Labor

By David Swanson

Walking through Charlottesville, Va., today I saw a sight that is increasingly common in the United States: men in prison uniforms, watched by guards, out working in public, in this case shoveling snow. I asked them if they were being paid for their work, and they just laughed.

A short while later I ran into a city official who was clearly familiar with the prisoner snow-shoveling program. He told me it was nothing new, part of "work release," gave the prisoners a chance to get outside, and that the prisoners were paid.

I pointed out that when asked if they were paid they laughed at me.

Then this official explained that he meant they were paid about 25 cents an hour.

Every election cycle, the labor movement alone dumps enough money into the corporate media through the campaigns and PACs that it could have instead created a new television network that would actually report the news all year long through every future election cycle.  Rather than threatening to possibly not succeed in persuading working people to vote for corporate candidates, Trumka should threaten to defund the corporate media election bonanza and give us real news.

By David Swanson

The evidence is clear that there is nothing Congress can do to produce fewer jobs than borrowing money and spending it on wars and the military. Even cutting taxes produces more jobs. Investing in nonviolent industries, in education, in energy, in transportation, in infrastructure produces more jobs and does more for the economy.

But my representative, Tom Perriello, said in an Email today:

I supported the Defense Appropriations Bill, which also included three of my requests for companies in the 5th District that will create jobs in the important areas of defense technology and intelligence. While working to enhance our national security, these companies in Martinsville, Buckingham County, and Danville will also have the opportunity to provide skilled, good-paying jobs to local residents.

This is one step forward and three steps back, while funding the slaughter of human beings in distant lands, and Perriello knows it.

By David Swanson

"If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I've been fighting for it in the Senate and that's why I'll make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States." --Barack Obama

Washington, DC: On Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter (http://tr.im/CQCf) to an internet provider threatening legal action if it did not shut down the Yes Men parody website, (http://tr.im/CQCu) because the website falsely portrays the Chamber’s position on global warming. However, in its letter, the Chamber falsely inflated its membership by 1,000 percent and falsely alleged copyright infringement. http://tr.im/CQFu The Yes Men lawyers strongly opposed this take-down demand and the site remains up at www.chamber-of-commerce.us.

By David Swanson

The US Chamber of Commerce blew a mere $39 million on lobbying in Washington in the past three months. Lobbying for the promotion of global warming, the denial of healthcare, the further deregulation (if possible) of the financial "industry", blockage of the right to unionize, the lowering and elimination of minimum wage laws, maintenance of tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, and protection of the "right" of corporations to bribe politicians. Money well spent: all minority positions, all adhered to by our government.

The Fight for Higher Minimum Wage
CNN Financial: CNN Money Morning
April 3, 2002
Guest: David Swanson
Host: David Haffenreffer

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNNfn ANCHOR, MONEY MORNING: Most Americans would agree that the national minimum wage of $5.15 an hour isn't really a living wage. But more individual cities and counties are joining a living wage movement. And joining us now with more on all this is David Swanson . He is with an advocacy group for lower income Americans known as ACORN. Welcome to the program.

DAVID SWANSON, ACORN: Thank you.

By David Swanson

Ohio may be trailing Michigan and a few other states in official unemployment statistics, but in all of these states the truth is worse than we're told, and it's visible. Unemployment rates do not include those who've given up looking for work, those with an insufficient part-time job, those who have figured out that they would pay more for childcare than they would earn working, those in prison, or those working for less than a living wage.

By David Swanson

Cultures isolated from modernity have tended not to engage in anything resembling what we call work. When we began inventing modern time-saving devices and increasing productivity in our factories (and, yes, exploiting other peoples to do the factory work) we were always told we'd be able to work less -- often by people who clearly imagined there were limits to human greed and cruelty.

Book Can Now Be Ordered, Book Tour Being Planned

You can now pre-order my book at Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook

It's a thick book containing everything I know - and then some - for $10 (pre-order discount price).  And you can support a good cause by pre-ordering it now.

You can also call or visit your local bookstore right now and ask them to be sure to stock the book.

If you're in California, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, or Ohio please see below.  I'm only coming once to any given state, so please schedule more events for the times I will be in yours! Please don't ask me later why I didn't come to your town!

If you're in another state, please contact me re dates in 2010. -- David Swanson

By David Swanson

I think the peace movement and every justice movement in the United States should simply overwhelm Congress members during the next two months with one and only one demand: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act in January. This is, of course, the bill that the labor movement has been trying to pass for years, and that Democrats in Congress and President Elect Obama have committed to making law: http://aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca

By David Swanson

According to news reports, president elect Obama is considering for Labor Secretary three people who actually know something about labor and actually support the intended mission of the labor department, which is protecting the rights of laborers. And by laborers, I mean you. If you have not recently received a government bailout, you're one of us. Here's the short list:

By David Swanson

Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.

CLICK FOR PDF.

By David Swanson

John Bowe's terrific new book called "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy" takes the reader on a journey ending in the question I've placed above this essay.

By David Swanson

Live Blogging Progressive Caucus Hearing on Economy

January 16, 2008 - I'm in the Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room, and it's much fuller than it has been in the past for some recent Congressional Progressive Caucus events. That's encouraging. But the few Congress Members who were here at the start of the event have left to go vote. Other than the Caucus Co-Chairs Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, who offered opening remarks, I only noticed Sheila Jackson Lee here briefly.

By David Swanson

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn

By David Swanson

The Spring 2006 issue of Ms. Magazine contains an article by Rebecca Clarren about some beautiful tropical islands described by disgraced House Majority Leader Tom Delay as "a perfect petri dish of capitalism." What's so perfect about Saipan and the other 13 Northern Mariana Islands? Primarily this: items produced there can carry the label "Made in USA" and be sold in the U.S. without tariffs or quotas, but the scandalously low U.S. minimum wage does not apply, and the pathetically minimal rights of immigrants and workers in the U.S. do not apply. There are no labor unions. Any worker can be terminated and deported at any time for no cause.

By David Swanson

April 22, 2006 -- The first sentence of the top article in the only daily newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia, today contains a remarkable analysis of the living wage movement: "The president of the University of Virginia on Friday acknowledged that students fighting for better pay for university workers have a valid case for change, calling the debate "revolutionary" in its shifting of the poverty burden from government to the private sector."