Mexico teachers' strike closes schools in several states

From The Digital Journal

 By Ken Hanly

Aug 23, 2013 in Politics

Mexico - Most of the 26 million Mexican students return to school this week but more than two million were forced to stay home as teachers in several areas launched strikes opposing changes to the public education system.

About 24,000 schools in five impoverished states in the south of Mexico remain closed as teachers strike. Among the chief demands is the cancellation of new federal regulations requiring teachers to take competency exams to be hired and retained. In the state of Tabasco half a million students will not go back to school as teachers demand the resignation of the state education minister.

About 20,000 strikers marched on the National Congress in Mexico City and have set up camp in the central plaza. Leaders say they will stay there indefinitely. Hundreds of strikers attempted to force their way into a session of the legislature voting on reforms and fought pitched battles with police, in which 22 officers were injured. A blockade by teachers on Wednesday forced senators and deputies to hold their session at a convention center. Leader of the largest teachers' union the CNTE, Francisco Bravo, said: “Our demand is for them not to vote the laws, that they suspend the process and that we enter into negotiations that take the teachers' point of view into consideration". President Enrique Nieto persuaded the Mexican congress to pass sweeping educational reforms last December. This month legislation is being negotiated to implement the reforms.

As classes began in many schools and strikers entered the capital Nieto said: "Education is the most powerful instrument for Mexicans to reach new and better opportunities in life." The striking teachers say they are simply scapegoats and that the real problems in Mexico's poorly performing public education system is years of underfunding and endemic corruption in the system. The strike leader Juan Ortega told the press: "We want the whole national education system to be evaluated". While there are serious weaknesses in the Mexican system, the situation has vastly improved from a generation ago. Then, adults were fortunate if they were able to finish six years of grade school. Now almost every child fifteen years and younger is in school. However, the quality varies greatly and Mexico has the highest dropout rate of the 34 OECD member nations.

The head of the National Education Worker's Syndicate or SNTE, the largest teacher's union has been jailed on corruption charges. Somehow while supposedly living on her teacher and union salaries Gordillo managed to amass a fortune of millions of dollars during her more than two decades as head of the union. The strikes taking place now are being led by a rival union that is often more radical, the National Education Workers Coordinator. The fight against the reforms in southern Mexico has been ongoing all year. Teachers in the province of Guerrero attacked and burned government and party offices after the state legislators passed the reforms. Parents in Guerrero are setting up their own classes as thousands of teachers protesting a revamp of the country's education system have closed schools.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/356941#ixzz2czIukzD5

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MLK, Malcom X, no talk about the socialist history.

At this time of celebration of the march on Washington it is important to see what happened in the struggle against racism. You will not hear this from the many African American talking heads that are now in the media.

The black revolt of the 1950's and 1960's was so powerful that the white ruling class had to make adjustments. It assassinated the most powerful and radical leaders such as Malcolm X, the leaders of the Panthers and Martin Luther king. They were assassinated when they were moving to the left, trying to move towards unity with other workers and also opposing US wars and occupations abroad, that is when they were most dangerous.

Malcolm X wrote in the months before he was assassinated: "It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter." He also stated: "You cannot have capitalism without racism." So he was moving towards working class unity and against capitalism.

Months before he was assassinated he was moving to question and move away from black nationalism. He said in relation to this : "If you noticed I have not been using the expression (black nationalism) for several months."

In the months before his assassination Martin Luther King was also moving to unite the working class in struggle with his Poor Peoples Campaign and also talking about capitalism and socialism. He wrote..."something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move towards a democratic socialism."

With the black revolt over for the time being US capitalism has been increasing the repression of African American youth and workers in general. As part of this strategy it has bought off a section of the African American middle class and politicians. We see many of them in Congress and in the media. They are way to the right of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Panthers when these leaders were assassinated. They hold on to their positions by not talking about US capitalism and at the same time helping to hold down the African American working class and youth when these forces seek to fight.

This is the new strategy of US capitalism. It will not last. A new Black revolt is building and new leaders will arise who will learn the lessons from the past and build a united working class movement against capitalism and for democratic socialism.

Sean.

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Wireless companies responsible for worker deaths.

Two workers fell from tower in Texas

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

When I was active in my Union I was for many years a member of the Contracting Out Committee. Working for a public utility we were always trying to prevent the private sector from getting our work.  The developers and real estate firms, in league with contractors that would do this work, had representatives on the Board of Directors that would assure their interests were protected.  They would generally be supported by building trades unions that wanted the work for their members.  So workers in the public sector were forced in to competition with workers in the private sector for who got the work.

I always argued for more hiring, bringing workers in as public sector union members expanding our workforce. Public sector employment even today after the onslaught we have faced, is generally a more humane and less competitive workplace with more security and better benefits and retirement, that’s why they want to smash the public sector Unions.

Sending out work to private (non-union) contractors in particular, always means workplace safety suffers as the effects of the market are greater.  The telecommunication companies like Sprint contract out a great deal of their work to contractors and sub contractors much like the retail giants contract work to sweatshops.  The race to provide faster, more extensive and advanced networks has led to an increase in the deaths of tower workers and 2013 has been a bumper year with ten tower workers dying in falls so far. After 2006, when 18 tower workers died, OSHA declared tower climbing beat out fishing and logging as “The most dangerous job in America.” *

I touched on the ineffectiveness of OSHA in an earlier commentary on the market driven catastrophe at the fertilizer plant in West Texas (hereand here) pointing out that today there are 2200 OSHA inspectors for 8 million workplaces. It’s hard not to laugh at statistics like that were the consequences not so dire. Workers cannot put our lives in the hands of a state agency that was opposed by many politicians and the US Chamber of Commerce. If it was set up to seriously protect workers on the job, the ratio of OSHA inspectors to workplaces would be much different.

The fierce competition for market share and profits trumps safety, “…there is so much work this year that many crews are working around the clock and haven't taken days off in weeks.”,  industry representatives tell the Wall Street Journal,  “crews are working 12- or 16-hour days and, when they get tired, forget to clip on safety lines or clip them on improperly.” One project manager adds.

But am I not right in thinking there’s 20 to 30 million workers that capitalism refuses to put to work?  Yes, but it’s a better business decision to have people work longer hours than shortening them and hiring more people----it’s more profitable.  Sure, the pace of work destroys the body, the family and leads to unnecessary deaths and the tendency towards drugs that increase energy and keep you awake when your body demands rest.  But in order to win the bid to do this work for the telecommunications giant, a contractor has to underbid his or her competitors.  The wireless industries PR departments sing the same old tune workers are all too familiar with. Sprint says it is “deeply saddened” by the recent spate of deaths and “requires subcontractors to maintain written safety programs and designate one employee on site responsible for ensuring safety.”

OK, they’ve covered their asses, it must be the workers’ fault.  Let’s not forget though, that here in the US, a corporation has personhood; a corporation is a person and with the same rights as a person. And as any worker knows, the person making the decisions does not tend to take positions that are against their own self-interest. If the company-designated employee for safety takes action that hurts profits, they’re in trouble. This is why the Team Concept in the workplace is so destructive as it undermines independent worker power on the job. You can’t mobilize the power you have, and in our case it’s numbers and the ability to stop production, if the object of your activity is supposedly on the same team.

It’s obvious that a huge cause of death and injury in the workplace is the pace of the work and the competition between workers as we are forced to cut corners in order to help our bosses win market share from their rivals. 

One of the major contractors that oversees work for Sprint instituted a “Tower Construction Acceleration Program” that pays a $3000 bonus to contractors that finish on time and with no defects (workers health and happiness aside). One construction manager told the WSJ that some jobs pay $12,000 in bonuses per site and that the bonuses “encourage them to work more quickly.”  Nothing new there.

Many of the telecommunication companies are unionized so contracting work out eliminates those concerns, it’s the private, unorganized sector getting a hold of public work through these contracts and workers suffer for it, not just in in lower wages and benefits which is most often the case, but also in quality of life and workplace rights. Some tower workers admit that the carriers set “pricing and schedules that can create strong incentives to cut corners.”

The word terrorism is thrown about a lot these days.  Every individual or force that stands in opposition to capital’s rapacious quest for profits is given the terror label and their actions “terrorism”.  Some have not liked that I refer to the West Texas catastrophe or the mine explosion or the Fukushima disaster acts of market terror but they are exactly that; they are not accidents in the way we think of an accident.  Capitalism is an economic system that exists through coercion and force and is, by its very nature, a system of terror.  Workplace terrorism, economic terrorism, we don’t have to buy in to the language and terms that the 1% use to describe life’s events.  We have our own view of the world and our own language which describes what happens around us more accurately.

In the case of the tower worker, of course a bad decision by an individual worker might lead to an accident or death.  The issue is under what conditions are the decisions workers make made.  We have free will, Marx once said, but we rarely, if ever, get to choose the circumstances in which we exercise that free will.  And in the case of the workplace, there is no democracy there, we do not control the labor process, we are simply a part of it under the direction of the owner(s) of capital.

There are only two sources of power in the workplace, the bosses and the organized workers. Without organization it’s every man or woman for themselves as each individual tries to make a deal and the boss sets one against the other. Safety is strongest where workers are organized and elected worker representatives have a real presence on the job. The power to shut down an unsafe project is something workplace representatives must fight for.

Building and strengthening the organized workers’ movement in the workplace and in our communities as well is what will reduce injury on the job and disasters like the recent spate of mine deaths and catastrophes like the BP spill that killed 11 workers and did untold environmental damage. No one can work an eight-hour day these days and pay the rent.  Sixteen-hour days, speed ups caused by the competition between capitalists for market domination---this is why 13 tower workers have died this year.  They were victims of the free market at work. 

The Union hierarchy has all but abandoned any attempt to win a shorter workweek with no loss in pay or win anything for that matter. As recently as 1984, the AFL-CIO platform to the Democratic Party called for a continuation of the historic norm of reducing the hours of work.  The Democrats of course will do no such thing just like this party of Wall Street will not put any teeth in to OSHA. Along with workers having independent organizations in the workplace, independent of the bosses, we have to have political independence as well in the form of our own party based on these organizations and the communities in which we work and live.

I want to stress as another author on this blog did a few days ago, the small businesses that cannot afford a $15 or $20 an hour minimum wage must join with workers in the struggle for it.  For most community businesses don’t object to such a wage, they just can’t afford it.  The workers’ movement in return must fight to free small business from the clutches of the corporations, the insurance companies, the taxman, bankers and others that weigh heavily on them.  It is absurd that a community business should provide health care for workers; the sickness industrial complex, the hospital and pharmaceutical industries, must be taken in to public ownership and these vital services can be managed in the public’s interest.

These are all steps we must take that will curb the power of the bosses over our lives in the workplace and outside it. But each victory in this regard is only temporary until we take control of the labor process and the management of society as a whole.

* A New Spate of Deaths inthe Wireless Industry WSJ 8-22-13

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Bradley Manning statement after his sentencing

From Democracy Now

Bradley Manning: "Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society"

 

The following is a transcript of the statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday after Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."

I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others. If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

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$15.00 minimum wage. Its the way you look at things.

The movement that is developing for a $15.00 minimum wage is very inspiring. It deserves the support of all working people. It also reminds me of when I was young and laboring to an older bricklayer who was good union man. One day he asked me. He was always asking me questions to increase my class consciousness. He asked me: "Tell me young fella how this comes about. They are always saying that the rich ones have to be allowed to make as much money as possible or they will not be motivated. But at the same time they are always saying that the poor and the working class need to be kept on the lowest possible wage to motivate them? What do you think about that?"  That old dude was not so slow.

We hear all sorts of excuses not to pay the $15.00 minimum wage. Actually I think it should be $15.00 minimum or a $5.00 an hour wage increase which ever is the greater. This would mobilize wider sections. But I unconditionally support the struggle for the $15.00 minimum wage. But one of the excuses we hear comes from the small employers. They say they cannot afford $15.00, it would put them out of business they say. We have to answer this.

The small business people have many expenses besides wages. Rent in most cases, interest on money they owe on loans, heating and cooling, taxes, insurance, and on and on. But it is the wages that are targeted. The small business owners see the workers wages as the easiest way to cut their expenses. . They do not want to take on the banks, the insurance companies, the tax collectors and so on. This is a false and unfair approach and one that will backfire on the small business people themselves. They should unite with the low paid workers to fight for lower rents, lower taxes, lower insurance payments etc., and in this way pay the $15.00 an hour minimum wage.

Back in the 18.00's there was the great struggle for the 8 hour day. This struggle formed 8 hour day committees and built a national network of struggle. We should establish $15.00 an hour committees and link these together into a powerful network of direct action struggle. These would take up the issue not only of wages but also conditions on the job and health care.

At the same time this $15.00 an hour movement should look to the established trade union movement with its 12 million members. Every union member should be at their union local moving motions to hold meetings in the workplaces, in the unions at all levels for the $15.00 an hour minimum wage. In this way link the existing trade union membership with the $15.00 an hour movement whether their wage is above $15.00 an hour or not. The more they keep down the minimum wage the more the bosses will push down the wage of all workers, the more the workers push up the minimum wage the more the wage of all workers will be pushed up. The reason this would happen would be that a more  powerful workers movement would be built and this would push the bosses onto the defensive and force them to hand over some of  the trillions of dollars they have looted from workers and hidden away in the last decades.

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Fast Food workers call For a nationwide strike

We are not familiar with the level of organization that has gone in to this but we should keep our eye on these developments and support them when and where we can. From Chicagoist

***********

by Chuck Sudo

Retail and fast food workers called out for a nationwide strike today to take place Aug. 29. The workers and their supporters have been staging strikes in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Detroit and other cities across the country for months demanding a hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Hundreds of workers and several labor organizations in Chicago recently participated in two days of walkouts and protests earlier this month.
Nancy Salgado, a single mother who has worked at a Chicago McDonald’s for the past 10 years said in a press release:

“We are united in our belief that every job should pay workers enough to meet basic needs such as food and housing. Our families, communities, and economy all depend on workers earning a living wage.”

Organizers say the strikes will hit fast food chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King, as well as retail outlets such as Sears, Macy’s and Dollar Tree Stores. Chicago’s protests at the beginning of the month saw walkouts at some of those locations along with Whole Foods, Sally Beauty Supply, Walgreen's and others. Supporters of the strikes say that large corporations can afford pay increases for rank and file employees when the industry sees $200 billion a year in revenue.
"It’s time for these big fast-food and retail companies to pay up. They can afford to pay us more and have a responsibility to ensure the workers who keep their businesses booming don’t live in poverty," said Latrice Arnold, a Wendy’s employee from Detroit. Recent data has suggested low wages from big box retailers and fast food chains hurt American taxpayer’s—regardless of whether or not they’re a low wage worker—because thousands of employees are also on government aid. CNN Money reported in June that one study showed 3,216 Walmart employees, America’s largest private employer, were enrolled in public health care programs in Wisconsin.

Additionally, demographics of low wage workers has changed over the years. While the assumption might be fast food chains are staffed with younger people looking for some extra cash, the Economic Policy Institute released a study that showed 8 out of 10 workers making $7.25 an hour are older than 20, and half those work 40 hours a week. Researchers from the EPI told the Washington Post “It is clear that the bulk of minimum wage workers are mid- or full-time adult employees, not teenagers or part-times.”

 

Contact the author of this article or email tips@chicagoist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

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A poem on the 74th Anniversary of Trotsky's murder

          

                           

                                       You Are The Old Man In The Blue House

                                           
                                               after Bertrand M Patenaude

                                         Making impossible promises to yourself.

                                         Outdoors the cactus, the wolves.

                                         The hour of nowhere else to go.

                                         It’s a decade since the new god stamped

                                         your passport ‘invalid’.

                                        Your fifty-ninth birthday is candied plums

                                        and two small orchestras.

                                        Out there your friends welcome

                                        bullets in the back of the head.

                                       An August storm batters the porch

                                       with the Chief Prosecutor’s words:

                                       Down with the vulture, these miserable hybrids

                                       of foxes and pigs!

                                       In your hand

                                       the pistol with not enough ammunition.

                                       You wait for you know not who

                                       to hug your skull and whisper.

                                       “Everything is finished”;

                                       indulge in just one more

                                       promise that won’t come true over

                                       the candied plums and two small orchestras

                                       in the hour of nowhere else to go.

                                       KEVIN HIGGINS 

The poem has also been translated into Spanish and the translation published in the online Mexican literary magazine Cuadrivio. 

Today is the 74th anniversary of the murder in Mexico City, by an agent of Soviet Military Intelligence, of the exiled co-organiser of the Russian Revolution.

Above is a poem I wrote a few years ago about Trotsky's last years. He wrote extensively about literary and artistic matters, co-authoring (with André Breton & Diego Rivera) a 'Manifesto For an Independent Revolutionary Art'.The poem originally appeared in The Galway Advertiser in 2009.

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