American Axle and the 2008 elections

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12940/1/420/

Author: John Rummel

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/25/08 15:43

Commentary

The workers at American Axle are doing all they can. Their cause is just, they are united in battle and unions from all over are coming to this plant on the Detroit-Hamtramck border to lend support. For seven weeks now, 3,650 workers have been on strike, resisting a very profitable company’s efforts to drastically reduce their wages (by as much as 50 percent) and benefits. However, the balance of forces in this fight is anything but even and they sure could use some help from high places.

Autoworkers are fighting two enemies at once: the company and a far-right Republican government in Washington whose agenda is to make workers suffer and sacrifice for corporate profits. While Democrats are not without blame, the lion’s share of the mess we’re in rests with the Republican Party.

Of all the wrongs to make right in the November elections, those faced by labor should be put on a fast track. For 30 years, the Republican right wing has hit hard at the trade union movement —Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers was just the beginning.

The scales of justice have been so tilted toward employers they have almost fallen over. Just think about what has taken place: Tax laws that reward companies for moving production out of the country. A National Labor Relations Board that should be called the National Corporate Get-Rid-of-Your-Union Relations Board. An Occupational Safety and Health Administration that has reduced staff and closed its eyes to dangerous work conditions. Free trade agreements that have made it easy for companies to set up production all over the world, worsened poverty and inequality in every country where they have been implemented and led to a massive loss of jobs here in the United States.

In this political climate workers are supposed to feel lucky just to be working and have no right complaining about corporate salaries and the halving of their wages and benefits. “We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world and we have the right to do so,” said American Axle CEO Dick Dauch. Work for what I say or I’ll give your job to someone else, he’s saying.

Workers can win under such conditions, but why should it be so difficult? Isn’t it about time to send the Republicans packing?

In addition to the unity and solidarity being shown on the picket line, labor needs a Democratic landslide in the November elections — a landslide that sends a message to the next president and Congress that relief for working people is needed, and a landslide that will give labor the leverage to stop and even reverse the corporate attack.

The AFL-CIO’s “McCain Revealed” campaign shows him to be no friend of labor. His voting record is dismal. He’s voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act, voted to give Bush “fast track” authority on free trade legislation and voted to block a bill to protect overtime rights. McCain continues to be a strong supporter of the Iraq war and there is no way the needs of working people are going to be met while we’re spending three trillion dollars on the war. In other words, a McCain victory will be a continuation of Bush’s policies.

On most issues facing labor, Senators Obama and Clinton have both pledged policies opposite from McCain’s. A huge anti-McCain vote in November will be a defeat for the far-right and at the same time strengthen the hand of labor, the whole working class, women and youth. A big turnout by autoworkers in November will make battles on the picket line a lot easier.



John Rummel (jrummel@pww.org) is a Michigan correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

May Day 2008

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12942/1/420/

Author: PWW Editorial Board

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/25/08 16:06

Workers of the world unite! That visionary call, issued 160 years ago, is being answered today in new and powerful ways.

As capital has gone global, using workers around the world as pawns in the transnational corporate profit grab, labor unions are going global too. They are forming unprecedented international alliances to fight the global assault on wages, benefits, living standards and worker rights.

• The United Auto Workers and France’s metalworkers federation (FTM-CGT) are developing a joint strategy for organizing at employers they have in common. They have agreed to share information and assist each other.

UAW Vice President and Organizing Director Terry Thurman said, “We are very pleased to work with our French brothers and sisters. … The corporations cross national borders for their self-interest, and our unions need to do the same thing.”

FTM-CGT includes the shipbuilding, aircraft and rail, electrical and electronic, mechanical equipment, metal, agricultural machinery, jewelry making and automobile industries.

• Earlier this month, the Communications Workers of America and Germany’s largest union, Ver.di, launched the first union ever to represent workers in both the U.S. and Europe. The new union, called T-Union, will support T-Mobile workers trying to win collective bargaining rights in the U.S. and other countries. It will also represent German union members who work for T-Mobile in the U.S.

• Last year, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement with Britain’s largest manufacturing union, Amicus, and the British Transport and General Workers’ Union to move toward a merger. Amicus and the T&G have since joined into one mighty union with 2.1 million members, called, appropriately, Unite.

• The AFL-CIO has just formed a new partnership with Enlace — a network of 21 worker centers, unions and organizing groups representing approximately 300,000 low-wage workers in the U.S. and Mexico — to work together to promote and enforce worker rights in the two countries.

All this indicates that labor is beginning to step onto the global stage as the advocate for the world’s people. It gives every reason for optimism as we celebrate May Day, the international workers’ holiday.

U.S., Korean workers: ‘Free trade’ pact spurs race to bottom

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12938/1/420/

Author: Dan Margolis

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/25/08 15:36

Despite strong resistance from labor and civic organizations in both the United States and South Korea, President Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to push through the stalled Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).

When Lee met with Bush April 18 at Camp David, according to Lee’s spokesperson, the two presidents chatted “like old friends,” and pledged that their countries’ legislatures would ratify the agreement.

Lee’s right-wing Grand National Party now dominates South Korea’s Parliament, so ratification there is likely, though there is a strong upsurge of grassroots protest. But U.S. ratification is much less likely. Contrary to Bush’s statements, Democrats in Congress, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are generally opposed to the agreement.

“The only trade agreements I believe in are ones that put workers first,” Sen. Obama told members of the United Auto Workers in November. “Because trade deals aren’t good for the American people if they aren’t good for working people. That’s why I opposed CAFTA. That’s why I oppose the South Korea Free Trade Agreement.”

Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, enthusiastically supports the agreement.

A recent statement issued jointly by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win in the U.S. and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions says, “The KORUS FTA is based on an economic model that has privileged investor rights over workers’ rights, public services and the environment.”

The joint statement continues, “It is clear that this model will permit restructuring and provoke a ‘race to the bottom’ on working standards in both countries, resulting in the deterioration of wages and working standards.”

If passed, KORUS will be the largest free trade agreement signed by the U.S. after NAFTA. Negotiations on it began in February 2006 and concluded last year. Ratification has been stalled by major protests, especially by labor and farmers’ groups, in both countries.

The Korean Alliance against KORUS FTA, which represents more than 300 Korean organizations, including labor, farmers’ groups and nongovernmental organizations, and hundreds of thousands of people, made clear their concerns in a 2007 report to the U.S. Congress.

The report charged the agreement would limit Koreans’ access to medicines and decrease Korean agricultural production by 45 percent, “meaning that roughly half of South Korea’s farmers will lose their livelihoods.” Further, implementation would diminish Korean authority to regulate water use and energy and even education. The alliance also expressed concern about harmful effects on Korean environmental policies.

Many Koreans, including progressives in the south and North Korean leaders, also fear that the agreement is a way for U.S. imperialist interests to strengthen their reach over the whole peninsula.

For American workers, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in April 2007 when the agreement was concluded, KORUS would “exacerbate and accelerate the loss of good jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector, especially in autos, apparel and electronics.”

South Korean President Lee represents the ultra-right Grand National Party, which has its roots in the dictatorship that ended in the 1980s. After years of liberal rule, the GNP won the presidential vote last December and the parliamentary vote this April, when it trounced the liberal United Democratic Party. The GNP won a majority of the 299-member legislature, while the UDP won only about 80 seats, in an election that commentators said was characterized, more than anything else, by widespread demoralization.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions says the reason for the ascendancy of the GNP was that, while most people agreed with the liberal UDP’s rapprochement with North Korea, the liberals weren’t able to address the growing rich/poor divide in South Korea.

What’s more, former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun was an original drafter of the KORUS agreement.

Consequently, facing a choice between a pro-KORUS liberal party that had lost the support of labor, the ultra-right GNP and a disunited left opposition, most South Koreans sat out the April vote, pushing voter turnout down to 46 percent, the lowest in South Korea’s history.

dmargolis@ pww.org

China and Africa: A Different Relationship?

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/6782/

By Norman Markowitz

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click here for related stories: Imperialism/Globalization

4-24-08, 11:23 am No region of the world was so devastated by both commercial and industrial capitalism and the imperialisms they fostered than Africa. From the 16th to the 19th century, Africa was robbed of tens of millions of its people for the slave trade that European and later North American states used to enrich themselves by developing much of the Western Hemisphere with human chattel. This was followed by colonial empires which looted Africa of its natural resources and also condemned tens of millions of Africans to forced labor in mines and on plantations to pay feudal taxes that were imposed on them. “Africa Arises," chapter six of Gerald Horne’s fine new book, Blows against Empire, looks at a different relationship between Africa and a new world power, the Peoples Republic of China. Along with a huge rise in trade relations and Chinese investments, China is working with Africans to build roads, to assist Ethiopia in constructing the continent’s largest dam, to aid Nigeria in developing a communications satellite system, and to introduce life saving anti-malarial drugs in Uganda. While some critics may argue that the Chinese are doing what the European and U.S. colonial powers have done in the past, Chinese investments in projects to facilitate their gathering of resources, clearly aid African development in a direct way. Horne looks at the positive role that China is playing in the Congo. By contrast, the U.S. through the CIA subverted the anti-colonial peoples revolution led by Patrice Lumumba at the end of the 1950s. CIA operatives and assisted in Lumumba’s murder and installed as its major African “asset” the brutal and corrupt Joseph Mobuto, whose dictatorship lasted three decades and was considered as one of the worst in the world. Horne is not uncritical of China’s past support in the 1970s of adventurist and elements in Africa as part of its anti-Soviet stance and its subsequent “strategic alliance” with the U.S. But, whereas U.S. and European states hypocritically pose as defenders of “democracy” against governments like that of Zimbabwe (Horne reminds readers that it was China which supported Robert Mugabe in the 1970s against political rivals who had Soviet support), China has continued to develop economic relations with various African states that are helping Africans raise their standards of living and improve their overall quality of life. The U.S. is not the only nation by any means involved in neo colonial activities in Africa. France. A large colonial power in Africa until the post WWII era, in a more direct way than the U.S. has its firms and “expatriates” working with local “allies” to control oil, bauxite, and other important resources. French military power is also around in a direct way to back up its firms. But Horne suggests that the “relative decline of U.S. imperialism – the locomotive of world imperialism – may be so significant that it will be unable to arrest the rise of Africa in league with China.” Horne is at his best in this chapter in untangling the complex geopolitical manipulations of U.S. imperialism in Africa, from its continuing attempts to create a dangerous new Africa Command (AFRICOM) for the U.S. military on the continent to advance its imperialist interests, to its struggles to control oil resources to its attempts to undermine Chinese relationships with African nations in a wide variety of ways. Horne also follows the money, showing how predatory “lenders” including U.S. GOP backers “buy up the debt of impoverished African countries from pennies and then force those countries to “renegotiate” under constitutions which give deepen their poverty and provide the ‘lenders’ with super profits. He also shows how U.S. based pharmaceuticals have sought to deny HIV and other life saving drugs to poor African nations, where these diseases are epidemics, in order to retain their profit margins in the developed countries. Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization and the IMF continue to put the squeeze on African nations as they do on Latin American and other nations, limiting social sector development in education and other areas in order to foster “free markets” and “fiscal responsibility” (neo colonialism in what is a fairly crude form). Finally, American based big agribusiness firms are exploiting African land and in effect increasing hunger among its peoples. All of this open plunder should make the critics of Chinese policy in Africa, along with those who selectively criticize the “human rights” abuses of some African states, take pause. Whatever contradictions may exist in China’s policy in Africa(which one might say is clearly one is seeking to develop resources for its own industries) its Communist leadership and revolutionary anti-imperialist traditions have kept it from engaging in the crude forms of exploitation that have characterized the Euro-American states for five centuries. Horne concludes optimistically that the role of China in Africa along with possible role of India (which has, as a legacy of British imperialism, its own Diaspora on the continent) and the global Diaspora created by slavery and colonialism, especially the large African-American community, offers hope for both African liberation and global victories against U.S. imperialism. Whether that, “the coming together of progressive Africans transnationally,” which Horne also sees as “a vindication of (W.E.B.) Du Bois vision” will occur remains unclear. But that it can occur and that all anti-imperialists should struggle to make it occur, not only for Africans but for Americans and all the world’s peoples, is clear.

Some background about Tibet

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12898/1/419/

Over a month after Tibetan protesters launched demonstrations demanding independence, news reports and opinion pieces continue to appear daily. Many discuss issues of sovereignty, development and relations among nationalities. Others focus on responses, including protests and counter-protests over the Olympic torch relay, or calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics.

For many Americans with varying political views, Tibet is inextricably linked with Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, living in exile in India, is seen as a leader for spiritual enlightenment and world peace. Most in our country, however, know little about Tibet’s political and economic history.

In “Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth” (January 2007), political analyst and author Michael Parenti pointed out that before the 1949 Chinese revolution, Tibet was an abysmally backward feudal society. Most arable land was still owned by rich secular landlords or wealthy lamas (Buddist spiritual teachers), while most rural Tibetans were serfs, bound to the land, every aspect of their lives controlled by overlords who often tortured, mutilated and sexually abused them.

While Parenti and other observers are critical of many aspects of development since then, it is generally agreed that the life of ordinary Tibetans has improved greatly, both economically and socially.

Former U.N. Under Secretary General and Indian civil servant C.V. Narasimhan, writing in The Hindu’s magazine, Frontline, in December 2000, called Tibet’s agrarian economy “still poor by any standard, but … a considerable improvement over the last four decades. Education is taking off, although Tibet has still a long way to go. Religious freedom has been guaranteed, as indeed over all of China.”

Narasimhan added that India cannot support claims to an independent Tibet since it recognizes by treaty that Tibet is an integral part of China. Others have noted that the Dalai Lama himself calls for greater autonomy, not total independence.

Some 95 percent of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is Tibetan, and over 90 percent speak Tibetan as their first language. Many ethnic Tibetans also live in other parts of China, including Qinghai and Gansu provinces.

Writing in The Hindu in 2004, correspondent Amit Baruah said the income of the average Tibetan farmer living in the TAR has risen as much as sevenfold since the 1960s. Ninety percent of children are in elementary school, and life expectancy has risen to 67 years from 35 during that period.

Writing last week in Foreign Policy in Focus, Ross Gearllach , an analyst at the Institiue for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, pointed out that the recent protests have not focused on government or army facilities, but instead have targeted businesses owned by Han Chinese.

“The ability of the average ethnic Tibetan to provide for his or her family is hampered by the same inflation and difficulties procuring services that plague the rest of China,” wrote Gearllach. “However, their attempts to do so are further exacerbated by the economic and social discrimination they suffer as a result of government industrialization policies. Beijing’s policy of bringing in settlers from the east to run the new machinery, most of them Han Chinese, makes it increasingly difficult for Tibetans to pursue their traditional lifestyles.”

Much has been said about the history of Tibet’s relation to China. In “Tibet: An Inalienable Part of China,” first published in the German Communist monthly Red Fox and reprinted in the Australian newspaper, The Guardian, Rolf Berthold noted that the Chinese Republic’s first provisional president, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, proclaimed in his inaugural address that the Han, Manchu, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans were unified in one state. The republic’s constitution said Tibet was part of China. Tibetan local government representatives participated in forming the Kuomintang government, and it in turn confirmed the Dalai Lama and had representatives in Tibet.

Given the widespread U.S. efforts to undermine and subvert the socialist countries following World War II, it should be no surprise that Washington has had a hand in developments regarding Tibet. It is generally acknowledged that in the period leading to the 1959 uprising, and continuing at least until 1973 when U.S.-China diplomatic relations were re-established, the CIA funded opposition movements there. The National Endowment for Democracy reportedly picked up this function during the Reagan administration. In a sign the Bush administration is reaching for a more direct relationship, The Hindu last week cited Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s statement that Washington wants to open a consulate in Tibet.

mbechtel@ pww.org

‘Free trade’ deal stopped, unions celebrate

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12893/1/419/

Author: John Wojcik

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/18/08 13:04

Labor is celebrating the 224-195 House vote April 10 to set aside the U.S.-Colombia “free trade” pact because of concern on Capitol Hill about the continuing murder of trade unionists in that country.

The vote, called for by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derailed a Bush administration attempt to “fast track” the deal through Congress in 90 days. Under the customary fast track approach to trade deals, Bush wanted Congress to approve the measure by voting on legislation implementing the trade deal, not on the agreement itself.

Pelosi proposed a rules change to drop fast track and stop the 90-day clock. As labor leaders applauded the move, Republicans noted angrily that it was really a vote against the pact, which had been pushed by Bush as “vital to national security and to protecting democracy in Latin America.” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, praising the vote, said “it should never come up on Capitol Hill again until the murders of Columbian trade unionists stop.”

International labor and human rights groups have blamed the Colombian government and right-wing paramilitaries it employs for the deaths of thousands of trade union activists there over the last several years.

Pelosi hinted that she might allow a vote on the pact sometime in the future, possibly in exchange for support from Bush for a second economic stimulus package that would include steps to help working families. Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) both flatly rejected this tradeoff, saying they were unalterably opposed to the Colombian pact. The two senators as well as Pelosi were part of a meeting between congressional and labor leaders where the new economic stimulus package was drafted.

“With the United States economy entering a potentially severe recession, with the trade deficit running at about $2 billion a day, and with unemployment on the rise, the last thing we need is another flawed trade agreement with a country that cannot even guarantee the rule of law, let alone basic human rights for its workers,” Sweeney declared in a prepared statement after the vote. “Congress should give its full attention to addressing the urgent needs of our failing economy. And there should be no vote on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until Colombia ends the violence against trade unionists and assures they can exercise their basic rights without fear.”

Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said she was glad that Pelosi is resisting strong-arm tactics by the White House and reasserting congressional authority over trade policies. Burger called for the House to refuse to consider any new trade agreements this year and said a new fair trade “model” is needed before any such deals are considered.

Burger said it would take years, not months, to ensure that the killing of trade unionists in Colombia is really stopped. “Trade isn’t free,” she said, “when thousands are killed for standing up for their rights in the workplace.”

jwojcik@pww.org

a quote

"When we first saw your trucks and planes we thought that you were gods. Then, after a few years we learned how to drive your trucks, as we shall soon learn how to fly your planes, and we understood that what interested you most was manufacturing trucks and planes and making money. For our part, what we are interested in is using them. Now, you are just our metal-workers."

Black worker to a whte boss; (Presence Africaine, 1956)