By Stan Johnson
USW International Secretary-Treasurer
This holiday season, the USW Rapid Response department would like to acknowledge the countless Steelworkers engaging in critical legislative fights and those who are struggling to keep their jobs or survive unemployment.
In addition, the department would like to show appreciation to all those who are currently making great sacrifices to be the counterweight against greed and corporate excess, particularly USW members who are on strike and those who have been left jobless after being locked out by their employers.
The following members on strike or locked out in the U.S. are standing firm for good jobs this holiday season. They’re supporting us all and holding the line for the middle class:
* 1,050 members of Local 207L illegally locked out by Cooper Tire & Rubber
* 82 members of Local 354 illegally locked out by National Gypsum
* 4 members of Local 1693 on strike at Clayton & Lambert Manufacturing Co.
* 179 members of Local 748L on strike at Omnova Solutions Inc.
* 53 members of Local 6966 illegally locked out by Hofmann Industries and HI-Products
* 216 members of Local 285L illegally locked out by Armstrong World Industries Inc.
* Members of both Local 5000 and 9443 are fighting for their rightful jobs after being permanently replaced during strikes that have recently ended.
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As Secretary-Treasurer, Stan Johnson oversees the finances of the USW. A former rubber worker, Mr. Johnson also chairs the Rubber and Plastics Industry Conference, participating in major bargaining. He chairs the International Paper Conference and co-chairs the Georgia Pacific Council and the MeadWestvaco Council. He is chairman of three union pension funds and participates as a trustee on a fourth. In addition, Mr. Johnson heads the Rapid Response program, the union’s award-winning grassroots legislative initiative, and also directs its grassroots political mobilization program.
By Fred Redmond
USW International Vice President for Human Affairs
Americans need jobs and America needs work. But corporations are not investing their $2.5 trillion in profits in the US. Consumers don’t have money or are too scared to spend it. President Obama promised to do what corporations won’t and consumers can’t. However, it won’t happen if Congress is not effectively pressured to pass the President’s bill. This is a job for organized labor.
I am no longer surprised when an otherwise intelligent individual asserts that “Unions had a role to play in the past, but we don’t need them anymore.” Has human nature changed? Did the captains of industry suddenly overcome their greedy natures?
Even capitalism’s champion Adam Smith was a realist on the nature of capitalists: “The workmen desire to get as much, the [employers] to give as little as possible…It is not however difficult to foresee which of the two must, upon all ordinary occasions, have advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.” (more…)
Leo Hindery Jr.
Chairman, U.S. Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation
America is facing a catastrophic jobs crisis. Not since the Great Depression has official unemployment hovered above nine percent – where it is today – for more than 20 months. Millions of American have given up looking for a job altogether. Even worse, real unemployment is more than 18%. Yet Washington overall has obviously yet to embrace a large-scale job creation agenda. Even if we reach consensus around the deficit – the only economic issue even getting any attention these days – it will do little to help the 29 million Americans who are unemployed in real terms. If we do not seriously tackle jobs, our country may never regain its competitive global edge.
We recently co-chaired a Task Force on Job Creation, seeking real solutions to the jobs crisis plaguing our country. This group of policy makers, economists, business and labor leaders developed a series of 15 immediate recommendations for reversing the crisis, outlined in a new report, “Vision for Economic Renewal: An American Jobs Agenda.” We found there are six vital policy areas that our government must address in order to create millions more jobs now: manufacturing, trade and globalization, U.S.-China trade, the infrastructure crisis, jobs in the green economy, and youth unemployment.
Washington is often a city of Chicken Littles, which makes ringing the alarm bell difficult. But once Washington wakes up from its deficit hangover, politicians will realize something that most Americans have known for months: The sky has already fallen.
Here’s what we can and need to do:
Manufacturing
America’s manufacturing sector must be a cornerstone of the nation’s economy and thus one of the essential drivers of the recovery we are still searching for. Yet manufacturing remains in a decades-long free fall, with, like most other sectors, stagnant wages for more than a decade. In just three years, our manufacturing sector has lost over 2.5 million jobs, and over the last decade, we’ve lost more than 6 million. The continuing decline of manufacturing will limit job growth and jeopardize our national standing. Industries that were once great contributors to our country – auto manufacturing, shipbuilding and machine tools fabrication – are barely shadows of what they once were. Meanwhile, jobs in other leading manufacturing sectors, like aerospace, are being offshored every day. (more…)
By Thomas M. Conway
USW International Vice President
Yesterday, July 7th 2011, the Republican leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee outlined a six-year surface transportation bill that would destroy millions of jobs across the country. The brief sixteen page document fails to address America’s infrastructure needs and instead will leave workers at the side of the road holding “work wanted” signs.
At a time when the nation’s unemployment rate hovers at nine percent, significant investment in our country’s roads and bridges is critical. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. road infrastructure a “D” grade with good reason as 72,868 U.S. bridges are categorized as structurally deficient and 89,024 bridges are categorized as functionally obsolete. The plan outlined by Republican leadership will further weaken our crumbling infrastructure by cutting essential funding by a staggering one-third and putting an estimated 490,000 jobs in 2012 alone in jeopardy.
The United Steelworkers (USW) has long advocated for direct investment of our country’s infrastructure to get men and women to work and home more efficiently and safely. Strong Buy American provisions put not just construction workers back to work, but sustains jobs in steel, pipe, cable and paper mills, plus concrete, glass, rubber, aluminum and other manufacturing plants that need infrastructure investment to keep producing. Infrastructure investment is also dependent on energy resources that USW-represented workers produce and distribute. (more…)
By Gary Beevers
USW International Vice President for Oil Bargaining
A little after midnight on Good Friday last year a heat exchanger on a naphtha hydrotreater unit at the Tesoro oil refinery in Anacortes, Washington catastrophically failed. The unit exploded, setting off a blast that shook homes five miles away and igniting a fire that could be seen anywhere in Anacortes. Three oil workers died in the blast; four others died at the hospital from injuries sustained in the accident.
The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) said the explosion was preventable. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) reported that Tesoro failed to adequately maintain the nearly 40-year-old heat exchanger and that microscopic cracks had built up, making a rupture possible.
Companies need to “make the investments necessary to ensure safe operations,” said CSB Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso to the press. “Companies that continue to invest in safety and recognize its importance will reap benefits far into the future.”
L&I Director Judy Shurke told reporters “The bottom line is that this incident, this explosion and these deaths were preventable,” as she cited the company for 44 safety violations and issued a record $2.39 million fine. (Tesoro is appealing the fine.)
The Anacortes explosion was certainly not the only accident in the oil sector last year. In just the months of April and May there were 13 fires, 19 deaths and 25 injuries in the oil industry. That includes, of course, the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and created one of the most devastating ecological disasters in history.
Our union has been working for years to pressure oil refiners to fix serious hazards and take real steps to improve refinery safety. We’ve suggested standards for reporting incidents at refineries to improve transparency and we’ve proposed standards to address fatigue and eliminate excessive overtime caused by companies not replacing a worker assigned to another job duty.
Our members have raised safety issues on the refinery floor, we’ve worked closely with fence line communities that are concerned with refinery safety, and we’ve taken these safety issues to Congress. Now it’s time for investors to weigh in on refinery safety because it impacts the bottom line.
This year, in collaboration with the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund, our union is presenting shareholder proposals at four major refining companies—Marathon, Valero, Tesoro, and ConocoPhillips. Our proposal calls on each company to:
“Prepare a report, within ninety days of the 2011 annual meeting of stockholders, at reasonable cost and excluding proprietary and personal information, on the steps the Company has taken to reduce the risk of accidents. The report should describe the Board’s oversight of process safety management, staffing levels, inspection and maintenance of refineries and other equipment.”
Marathon, Valero, Tesoro and ConocoPhillips opposed our resolution. After seven workers were killed, Tesoro said it was committed to safety so a report on their performance wasn’t necessary. Valero said it was already disclosing numbers on its total reportable incident rate (TRIR) so information on process safety, staffing, and inspection and maintenance was unnecessary. Valero also said that publishing a report would be too expensive.
Refining companies usually don’t mind providing the public with data on reportable injuries. The problem is that information provides a deceptive picture of refinery safety. BP’s Texas City Refinery posted an incredibly low reportable injury rate just before the 2005 explosion that killed 17 people and led to the biggest fines in OSHA history. Simply put, reporting slips, trips and falls doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not an explosion is likely to happen.
It’s exactly this type of failed logic that led Transocean to give its executives ”safety bonuses” for turning in the company’s ”best year” in safety in 2010. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission management actually said “…we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate. As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”
“Okay that’s just crazy. You gave yourselves a safety bonus because statistically the Deepwater Horizon explosion, killing 11 people and pumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast counts the same as Bob cut his hand on a bolt—it’s just one incident.”
The real information that we need to know — whether or not a refinery is running safely — is the information we asked for in our shareholder resolution: the Board’s oversight of process safety management, staffing levels, and inspection and maintenance of refineries and other equipment. To know whether or not there’s a risk of a deadly explosion, we need to know whether or not people at the top level of the company are directly involved in process safety; we need to know how much overtime people are working and what the risk of fatigue is; and we need to know whether or not the company is inspecting and maintaining its refineries.
I honestly don’t know if the bankers and billionaire stockowners care about whether or not oil workers die. But I do know that they care about making money. And blowing up refineries is bad for business. Not only do these accidents lead to months of downtime and cause insurance rates to go through the roof, they’re also bad for the public perception of our industry and drive down investor confidence.
So whether they’re doing it to save lives or just to protect their investments it’s time for investors to weigh in on refinery safety. Their profits, and our lives, depend on it.
***
Gary Beevers brought to the table extensive experience negotiating with major oil companies when the USW International Executive Board chose him to take charge of the union’s National Oil Bargaining program. After Beevers held numerous positions with his local union, the president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) appointed him in 1987 to serve an international representative covering workers in the oil, chemical and paper industries as well the public sector. After OCAW and the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) merged for form the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy (PACE) workers union, Beevers was elected in 2003 as vice president and regional director of PACE Region Six. Following the PACE-USW merger, he became director of USW District 13.
By Jon Geenen
International Vice President, United Steelworkers
By now anyone who had not yet heard of the Koch brothers has been introduced to them. Every major newspaper and magazine has run an article about the brothers who until recently lived largely under the radar while advancing a political vision via political action committees and think tanks funded by their fortunes.
In the advent of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, journalists and others have made a clear connection between the Koch brothers and their role and influence in the advancement of the agenda of the far political right. Indeed, it is important, in fact essential, that Americans know who is driving the agenda and what the agenda is about, although the Citizens United decision and federal law allow the Koch brothers and other wealthy funders of the far right to donate in secret.
The groups that generally operate in the middle and to the left of the center of the political spectrum who identify themselves as moderate, progressives, trade unionists and other like-minded people are outraged by this dirty little secret. It has led to a progressive uprising in some areas, with protests that are said to eclipse the anti-war protests of the 1960s. These groups have also launched various efforts to pressure the financiers and architects of this agenda into rethinking their positions.
Therein lies at least one problem.
A number of organizations are advocating a boycott of the products that come from companies owned by the Koch family. This is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it could potentially hurt the wrong people.
The Koch brothers own Georgia Pacific. It is an American consumer goods company that makes everyday products like facial tissue, napkins, paper towels, paper cups and the like. Their plants are great examples of American advanced manufacturing. Incidentally,
GP makes most of its products here in America. The company’s workforce is highly unionized. In fact, 80 percent of its mills are under contract with one or more labor union. It is not inaccurate to say that these are among the best-paid manufacturing jobs in America.
This presents a dilemma and a paradox. While the Koch brothers are credited with advocating an agenda and groups that are clearly hostile to labor and labor’s agenda, the brothers’ company in practice and in general has positive and productive collective bargaining relationships with its unions.
While some companies are running from investment in American jobs, The Koch brothers’ Georgia Pacific just reached agreements with its primary union in the paper industry to invest more than a half a billion dollars in capital to essentially create two state-of-the-art machines that conserve fiber and energy at two separate union mills.
While certainly there are disagreements from time to time on what the right pension program is, or right wage increases and incentives, or the right formula for health care cost sharing, ultimately we end up with negotiated solutions.
So the problem for the advocates of a boycott against Koch is that it can only marginally hurt Koch, and the workers who are the epitome of what advanced manufacturing jobs in the United States ought to look like, would be the first casualties of a boycott. Of course, this will eventually drive a wedge between groups that are otherwise in political alignment.
If consumers pick alternate products (because people will still use toilet paper), in many cases, the substitute will be from a company with a track record that is much less friendly to the values of the workers who would, as a result of the boycott, become the collateral damage. The Koch brothers’ lifestyle will not dramatically change; there are no shareholders that will become concerned; the company is privately owned. The stock won’t plummet either — there is none.
To be sure, I personally have grave concerns about the agenda and influence being wielded by private wealth into our political system. Who doesn’t? I too agree that the Koch brothers are an ideal example of a very broken system. They undoubtedly know that many see them as pariahs, and undoubtedly they don’t care — no more than I care if someone attaches a label to me for my political views.
So the question is: Can you hurt the Koch brothers through this kind of boycott? Or are you inadvertently becoming the bully that is kicking the Koch dog. There is no doubt that the events in my home state of Wisconsin and elsewhere have become an ignition point for action, and thank God that they have.
Arguably we have been rescued from the social hospice overseeing our demise. It is fair to keep the Koch brothers at the center of the debate. There have been fewer clear examples in our lifetime of the corruption of our system. If “Citizens United” gave corporations First Amendment rights, then too it gives them First Amendment responsibility and accountability. It is fair to find a way to make the Koch brothers responsible for promoting an agenda that ultimately hurts workers, but we should not make union workers collateral damage in this contest with Koch.
***
Jon Geenen is responsible for USW paper bargaining. He began his career in 1977 as an industrial apprentice at the International Paper mill in Kaukauna, Wis. There he joined Local 20 of the United Paperworkers International Union (PACE) and served as bargaining committee chair, vice president and president. During the nine-year period he was active in his local, he assisted in the development of the union’s IP strategic bargaining program. After he was appointed to an international representative position for a Pace region in 1993, Mr. Geenen serviced numerous paper facilities and organized workers at CBC Coating in Appleton, Wis. and Stora Enso in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. From 2003 to 2005, Mr. Geenen served as the national director of paper bargaining and head of the PACE Rapid Response Education Network. He helped set in motion coordinated bargaining within the paper industry and organized the first National Paper Bargaining conference in 2004. After the merger of PACE and the USW, the USW executive board appointed him to serve as Region 2 Director in July of 2005.
Not the wars. Not greenhouse gasses. Not even the deficit. The issue most important to Americans is jobs.
Despite that, jobs failed to make an appearance in the State of the Union address.
The talk was all about business. Business was doing better. Business needed taxpayers to help pay for research and innovation. Business will get government help to eliminate pesky regulations. Business must have lower taxes.
The most telling statement was this:
“We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business.”
Especially because it wasn’t matched by a companion:
“We have to make America the best place on Earth to work.”
The speech expressed a policy in which business is the focus of government, taking precedence over workers. The American colonists created a government for their own benefit; they did not constitute an agent to serve business. A policy giving corporations primacy is risky for American workers.
The state of the union noted that happy days are here again for corporations and banks:
“Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.”
The state of the union outlined a plan under which the government will coddle corporations, essentially proving companies government welfare using American workers’ tax dollars. If businesses create jobs for workers as a result, fine. If they don’t, there’s no plan to exact a penalty.
For example, under the policy described in the speech, American workers will fork over tax dollars to pay for research and development for businesses that are sitting on a record $1.8 trillion in cash reserves — hoarding it rather than creating jobs.
The president said:
“Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology — an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”
Maybe it will create new jobs. Hopefully. But no guarantees were offered. Mentioned as a business success story in the speech was a Michigan company, Luma Resources, which began manufacturing solar shingles with the help of a $500,000 government grant. It created 20 jobs, $25,000 a job. American taxpayers might think that’s a little pricey, but what’s worse is the potential for Luma Resources to go the way of Evergreen Solar, squandering the corporate welfare.
Evergreen, the third largest maker of solar panels in the U.S. and recipient of at least $43 million in corporate welfare, announced earlier this month it would close its main American factory in Massachusetts and move manufacturing to China. Eight hundred Americans will lose their Evergreen jobs by April.
Evergreen officials said China will give the company even higher amounts of corporate welfare, which, of course, makes sense since China is not a capitalist country. Its economy is government controlled. And that government routinely violates international trade regulations – by providing banned subsidies to industries and by deliberately devaluing its currency.
No matter how better educated American workers get. No matter how much more innovative. No matter how much more productive. No matter how many tax dollars the government spends on research and development, if the corporations that benefit move manufacturing overseas, the American workers who paid for it will suffer.
In fact, it’s more than suffering; it’s betrayal by their government that provided tax benefits to companies for off-shoring jobs. It is betrayal by their government that fails to stop violations of trade laws by countries like China that lure away firms like Evergreen.
At the end of the State of the Union speech, the president said:
“From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream.”
An ordinary American dreams of a family-supporting job, owning a home, saving enough to pay for a child’s college education, helping to build a safe community. Corporations aren’t Americans, no matter how often the U.S. Supreme Court grants them rights that the U.S. Constitution guarantees to human beings. Businesses aren’t citizens. Their allegiance isn’t to America. It’s to profits. They dream only of dollars. They concede no responsibility to family, community or country.
They were not included when the president said:
“Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political preference. We are part of the American family.”
The top priority of the American government must be making America the best place on Earth for Americans. If that’s good for corporations, great. The government must never place American citizens second.
***
Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, 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.
Earlier this month, a former member of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) wrote to the USW blog to complain that now, six years after UPIU, and its successor, PACE, joined the United Steelworkers union, he would have to begin paying the same rate of dues as other steelworkers have been paying all along. USW District 2 Director Michael Bolton responded to this member from Michigan, and his letter is published below.
Dear Brother;
In response to your email regarding the final phase of the merger agreement, which includes dues going to the full USW rate as all other Steelworkers are paying:
Not only would I like to thank you for taking the time to write, but I also want to provide a response to your comments. It is disturbing to read that after having identified yourself as a lifelong union member, you would encourage new hires to work as scabs, or without a union – the very opposite of what your union has stood for. Being union is not about how much you pay in dues, it is more about a personal philosophy, about who you are; and, moreover, where you stand with your coworkers and the middle class. I am surprised that you are willing to abandon who you have been for 43 years because of a disagreement over what the right amount of union dues are.
Our dues formula is not at all out of line with that of other activist unions. In terms of how frugally we spend the members’ money, our union does more and leads the movement by example – and for that, we will not apologize because our members have decided that they wanted a fighting union. That is why PACE decided to merge with the Steelworkers in 2005. The PACE Union was given a six-year transition period to prepare for the USW dues structure while having access to all the benefits of the USW.
Our union doesn’t merely show up to fight for a better collective bargaining agreement that comes around once every three or four years. We fight every day in every venue to protect our members. For example, there is no union that has entered and won more fights to put a halt to the off-shoring of American Workers’ jobs than the USW. There has not been a month that has gone by since the 1990’s when we haven’t been in the middle of a trade case protecting USW members’ jobs, or preparing the next attack to protect American workers’ jobs. (more…)
Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter.
The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.” Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in her bedroom.
Words have consequences.
Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate torment, with predatory viciousness. Drew eluded accountability the same way conservatives are seeking to evade culpability after their irresponsible speech has provoked the delusional to violence.
It’s hard to draw a line directly from Drew’s cruel words to the noose around Miss Meier’s neck. Similarly, it’s difficult to directly link violent political rhetoric like Sarah Palin’s illustration showing gun sight cross hairs on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district to the shattering of Giffords’ office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March or Jared L. Loughner’s shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded.
What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening communication that becomes so repetitive that it’s routine has the effect of sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.
Conservatives are yammering that they’re not the only ones who engage in brutal rhetoric. That’s true. But in a contest for production of violent words and images, Republicans would, to use their words, “kill” the Democrats.
The Department of Homeland Security concluded in an April 2009 internal report that right-wing extremism, with a growing potential for violence, was on the rise. That was followed last spring by Capitol security officials reporting a tripling of threats against members of Congress – almost all from opponents of health care reform – in other words, from Republicans, right-wingers or people influenced by GOP TV and radio front men like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, who personally profit from the hostile climate they generate.
They didn’t stop though they had fair warning about the consequences. Consider the case of Byron Williams. He launched a 12-minute shoot out with California Highway Patrol officers last July after they stopped him for erratic driving. A police affidavit filed the following day said Williams intended to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at The Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”
The Right has for decades slammed the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to protect constitutional rights, but Glenn Beck had made the Tides Foundation, once an obscure progressive organization, famous by attacking it repeatedly – at least 29 times between January and the July shoot out last year, including two tirades the week before Williams began his assassination mission.
Williams, who was armed during the shootout with a handgun, shotgun, rifle and body armor, said he watched FOX News to see Beck, who blew his mind, and who he viewed as a “schoolteacher.”
Still Beck, expressed no remorse and tried to squirm out of any responsibility for inciting Williams, saying on his show:
“I am the only one that has mentioned the Tides Foundation. . . So that’s what they’re using. This guy couldn’t have found this out on his own; it had to come from me. . .America, if you don’t think that they will use anything, they will. They absolutely will.”
Words do have consequences, Mr. Beck, no matter how many times you cravenly shout denials.
The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives insisted on reading the U.S. Constitution on the opening day of the new Congressional session. It was, however, nothing but political theatre because conservatives disassociate the rights it grants from the incumbent responsibilities. Right-wing leaders like Beck disavow responsibility altogether.
When it was Arizona Rep. Giffords’s turn to read, the chamber had come upon the First Amendment, which guarantees, among other things, the right to free speech. It even guarantees Republican Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl the right to go on television the day after the shootings and contend that Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik didn’t have the right to speak about the complicity in the crime of vile, hateful and threatening political speech.
The courts have established the “crowded theater” test to determine when free speech ends and responsibility begins. Americans are responsible to refrain from yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when, in fact, there are no flames. The freedom to yell ends at the point when it endangers others.
Republicans are recklessly yelling. During the fall campaign, Arizona Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle suggested her supporters consider their Second Amendment rights if Sen. Harry Reid were re-elected. Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman said at a Tea Party rally on July 4, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and then was hired by new GOP Congressman Allen West to serve as chief of staff. Tea Party contender Jesse Kelly held a fund raiser in June asking his supporters to “get on target to . . . remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” by shooting a “fully automatic M16” with him.
Republicans bear responsibility for the consequences of this kind of brutal discourse – a political atmosphere charged with violence. Just like Glenn Beck, though, Republicans guard their rights, but shirk the concomitant responsibilities.
***
Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, 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.
Real men, real human beings, with feelings and families, fought and died at Gettysburg to preserve the Union, to ensure, as their president, Abraham Lincoln, would say later, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Perversely, afterwards, non-humans commandeered the constitutional amendment intended to protect the rights of former slaves. Corporations wrested from the U.S. Supreme Court a decision based on the 14th Amendment asserting that corporations are people with rights to be upheld by the government – but with no counterbalancing human responsibilities to the republic. No duty to fight or die in war, for example. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court expanded those rights – ruling that corporations have a First Amendment free speech right to surreptitiously spend unlimited money on political campaigns.
Today, Lincoln would have to say America’s got a government of the people by the corporations, for the corporations.
The proposed trade agreement with South Korea illustrates corporate control of government for profit. It’s the same with efforts to revive the moribund trade schemes former President George W. Bush also negotiated with Panama and Colombia, the world’s most dangerous country by far for trade unionists, with 2,700 assassinated with impunity in the past two decades, 38 slain so far this year.
Nobody likes these trade deals – except corporations. They’re all modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), both of which killed American jobs while giving corporations new authority to sue governments (read: taxpayers) for regulations – like environmental standards – that corporations contend interfere with their right to make money.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the South Korea so-called Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would cost America 159,000 jobs and enlarge its trade deficit by $16.7 billion in its first seven years.
Americans, now suffering though corporate-caused 9.6 percent unemployment, know a deal when they see one – and the South Korea FTA is not one. In a September poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 53 percent of Americans said so-called free trade agreements have injured the country. Only 17 percent said those trade schemes benefited the United States. Disgust with these deals spans party lines, including Tea Partiers, 61 percent of whom said they’re bad for America.
Many politicians, particularly Democrats, abhor the schemes as well. In July, just after President Obama announced that he would try to get the South Korea pact passed, 110 House Democrats described their disdain for the deal:
“We oppose specific provisions of the agreement in the financial services, investment, and labor chapters, because they benefit multi-national corporations at the expense of small businesses and workers.”
In addition, during this fall’s midterm election campaign, 205 candidates, Republican and Democrat, ran on platforms condemning job off-shoring and unfair trade, and house Democrats who ran on fair trade were three times as likely to survive the GOP “shellacking” as Democrats who supported so-called free trade schemes.
Significantly, the South Korean public and some South Korean politicians also oppose the trade proposal. In the week leading up to the G-20 meetings in Seoul, trade unionists, farmers, peasants and students filled the streets in marches and candle light vigils to express outrage with the proposed agreement, including its provisions giving U.S. corporations the right to challenge South Korean laws in private tribunals.
In October, 35 South Korean lawmakers joined 20 U.S. Representatives in writing President Obama and Korean President Lee Myunk-bak to protest the proposal.
They were wrong. It wasn’t a setback for Obama. It was the president refusing to sign a bad deal for American workers.
It was, however, a humiliation for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which just spent at least $50 million from secret corporate donors to elect Republicans who will do its bidding. The South Korea deal is a priority for the Chamber. Here’s what Chamber senior vice president for international affairs Myron Brilliant told the New York Times after the South Korean negotiations broke down and Obama pledged to attempt to complete the deal over the following six weeks:
“This will be an early test for this president with the new Congress, particularly the House leadership.”
The “Brilliant” test is whether the president of the United States will comply with Chamber demands to complete trade deals that kill jobs and that Americans despise.
When Obama went to Seoul, Chamber President Thomas J. Donohue was there to, as he put it, help win the trade deal. He also was among 120 executives given exclusive access to international leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev in a conference before the G-20 meeting.
The international organizers didn’t invite to the trade talks or the conference the students, farmers, environmental groups, organized labor and untold millions of individuals who oppose the so-called free trade deals. The human beings who will be hurt most by the trade deals didn’t get a seat at the table. The corporate-people who stand to gain everything did.
Brilliant’s comments express the corporate sense of entitlement. They spent tens of millions to get what they wanted from politicians to increase profits. Now they expect it to be delivered. It’s their recompense, their corporate reward.
If fatter profits mean fewer American jobs and wider trade deficits, that’s simply not a problem for corporations. That’s among the perks corporations got when the Supreme Court awarded them the privileges of personhood in America but none of the pesky personal and patriotic responsibilities of actual people in American society.
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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, 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.
