n September 15, the Swedish parliament opened again after a long summer break. In the mean time, 2,500 people gathered in Stockholm to protest the government’s right-wing policies. The main slogan was: ”We won’t pay for the capitalist crisis”. The protest against the right-wing coalition government is a yearly event since 2007. Read more here.
Archive for category Workers' Struggles
Across University of California (UC) campuses, thousands came out in protest against proposed furloughs for teachers, job reductions for campus workers, and a staggering 30% increase in tuition costs for students. School administration and government officials blamed budget shortfalls; however, that did not stop the protests from expanding not only across all the UC campuses but to other California-based universities as well.
Sights set on Steel City
Sep 26
A week of demonstrations, of teach-ins, and of marches is currently underway in the city of Pittsburgh ahead of the G-20 summit set to take place beginning on September 24. In just a few days, some of the most influential people in the world – finance ministers made up from the world’s leading economies, the governor of the European Central Bank, representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and others – will wrangle with each other over how to effectively “handle” the fallout caused by the capitalist crisis. Despite how the G-20 seeks to portray itself, it is – like every other convention of the ruling elite – quite literally a battleground where rival capitalist powers engage one another to see if they can weaken their foreign competitors and, thus, strengthen their own class of capitalists through a variety of protectionist trade measures, interest rate cuts, and deficit spending.
A report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the economic recession is going to get worse before it gets better. Some economists predict that anywhere between 2 -3 million jobs or more may be lost by the end of 2009 alone. The magnitude of job losses that took place since the end of 2007 was, as many experts confirm, the sharpest since the beginning of the post-war era. Last year the United States lost a total of approximately 3 million jobs – the largest annual figures on record.
After a decade and a half of struggle, the workers at the Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina won their right to union representation. Steven Greenhouse from the New York Times notes that the United Food and Commercial Workers [UFCW], after failed unionization drives in 1994 and 1997, won the support of the workers with a margin of 162 votes in favor of unionization. It is, without a doubt, a highly significant victory for the working class from the southeastern region of the United States and for working men and women of the country as a whole. With typically low levels of unionization relative to the rest of the United States, the workers from North Carolina set a precedent for the entire southeastern region to emulate.
In an act of bravery and heroics, around 250 workers from Republic Windows and Doors occupied a Chicago factory after they were told, as recently as three days ago, of its closing. Rupa Shenoy, a writer for the Associated Press, explained that the workers, upon hearing of the impending closure, voted overwhelmingly to occupy the plant until they receive the severance and vacation pay they say is owed to them.
In an attempt to secure Federal monies to aid the rapidly deteriorating American auto industry, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), Ron Gettelfinger, announced to the media that the UAW is willing to make major contractual concessions to management. These included the suspension of the “jobs bank” program, the delay of $7 billion from General Motors paid into the Health Care Trust, the slashing of 30,000 more jobs over the coming years, and the closure of another 9 factories in North America.
If recent financial news was not bad enough, now the “Big Three” American car manufacturers face bankruptcy, so they say, if Congress does not distribute $25 billion of the $700 billion financial bailout to General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler, LLC. General Motors warned that if they do not receive funds soon, they will not be able to fund their operating costs. The company [General Motors] ended the third quarter with about $16 billion on hand, but it needs $11 billion to $14 billion to continue normal operations. It burned through $7 billion in the third quarter. Congressional Democrats favor a proposed auto bailout in order to prop up the shaky industry. They face growing opposition, however, from Congressional Republicans who adhere more to “free-market” principles. Richard Shelby (R-Ala) suggested that the Big Three’s financial straits are not the product of our current economic downturn but instead are the legacy of the uncompetitive structure of their manufacturing and labor force. According to Shelby, their current economic problems were caused by the United Auto Workers (UAW). In other words, it was not the capitalist system which caused the downfall of the Big Three, it was workers who demanded too much money!