Nov 6, 2004

On the same day that the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, voted 67-45 to support Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip, the leader of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) denounced the plan as a maneuver to block and “bury the very idea” of an independent Palestinian state.

Up against sharpened threats against Cuba’s revolution and a reduced flow of U.S. dollars to Cuba, the government there has acted dramatically to move towards a dollar-free domestic economy. The goal is to prioritize dollars for use in international trade.

China: Private workplaces should be union / South Africa: Big victory for restaurant waiters / Iraq: U.S. plans prison expansion / Russia: Millions strike for pay, benefits / Korean peninsula: Demand U.S. compensation for war damage

Book Review


Exporting America:
Why Corporate Greed Is
Shipping American Jobs Overseas
By Lou Dobbs
Warner Books, 2004
Hardcover, 208 pp., $19.95

In February 2003, Ari Fleischer, then George W. Bush’s press secretary, brushed off millions of demonstrators worldwide demanding “No war for oil!” If the assault on Iraq was for cheap oil, Fleischer said, the U.S. could simply “lift the sanctions so the oil could flow. This is not about that.”

SAN FRANCISCO — As the lockout of 4,000 hotel workers by the 14-hotel Multi-Employer Group continued here, workers and their union, UNITE HERE Local 2, were encouraged by several developments:

CHICAGO (PAI) — Management demands to load $2,000 in increased health care costs on each worker each year, plus its insistence on higher workloads, forced teachers at Chicago’s city/community colleges into their first strike in 27 years.

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Lack of paid sick leave in the U.S. may force flu-ridden employees — men and women who caught the flu and didn’t get shots due to lack of vaccine — to work when they should not, the National Partnership for Women and Families says.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is paying selected Florida families who “spray or have pesticides sprayed inside your home routinely” to study their infant children, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). When agency scientists started questioning the ethics of the study, EPA removed the study protocol from its web site and distributed a short “Desk Statement” that the scientists say is misleading.

The announcement of victory spread to airports across the nation at lightning speed after the nearly 3,200 customer service representatives at America West won their union election on Aug. 17. It was the largest union election victory for workers under the Railway Labor Act in over a decade, and the largest private sector union win in the country in over five years.