslim
holiday called Eid al-Fitr, which has something to do with Ramadan!

This only affects union workers at the plant. Non-union workers still
can keep their Labor Day holiday. What the heck is up with this? If
you go to the local newspaper's website, you'll see the story on
their page 1, at: http://www.t-g.com/ 

This is happening in order to
accommodate Somali workers at the plant. Now, there are conflicting
numbers of them, depending on the source. The union says there are
700 out of 1200 Somali workers, and the company says there are 250
out of 1200 Somali workers. Also, the company has provided 2 prayer
rooms for the Muslim workers at the plant, and none for any other
religious group.

This smells like the union, operating in cooperation with a multi-
national company, such as Tyson Foods, has sold out the American
workers living in Shelbyville, as well as those non-muslim workers at
the plant, in order to further the globalist agendas of its
leadership. BTW, all of them are very active in the DNC at the
national level! 

This national holiday was created in order to honor the contribution
of the American worker to the success of this country, and to their
roles in making American industry the most productive, the world has
ever seen! And the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
RWDSU), operating in cooperation with the Tyson Corporation's
management have destroyed that worker's celebration, at least for
those in Shelbyville.

This is an issue, but there is a more serious one to look at here.
How does a multinational corporation get 700 Somalis, and an unknown
number of mexican nationals (for a different shift, see the newspaper
article from the Shelbyville R/T)), approved for an H-1b workers
temporary visa, to the exclusion of the American workers who live in
that region? Does anyone else smell something rotten here? Or is that
the smell of money that Tyson saves by hiring workers who will accept
a lower wage, because anything is better than what they had before in
Somalia or Mexico! Also, here is a union, in a period of declining
union membership nationwide, able to grow its membership by helping a
company to import cheap labor that causes its membership ranks to
swell. And, just maybe we now have direct evidence that may implicate
the INS, or at least, high-level executives of that agency, in this
whole "open-border" mess. Is it possible that we have some greedy a-
holes from that agency "on-the-take" from large corporations. I
thought we were limiting Somolian immigration, because of ties to
terrorist organizations? Does anyone else smell a rat, here?

Now, I've never been a lover of unions, because of my background in
Western PA, but I am deeply offended by this on so many levels that
it is hard to keep it all straight! I think that there needs to be a
congressional investigation into this, and maybe the only person we
have left to do this might be Ron Paul from Texas. This would be a
really great opportunity for him to make his point concerning how
dangerous this whole globalization process is for the American
worker! This should scare the democrats to death, because it could
cost them the election! All the leaders of that union are pretty high
up in the DNC, as per their writings on the union's website!

I think that we should all boycott Tyson Foods, and let that company
know how much we oppose their cancellation of an national American
holiday, in favor of a non-American labor blasphemy! And, we need to
show Tyson that the American people will not stand by and watch them
import cheap foreign labor at the expense of the American worker!
Let's tell everyone we know what they are doing, and let a
groundswell of public opinion show those sob's what we think of their
globalist agenda!

Check out the union's web-site at:
http://www.rwdsu.org/ , and you'll
see what I mean about a globalist agenda. Tyson is a multi-national
company, and the union is a multi-national union, as well. If you
have any questions for me, you can contact me by e-mail at:
azsurvive111@gmail.com, or
gappgroup1@yahoogroups.com.

In the Spirit of Liberty,
tim guiney

Paul Krugman: Corporate America's War on Unions - Obama and Edwards

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times. Posted December 27, 2007.

The U.S. labor movement isn't dying a natural death: corporations and politicians are helping.

Once upon a time, back when America had a strong middle class, it also had a strong union movement.

These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated good wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often ended up being matched even by nonunion employers. They also provided an important counterbalance to the political influence of corporations and the economic elite.
Today, however, the American union movement is a shadow of its former self, except among government workers. In 1973, almost a quarter of private-sector employees were union members, but last year the figure was down to a mere 7.4 percent.

Yet unions still matter politically. And right now they're at the heart of a nasty political scuffle among Democrats. Before I get to that, however, let's talk about what happened to American labor over the last 35 years.

It's often assumed that the U.S. labor movement died a natural death, that it was made obsolete by globalization and technological change. But what really happened is that beginning in the 1970s, corporate America, which had previously had a largely cooperative relationship with unions, in effect declared war on organized labor.

Don't take my word for it; read Business Week, which published an article in 2002 titled "How Wal-Mart Keeps Unions at Bay." The article explained that "over the past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its ability to fend off labor groups." It then described the tactics -- some legal, some illegal, all involving a healthy dose of intimidation -- that Wal-Mart and other giant firms use to block organizing drives.

These hardball tactics have been enabled by a political environment that has been deeply hostile to organized labor, both because politicians favored employers' interests and because conservatives sought to weaken the Democratic Party. "We're going to crush labor as a political entity," Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist, once declared.

But the times may be changing. A newly energized progressive movement seems to be on the ascendant, and unions are a key part of that movement. Most notably, the Service Employees International Union has played a key role in pushing for health care reform. And unions will be an important force in the Democrats' favor in next year's election.

Or maybe not -- which brings us to the latest from Iowa.

Whoever receives the Democratic presidential nomination will receive labor's support in the general election. Meanwhile, however, unions are supporting favored candidates. Hillary Clinton -- who for a time seemed the clear front-runner -- has received the most union support. John Edwards, whose populist message resonates with labor, has also received considerable labor support.

But Barack Obama, though he has a solid pro-labor voting record, has not -- in part, perhaps, because his message of "a new kind of politics" that will transcend bitter partisanship doesn't make much sense to union leaders who know, from the experience of confronting corporations and their political allies head on, that partisanship isn't going away anytime soon.

O.K., that's politics. But now Mr. Obama has lashed out at Mr. Edwards because two 527s -- independent groups that are allowed to support candidates, but are legally forbidden from coordinating directly with their campaigns -- are running ads on his rival's behalf. They are, Mr. Obama says, representative of the kind of "special interests" that "have too much influence in Washington."

The thing, though, is that both of these 527s represent union groups -- in the case of the larger group, local branches of the S.E.I.U. who consider Mr. Edwards the strongest candidate on health reform. So Mr. Obama's attack raises a couple of questions.

First, does it make sense, in the current political and economic environment, for Democrats to lump unions in with corporate groups as examples of the special interests we need to stand up to?

Second, is Mr. Obama saying that if nominated, he'd be willing to run without support from labor 527s, which might be crucial to the Democrats? If not, how does he avoid having his own current words used against him by the Republican nominee?

Part of what happened here, I think, is that Mr. Obama, looking for a stick with which to beat an opponent who has lately acquired some momentum, either carelessly or cynically failed to think about how his rhetoric would affect the eventual ability of the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she is, to campaign effectively. In this sense, his latest gambit resembles his previous echoing of G.O.P. talking points on Social Security.

Beyond that, the episode illustrates what's wrong with campaigning on generalities about political transformation and trying to avoid sounding partisan.

It may be partisan to say that a 527 run by labor unions supporting health care reform isn't the same thing as a 527 run by insurance companies opposing it. But it's also the simple truth.

AlterNet is making this material available in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

MUST SEE! Absolutely! Anti Spp!

Wake up Canada!

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/downloads/Wake_up_Canada(REV).pdf

The most brilliant (and well illustrated) document I've seen to warn Canadians against the stealthy, cunning and very malicious "integration" of all 3 North American countries into a single entity that is going on right now under the radar of our democratic institutions, the media and most people.... MUST SEE!

How a major corporation intends to coopt unions: Magna

Magna opens doors to unions

Development is considered a huge win for CAW, but it's unclear yet just how it will impact Stronach's company

Nicolas Van Praet, Financial Post

Published: Friday, October 12, 2007

Magna International Inc. was once so scared of unions in Canada choking its successful business that it deliberately set up small factories and encouraged plant managers not to put company signs out front that might attract labour organizers.

Now, it is set to announce a deal with a labour group it previously spurned that will open the doors to a widespread unionization of its Canadian factories.

On Monday at Magna's headquarters in Aurora, Ont., Magna and the Canadian Auto Workers union will announce that the union will be allowed to start organizing Magna's Canadian plants, sources say.

Frank Stronach, Chairman of the Board of Magna International Inc., in the photo.

(Photo: National Post File)

A deal on American plant unionization could come later.

The development is considered a huge win for the CAW, which has seen its blue-collar membership decline as a strong loonie has claimed thousands of manufacturing jobs over the past several years.

For Magna, it is yet another major shift, coming just one month after shareholders approved a deal to let Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska buy into the business.

"This is pretty big," said Wayne Lilley, author of Magna Cum Laude, a recent biography of Magna founder Frank Stronach.

"It's certainly a departure from Magna's long-time culture and belief."

With annual sales last year of US$24-billion, the Aurora, Ont.-based auto-parts giant, founded by Frank Stronach, is one of the country's largest manufacturers without a unionized workforce.

Despite public claims by Mr. Stronach that he would not be opposed to reasonable labour representation, Magna has consistently resisted attempts by the CAW to organize its plants.

Its non-union culture is widely considered to be one of the major drivers of its growth.

One reason the CAW never broke into Magna, despite numerous attempts, is that employees were happy with Magna's deferred profit-sharing plan, recreation areas, and daycare facilities, Mr. Lilley said.

For more than a year however, Mr. Stronach has been talking about letting both the Canadian Auto Workers and the United Auto Workers unions in as a way to put aside old management-labour divisions in the North American auto industry and ensure its survival. The hope is that the newfound cooperation

could foster a new work model - and keep auto parts and auto making jobs that might otherwise move to other continents. As Dan Luria, an analyst at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center put it, Mr. Stronach "wants to be able to say he remade labour relations in North America."

Buzz Hargrove, CAW president, declined Friday to comment. Earlier this year, he said CAW representation at three Magna plants in Ontario, covering about 1,000 employees, has worked well for both sides. Seeing that success may have provoked the switch in Mr. Stronach's thinking, Mr. Hargrove said at the time. Mr. Stronach could not be reached.

Magna officials have been in talks for more than a year with labour leaders with the CAW and United Auto Workers union about further unionizing its North American workforce. The company had 21,050 employees at 70 manufacturing plants and engineering centres in Canada as of Dec. 31, 2006.

It employed 18,150 people at 72 sites in the United States, including eight plants organized by the United Auto Workers Union.

Unions like the CAW have become more pragmatic by promoting productivity and other business goals at the same time Magna has warmed up to organized labour, one analyst said yesterday.

"There have been changes in philosophy on both sides that I think made it possible," the analyst said, adding that investors will look at the development in a "very concerned" way because it potentially harms the company's long-term flexibility. On the flip side, it could help Magna win new contracts with manufacturers like General Motors Corp. because the unions have significant leverage with carmakers, the analyst said.

In a message to shareholders contained in Magna's 2006 annual report, Mr. Stronach said the biggest handicap hurting the North American auto industry is the gap between business and workers. He said North American auto manufacturers have to find a way to get greater flexibility in their costs if they want to better compete with companies in China, Korea and India, which pay workers less.

"I strongly believe that one way to achieve a more competitive cost structure would be through the development of a comprehensive 'framework of fairness' based on social economic justice," Mr. Stronach wrote, adding that such a framework would define the rights of workers and responsibilities of management, and give employees a profit-sharing plan. Workers at each Magna plant not yet unionized would still have to vote to accept representation.

Financial Post