Aug 30, 2003

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is going to put the unfair treatment of Haitian asylum-seekers on the national agenda, said Winie Cantave, co-director of the Miami-based Unite for Dignity. According to Cantave, hundreds of Haitian refugees, including entire families with small children, have been kept in indefinite detention after being apprehended on Florida’s shores.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Ironworker Ray Trujillo is on a mission: to reach every union family in California and convince them to vote “no” on the recall of Gov. Gray Davis Oct. 7.

Sitting at breakfast with a couple of union buddies, talking about the California recall, we recalled defeating the 1998 effort to gag labor’s voice in our state known as Prop. 226.

Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, has issued a statement charging the Israeli government is responsible for the new round of violence in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. The group said, “The renewed cycle of bloodshed has begun with the decision of the Israeli political and military echelons to implement – in the middle of the Hudna (cease-fire) – a series of ‘targeted liquidations,’ knowing full well that that act would lead to retaliation bombings and to the breaking of the Hudna.”

Cuba: Trade pacts signed with Alabama / Iraq: Int’l union federation condemns attack on UN / Liberia: UN says humanitarian crisis continues / Czech Republic: New political crisis looms

DETROIT – Thirty thousand retired steelworkers from bankrupt National Steel are seeing their worst nightmare become reality after a bankruptcy judge ruled earlier this month that they are no longer eligible for health care coverage.

DETROIT – “We want a living wage!” shouted 100 people conducting an informational picket line and rally at the Cintas industrial laundry plant here July 31. The line included workers from the plant, members of United Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) Local 129. The Detroit facility is one of the few organized Cintas facilities in the country.

People Before Profits
Wall Street seeks it. George W. Bush is eyeing it. The managements of Bethlehem Steel and LTV have done it. Those of United and Northwest Airlines are pushing it. Japanese insurers are doing it. France’s government is pressing it and Germany’s is calling for it. Italy’s is flirting with it. The occupation forces in Iraq are implementing it. The counterrevolutionary governments of former Soviet republics have done it. Turkey and Argentina’s masses have already suffered it.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – As picket lines went up at Yale University and its affiliated hospital Aug. 27, striking workers were electrified by the news that eight union retirees had occupied the university’s investment offices. Denied food, water and bathroom facilities for five hours by Yale police, the retirees – all in their seventies – held their ground, protesting poverty-level pensions. They were joined overnight by Rev. Jesse Jackson and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees President John Wilhelm, with union members standing vigil outside.

At a June 13 New York forum titled “Ending the safety net as we know it? Assessing the new federal block grant proposals,” leaders of the Community Service Society (CSS) and the Brookings Institution tackled probably the most important issue facing health, social welfare, and economic policymakers (and average citizens) of our time: the role of the federal government in administering health and social welfare programs.