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Commemorate the international Day of the Immigrants
6 PM Dec 18, at Oak Cliff Methodist Church, 547 E Jefferson in Dallas. Call
Hobie Hukill 214-543-4698 for info in English or Spanish.
Here is what AFl-CIO President John Sweeney said about the latest BushWhack
of immigrant workers: "The Bush Administration's last minute regulatory
changes to the H-2A agricultural guest worker program are shameful and will
hurt working families nationwide. These changes, which are now finalized, will
weaken requirements that employers engage in meaningful U.S. worker recruitment,
lower wage rates, and diminish worker protections and enforcement mechanism
for farm workers across the board."
Also Dec 18 is Dallas SweatFree Campaign meeting at 7pm at Northaven United Methodist Church in Room 239. Contact Marc Jacobson 469-835-6211 or texasfairtrade@yahoo.com. Marc also announced a state meeting of the Texas Fair Trade Coalition, www.texasfairtrade.org, for Saturday, February 28th from 1pm-5pm in Austin.
By now, it should be obvious to all that the neoconservatives in government are blocking the auto loans for one reason only: continued bloodlust against American workers. The following resolution was recently passed by the Teachers' Union in New York and might serve as a model for your own groups:
Whereas three million American workers depend directly or indirectly on GM, Ford and Chrysler for their livelihood and the well being of their families, their health care and their retirement and
Whereas, the collapse of the auto industry would not only be catastrophic for these workers and their families, but also significantly worsen the nation's economic recession, already the worst since the Great Depression, and
Whereas, a rescue of the auto industry is therefore critical
to both the stability of our economy and the survival of millions of families
and the towns and cities in which they live, and
Whereas, Senate Republicans have set up an outrageous double standard for any auto industry rescue, making draconian demands for labor concessions from the United Auto Workers (UAW) the condition of any rescue while the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry came with no conditions whatsoever: and
Whereas, labor costs make up only 10% of the cost of making a care and the Big Three's business woes are not caused by the middle-classes wages, benefits and job security that union representation has secured for autoworkers: and
Whereas, forcing additional concessions from auto workers would not help the automakers fix the problems that have led them to the brink of collapse, and the call for concessions is blatantly an attempt to further weaken the UAW in particular and industrial unionism in general;
Whereas, the real agenda behind the call for UAW concessions and the breaking of UAW contracts is to drive down the wages, benefits and working conditions of American workers; and
Whereas, this goal is as economically shortsighted as it is morally bankrupt, considering threat that current economic crisis was caused by the staggering debt of working families unable to make ends meet on the declining wages of American jobs; therefore be it
Resolved, that we condemn the neoconservatives' shameless effort
to use the auto industry's crisis as a weapon to bludgeon American workers even
further by weakening their unions and squeezing their wages.
**
Whatever else you do on January 1st, DO NOT, forget to eat your black-eyed peas!
Gene