Labor

Iraq is rich with a variety of natural resources, in the forefront of which is the enormous oil wealth, that is the real nerve centre of the political and economic life of both Iraq and the world.

It’s summer. The warm sun means you can put on shorts, pack your stuff and head off for a stretch at the beach, in the woods or at a resort hotel or maybe plan to have your cake and eat it too in a European café. Or can you?

Privatization, a strategy to eliminate public control over vital sectors of the economy, is nothing new. What is new, and perhaps more ominous, is that privatization has become the preferred method by which the Bush administration neoconservatives and transnational global corporations take over and occupy whole countries.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of Americans who are really too sick to work trudge off to their jobs, in spite of their fevers, sore throats, headaches, sprains and strains. Hundreds of thousands of children, after receiving a dose of Tylenol or Motrin, are sent off to day care or school with similar ailments, when they should be home under the watchful eye of a parent.

OAKLAND, Calif. — As Waste Management of Alameda County’s lockout of nearly 500 union drivers entered its third week, mountains of garbage continued to grow in many parts of Oakland and neighboring communities. Solidarity with the members of Teamsters Local 70 continued to grow as well.

DETROIT — Meeting in the heart of Motor City, a historic center of autoworkers and the African American working class, the NAACP placed ending racism and inequality and strengthening labor/Black unity high on the agenda of its 98th annual convention.

If this is a democratic country, then how do you explain the fact that 80 percent of the people oppose this war and yet more and more troops are sent? I’ll tell you why, from a working-class perspective. When you wake up and go to work, where you spend most of the waking hours of your life, you move into a democracy-free zone.

OAKLAND, Calif. — As leftovers from July 4 barbecues festered in the hot summer sun, locked-out workers were on the picket line at garbage giant Waste Management here and in other San Francisco Bay Area communities this week.

LOS ANGELES — On the heels of a fare increase for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority comes a strike by coach operators for the neighboring Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). The drivers are represented by Teamsters Local 952.

OAKLAND, Calif. — The blue T-shirts of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports were everywhere, proclaiming that port truck drivers, area union members, neighborhood residents and environmental activists are united to win decent pay and conditions for the drivers and a healthful environment for the Port of Oakland’s workers and neighbors.