https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7mnM0QthoQ&ab_channel=PeoplesDispatch
Monday, April 5, 2021
Amazon's SHOCKING Culture of FEAR Harms Efforts to Unionize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5GJHxAXnQ&ab_channel=StatusCoup
Sunday, April 4, 2021
As US continues New Cold War, Russia and China forge new ties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4uotsKHuNQ&ab_channel=TheGrayzone
US mass murder in Syria; China, Uighurs, and new cold war; Ukraine crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtzgHRHxQU&ab_channel=TheGrayzone
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN ALEX SAAB CASE
By Jose Manuel Blanco Diaz (Red Radio VE), Orinoco Tribune.
April 2, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/new-developments-in-alex-saab-case/
The plot around the kidnapping of the Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab in Cape Verde peaks, intensifies and continues to be a trending topic on Twitter, while the United States government relentlessly applies pressure to bring the diplomat to its territory.
Meanwhile, social media networks again reflect opinions about the case—#EEUUCompraCaboVerde was a trending topic in Venezuela this Wednesday, March 31. This, with respect to the most recent movements of Washington through a policy that, in general, is based on blackmail and financial suffocation.
The complaints about new agreements signed between the US government and Cape Verdean authorities have been portrayed as the conversion of that island country of Africa into a new “Colombia.” All this occurs in reference to the political and military interference of the White House.
In this regard, the government of Cape Verde itself reported on the recent signing of a memorandum with the United States. With the document, both parties pledged to promote common defense and security interests based on “shared democratic values.”
The Conviction Against Alex Saab
Another of the curiosities of the Biden administration regarding the persecution that the US government itself undertook against the Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, was revealed in decisions announced by Washington that do not make their intention clear.
For example, this Wednesday, March 31, the United States Department of the Treasury decided to withdraw the sanctions that Donald Trump issued, before handing over the presidency, on a group of companies allegedly linked to Alex Saab under the name of Di Alessandro Bazzoni.
Likewise, the measure comes a few days after courts in Switzerland desisted in continuing their investigation of Saab, because there was no evidence that the official committed any irregularity.
However, although everything indicates that the alleged accusations against Alex Saab continue to fall, the Venezuelan citizen remains kidnapped in Cape Verde with the pending threat of a very probable extradition to the United States.
In this new phase, questions are raised about the impact that the new memorandum with the African nation will have. It opens the doors for the United States to determine who can be singled out as allegedly guilty of “organized crime, money laundering or financing of terrorism,” something that the Alex Saab case has shown can mean any regular person.
CITING UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES, 1,300 STEELWORKERS STRIKE IN FIVE STATES
By C.M. Lewis, In These Times.
April 2, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/citing-unfair-labor-practices-1300-steelworkers-strike-in-five-states/
United Steelworkers Members Claim Allegheny Technologies Incorporated Is Refusing To Provide Essential Bargaining Information.
Brackenridge, PA – At 7:00 AM on Tuesday, March 30, 1,300 Steelworkers employed by Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (ATI) walked out in protest at facilities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The strike comes just over a year after United Steelworkers began negotiations with ATI. According to a statement released that day, the union is dissatisfied with company demands for “major economic and contract language concessions.”
United Steelworkers further claims that ATI has committed unfair labor practices. A charge filed with the National Labor Relations Board on March 9 alleges that the company is refusing to furnish the union with essential bargaining information. As USW International Vice President David McCall tells it, this withholding finally pushed the workers to strike.
“We are willing to meet with management all day, every day. But ATI needs to engage with us to resolve the outstanding issues,” McCall says. “We will continue to bargain in good faith, and we strongly urge ATI to start doing the same.
Healthcare is among the biggest points of contention in the negotiations. While the company maintains that their proposals continue a “premium-free plan,” a union bargaining update contends that out-of-pocket costs are up. Workers are also balking at a company plan to assign coverage to workers hired after 2024, which they say will give new employees inferior, more expensive coverage and thus introduce a “two-tiered system.”
Plant closures have been another topic of heated debate. Andy Artman, President of USW 1138 – 6 and an electrician at ATI’s Latrobe facility, says he had to relocate after ATI’s Bagdad plant in Gilpin, PA, shuttered in 2016. And he has company. Michael Barchesky, who has worked in electrical maintenance at the Latrobe facility since 2007, claims he knows people who have had to move two or three times because of facility closures. With the company pushing for more — including the Waterbury facility in Connecticut, the Louisville facility in Ohio, and a production line in Brackenridge — the union is fighting to ensure that workers forced into retirement will keep the pensions they’ve earned.
For rank-and-file workers like Joe Clark, an overhead crane operator at the Brackenridge facility, a work stoppage is his chance to draw a line in the sand after years of compromise.
“When we were first contracted to put this [hot rolling mill] in [at Brackenridge], they asked us for concessions because they wanted to create jobs that were going to be for us and for our families in the future,” says Clark. “It was supposed to guarantee more jobs for the community, so we sacrificed.”
The company spent $1.5 billion to expand and update the Brackenridge facility, aided by a controversial economic development strategy known as “Keystone Opportunity Zones.” The long-term tax abatements awarded to these zones were supposed to create jobs, but a 2015 piece written by then-President of the USW, Leo Gerard, argues they have never materially benefitted local residents. Bill Hrivnak, who Gerard quotes in the piece, says that “[Everyone] thought when they built a $1 billion plant here that it would be great for the community, and it hasn’t been.”
“They cut two thirds of the same department we work in now,” he continues. “The [new] jobs never appeared, the technology cut [existing] jobs, and we continued to work without raises, sacrificing. They’re always telling us the company is in a difficult position, and they’re not making money. But they’re paying out millions of dollars to their CEOs and their upper-level people.”
Workers are skeptical about the company’s claimed hardship. “You look at what we’re getting compensated and what the CEOs are getting compensated, it doesn’t really add up,” says Barchevsky.
Although it expects to rebound in 2021, recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal ATI has lost money each of the last three quarters. The same report finds that the company has “reduced company-wide employment levels by approximately 1,400 people, or about 17% of our total workforce.”
Many of those layoffs have been union jobs. Before a 2015 labor dispute that led to a lockout, workers say there were approximately 2,200 bargaining unit employees. Now there are just 1300, with management proposing to close more plants and make further cuts.
Artman puts things bluntly: “They’re trying to break the union.” Clark agrees, describing management as a “tyranny of evil men.” For its part, ATI released a statement on social media saying that it was “disappointed USW elected to strike.”
Fortunately for the USW, the Brackenridge community is on its side.
“Everyone’s still supportive,” says Barchesky. “They still wave, they still come and talk to us. Nobody wants to go on strike. We didn’t get compensated for the last seven months we were locked out, but we can’t lay down and take another beating… we can’t let them just keep gutting us.”
1,100 MINE WORKERS IN ALABAMA ARE GOING ON STRIKE
By Sou Mi, Left Voice.
April 2, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/1100-mine-workers-in-alabama-are-going-on-strike/
After The Failure Of Contract Negotiations, 1,100 Mineworkers In West Alabama With United Mine Workers Are Going On Strike Against Warrior Met Coal.
Over 1,100 workers at two Alabama coal mines and related facilities will go on strike starting Thursday, April 1, at 10:30 pm. United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) issued the strike notice against Warrior Met Coal on behalf of the workers in the company’s two coal mines and related facilities after negotiations over the latest contract failed.
The last contract was negotiated in 2016, as Warrior Met Coal was bringing the company out of the bankruptcy caused by its erstwhile owner, Walter Energy. As the union’s press release details, it was on the backs of the labor and sacrifice of their workers that the company turned itself around. Since then, the company has raked in millions in profits.
Coal mined by Warrior Met is used for steel production in Asia, Europe, and South America. The company reported a loss of $35 million in 2020, compared to a net income of $302 million in 2019. Citing uncertainty due to the pandemic, it has not released any financial guidance for the current year. Yet, as UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts says, the company has rewarded upper management with bonuses of up to $35,000 in recent weeks.
To no one’s surprise, the company continues to do this by squeezing their workers. In addition to the strike notice, the UMWA has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over Warrior Met’s conduct during negotiations.
All Eyes On Alabama
This strike comes days after a historic unionization drive concluded at an Amazon fulfillment facility in Bessemer, only a few dozen miles away. Cheered on by the community, 5,800 Amazon workers voted on whether or not to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). As we now wait for the ballots to be counted, there are new rumblings not too far away among the ranks of labor.
From Hunts Point, to Bessemer, to the coal mines of West Alabama, workers are increasingly realizing that they are the ones who are essential — not the bosses. This comes in the midst of a pandemic that has disproportionately hurt the working class. While they put their lives on the line, reporting to work to produce everything necessary to keep the wheels of society running, the bosses sat at home, in all their comfort, raking in profits. The bourgeoisie has had little to offer to the working class. Beyond some well-placed ads and symbolic crumbs, the ruling class continues to act in their self-interest, hoarding the profits generated from looting workers of the fruits of their labor. This isn’t a question of moral failure — capitalism is functioning exactly designed.
But workers aren’t just waking up to the injustices of the bosses, but also to the immense power that the working class holds. Not only do workers create the millions that their bosses pocket —- they also have the power to shut everything down. As Marcos, a worker at Hunts Point Market says, “A lot of the guys died with me here [on the job]. We kept this place open…While the bosses were home, I was here working for them. They got money, they got millions. They didn’t share it with us. We deserve more.” It is this anger that is spreading its roots across the country and now holds ground in the mines of West Alabama. After decades of defeats, faced with compounding crises, the U.S. working class is slowly beginning to rear its head again.
That these incidents are emerging in the South is particularly telling. Bourgeois media would have us believe that the Southern worker is conservative and reactionary. Indeed, Southern states continue to have some of the lowest union densities. At 8 percent, Alabama’s union density is lower than the national average of 10.8 percent. But what this belies is the region’s deep and rich history of multiracial labor militancy, particularly in Alabama. As Michael Goldfield notes in The Southern Key, “what made Alabama exceptional was that in the 1940s it was the most unionized state in the South. Union membership had increased from approximately 70,000 in 1933 to over 200,000 in 1945, over 25% of the labor force in that year.” Alabama had a higher union density — 25 percent — than in any state in the United States today. Bound in interracial unions, Black and white workers fought alongside each other through the turn of the 20th century against Jim Crow era laws and, later, against segregation.
It is a history that the UMWA itself has long been an essential part of. As Goldfield further writes,
The Alabama labor movement was centered in the Birmingham area, the stronghold of the United Mine Workers, who had already shown their strength in 1928 by leading a coalition that successfully abolished convict labor in the state. The roughly 23,000 unionized coal miners in Alabama were clearly the vanguard of the labor movement, aiding in the organization of all other workers across the state in the 1930s, including steel workers, wood workers, textile workers, school teachers, and even principals in one county.
In this vanguard role, through the 30s and 40s, mineworkers with the UMWA agitated and organized to unionize Alabama “wall to wall,” across all industries, giving material support and solidarity to these efforts.
Alabama’s combative unionism was eventually weakened and defeated in the McCarthy Era by the bosses, who used the police and the KKK to repress workers. They further divided workers by inflaming racism and anti-communism. Through the next decades serving as junior partners to the bourgeois regime, union bureaucracies steered unions towards business unionism: the union became a service that workers received for better wages, conditions and job protection, as opposed to a tool of self-organization for the working class. To rebuild the militant history that workers in the South belong to, rank-and-file workers have to reclaim unions from this misleadership and transform them into fighting organizations — ones that they can use to win both economic and political rights.
Today, the South continues to light the spark for the U.S. labor movement. From the West Virginia teachers’ strike of 2018 that began a strike wave among education workers in the United States, or the ongoing Amazon unionization drive in Bessemer, Alabama, Southern labor continues to show the way. To take lessons of the past and to fight with the full power of the organized working class, against the injustices of the bosses, and for better conditions and life, we now look to the miners of West Alabama.
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