Labor

WASHINGTON — Cientos de sindicalistas de descendencia asiática se reunieron en la capital para tomar parte en la novena convención de la Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), afiliada a la AFL-CIO. La convención celebrada del 19 al 22 de julio sentó las bases para una victoria en las elecciones programada para el año próximo.

OAKLAND, Calif. — As Waste Management, Inc.’s lockout of garbage workers in Alameda County communities entered its fourth week, union pickets at the company’s headquarters here were more determined than ever.

During the House and Senate debates on the Employee Free Choice Act, some of my friends got riled up by all the right-wing nuts attacking the EFCA because the Communists support it. I got a lot of e-mail from folks disturbed by the red-baiting and anti-communism. Some were indignant, and some worried that the Communist Party’s support for the EFCA was being used to taint the legislation.

DETROIT — The United Auto Workers union battled to get a new contract with Delphi and is now beginning tough negotiations with the Big Three automakers, Ford, GM and Chrysler. The Delphi contract includes the closure of 10 UAW plants, with the company keeping four in operation. Seven additional plants will be sold.

HOUSTON — Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) held a special press conference July 22 at the Christian Rescue Mission Church in the heart of the 3rd Ward, near this city’s downtown, to celebrate the first increase of the federal minimum wage in 10 years.

WASHINGTON — The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, an AFL-CIO affiliate, brought hundreds of trade unionists here July 19-22 to celebrate their struggles and to chart a path for further advances and victory for working families in the 2008 elections

BELVIDERE, Ill. — Pretend you’re an autoworker and you’re having a bad dream. In your dream it’s 2008, one year after the Big Three — GM, Chrysler and Ford — got away with murder in contract negotiations.

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.