In UK 475,000 to strike 10 May: let’s kick David Cameron and keep kicking
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Brits Hits the Bricks
by Sadie Robinson
Up to half a million workers will strike over pensions on 10 May.
The action will bring together members of the Unite, PCS, UCU, Nipsa and RMT unions. It will hit hospitals, colleges, job centres, transport and other key public services.
And it will show that the mood to fight the Tory (Conservative Party) attacks has not gone away. The strike will see 100,000 Unite workers in the health service walk out.
Frank Wood is on Unite’s national executive committee and is a bio-medical scientist at King’s Hospital in London.
He told Socialist Worker, “It is absolutely critical that we don’t retreat on pensions. This attack is part of a coordinated attack by the government—we need a coordinated response.
“People are looking to the Unions to give a lead. We must get organised now.”
Laura Miles, a member of the UCU’s national executive committee, said, “This is a fight against the government, not individual employers.
“That means we need to work with other unions to build serious action. Everyone knows that one-day strikes won’t be enough to win.
Sustained
“In the UCU lecturers are fighting for more action after 10 May—including rolling strikes. We need to rebuild a sustained, national campaign.”
The Tories have already forced attacks on millions of public sector workers.
They have increased monthly pension contributions and switched the inflation measure that pensions are linked to—slashing their value.
They also want to force people to work longer before they can receive their full pension.
Frank said, “This week NHS staff will be getting their pay slips with an average £30 less as a result of the attack.
“This is quite a blow on top of a three-year pay freeze, attempts to introduce regional pay and harsh cuts.”
A magnificent coordinated strike on 30 November last year saw around 2.6 million workers take action together.
But since then many union leaders have either refused to call more action or have dithered over the next steps.
The NUT and UCU unions called a strike in London on 28 March. Other workers are glad to be joining this new strike.
Laura Jowell is a PCS rep in Bradford, west Yorkshire. She told Socialist Worker, “People are relieved that we’re coming out again on 10 May.
“There’s a sense that we’re building towards something bigger in June. This strike can kickstart the dispute again.”
Rage
Aileen Scott-McFarlane is a Unite rep and lab technician in London.
She said that in her workplace “the feeling of rage is now at boiling point”.
“It’s as though the feeling to fight is stronger than before. Now we are getting organised to make sure the strike is solid.”
The Tories’ policies will pave the way for more harsh attacks on ordinary people’s living standards.
The government plans to raise the state retirement age for men and women to 66 by 2020.
One study found that four in 10 firms expect that by 2020 workers will retire at 67 or later. And one in six companies expects the typical retirement age to be between 68 and 70.
“My quality of life is being threatened,” said Aileen. “And this isn’t a one-off—if they get this through, they’ll come back for more.”
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Jefferson and Buffet Rule
Thomas Jefferson and Obama's Buffet Rule
I don't know what Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson would have thought about TV, cars, spaceships, cellphones, skyscrapers, computers or nuclear weapons. But I do know what Jefferson would have thought about the Buffett Rule. He would have liked it.
The Buffett Rule is the Obama Administration's proposal to adopt a 30% minimum tax rate on personal income above $1 million a year. It would promote one of the central tenets of progressivism: that the burden of taxes should fall on the rich, not the poor.
In 1811, two years after Jefferson left the Presidency, Jefferson wrote a letter to General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution. Jefferson said that he supported taxes (then Tariffs, since there was no income tax yet) falling entirely on the wealthy. As Jefferson explained: "The farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of this country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings."
Here is someone else who was an outspoken proponent of progressive taxation: Adam Smith, who literally "wrote the book" on capitalism. In 1776, in The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
(I wonder: When Adam Smith wrote about the "luxuries and vanities" of the rich, was he contemplating Mitt Romney's elevator for Romney's car? Or is that simply beyond contemplation?)
Two hundred years ago, when America was founded, progressive taxation was viewed as just common sense. We still have common sense, don't we?
First, let's see the Buffett Rule for individuals. Then the Buffett Rule for corporations. That would be progressive. And that would be progress.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
Congressman with Guts
I don't know what Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson would have thought about TV, cars, spaceships, cellphones, skyscrapers, computers or nuclear weapons. But I do know what Jefferson would have thought about the Buffett Rule. He would have liked it.
The Buffett Rule is the Obama Administration's proposal to adopt a 30% minimum tax rate on personal income above $1 million a year. It would promote one of the central tenets of progressivism: that the burden of taxes should fall on the rich, not the poor.
In 1811, two years after Jefferson left the Presidency, Jefferson wrote a letter to General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution. Jefferson said that he supported taxes (then Tariffs, since there was no income tax yet) falling entirely on the wealthy. As Jefferson explained: "The farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of this country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings."
Here is someone else who was an outspoken proponent of progressive taxation: Adam Smith, who literally "wrote the book" on capitalism. In 1776, in The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
(I wonder: When Adam Smith wrote about the "luxuries and vanities" of the rich, was he contemplating Mitt Romney's elevator for Romney's car? Or is that simply beyond contemplation?)
Two hundred years ago, when America was founded, progressive taxation was viewed as just common sense. We still have common sense, don't we?
First, let's see the Buffett Rule for individuals. Then the Buffett Rule for corporations. That would be progressive. And that would be progress.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
Congressman with Guts
Democrats Must Ask Labor
Big Labor's Big MomentBy: Jonathan Allen and Robin Bravender
For years Big Labor has been looking small, but it doesn’t feel that way now.
Unions won an Ohio referendum overturning Gov. John Kasich’s effort to restrict collective bargaining for government employees.
They built a recall campaign that could still knock Republican Scott Walker out of the governor’s mansion in Maple Bluff, Wis.
And on Tuesday night, they kneecapped Rep. Jason Altmire in a Pennsylvania Democratic primary — getting payback for his vote against the president’s health care law.
Not bad for a movement that had been read its last rites.
“The labor movement has huge momentum in terms of electoral politics,” said Robert Reich, former Clinton administration labor secretary. “Many union members have been stirred up by the anti-union animus of the Republicans.”
It’s the GOP that threw the unions a lifeline by going too far when it took office after the 2010 election, labor sources say, and it has only itself to blame if the public is more sympathetic to working stiffs than free-marketers.
“I think it was a clear overreach by some of these right-wing Republicans,” said Ricky Feller, the associate political director at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Former Wisconsin Rep. Dave Obey, a labor-loving Democrat who ran the House Appropriations Committee, said Unions are fighting for survival against a brand of conservative Republicans — he named Walker, Kasich and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan — whose ideology makes no room for them.
“They genuflect Ayn Rand three times a day before they go to work and they come in, whether it’s at the federal level or the state level, and they screw working people every time they turn around. It shouldn’t mystify people why [unions] are more active,” Obey said. “They have their backs against the wall. The governor has a switchblade out and it’s at their throat. So they’re going to fight back with everything they have.”
What they have — money and people — are the two sources that legendary organizer Saul Alinsky said create power.
The people power was evident at the ballot box and on petitions in Ohio and Wisconsin, and it has taken hold in the rise of populist sentiment both within the Democratic Party and outside it.
“When you see these right-wing attacks on everything and then the attempts to blame the victim … it mobilizes our people,” said United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.
Unions’ money and extensive ground game operation, long used to boost Democrats in national races, have been flowing to the states of late.
It helped fuel the ouster of several Republican state senators in Wisconsin last year and the effort to boot Walker.
“People are pumped up and that’s what our friend Scott Walker caused,” Feller said, adding that Walker’s opponents have a “good shot at him,” in the June recall election. “I think there’s some buyer’s remorse out there.”
Cash reserves are also being used selectively in races for federal office and in Democratic primaries. A labor coalition called Working for Us, which is headed by former AFL-CIO operative Steve Rosenthal, spent more than $50,000 on telephone calls and mailers aimed at helping Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.) beat Altmire in Tuesday’s incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary in western Pennsylvania.
Nearly 20 labor groups, including the United Steelworkers, the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, threw their weight behind Critz. Gerard of USW attended a pro-Critz rally earlier this month and SEIU launched a get-out-the-vote operation on his behalf.
With new forms of soft money exploding onto the political scene, Unions’ help is in heavy demand.
President Barack Obama, who turned up his nose at contributions from corporations and lobbyists, wants unions to help underwrite the cost of the party’s national convention this year, according to Bloomberg News. The request comes even as major labor groups are boycotting events in Charlotte because the city and the state of North Carolina are hostile to unions.
But Obama has nowhere else to turn, according to Democratic sources.
“The only groups that have a significant amount of money that they can play with is labor,” said a Democratic operative familiar with labor politics. “It puts labor in a good position.”
Labor groups say they can’t compete in the air wars against conservative groups that intend to pour hundreds of millions into defeating Democrats this year.
But they’ve long used their own extensive cash reserves to support candidates — principally Democrats — on the ground.
“The only way to fight big money is with lots of ordinary folks,” Gerard said.
Union leaders say that while they’re relishing some of their recent victories, they’re not getting comfortable just yet.
“We’re not at all cocky about this,” said AFL-CIO Political Director Michael Podhorzer. “I definitely think that it’s a very uphill fight.”
Some of organized labor’s critics doubt whether unions’ latest victories mark a true resurgence.
“I guess it depends on your definition of ‘resurgence,’” said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the anti-union National Right to Work Committee. He noted that unions failed to block Indiana from becoming the 23rd right-to-work state and couldn’t hold off efforts to curtail labor’s power in traditionally union friendly states like Ohio and Wisconsin, even though the Ohio measure was later defeated on the ballot.
Over the long term, the numbers aren’t looking great for labor as the percentage of the unionized workforce nationwide continues to dwindle.
“So while organized labor is fired up and has a lot of ground troops and is still able to donate relatively generously to campaigns, the ranks of organized labor are still declining overall,” said Reich, who is now a public policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
And he’s not expecting the GOP to discontinue its attacks. “We could be witnessing the start of a kind of no-holds-barred gloves off Republican assault on organized labor,” Reich said. “If politics is war by another name and if you want to knock out the enemy, then what better way to do it than to directly attack organized labor?”
Still, union leaders say they’re in a much better place than they were two years ago, and some are looking forward to a fight against Mitt Romney, which promises to put their issues front and center in the campaign.
“You never know what kind of gifts Mitt Romney is going to give you,” said Feller of AFSCME. The millionaire former private equity investor is known for off-the-cuff statements that make him seem out of touch with the working class, and the Obama campaign is certain to hammer him on the income inequality gap.
“I think there’s a great opportunity to draw contrasts between the extreme ideas of Mitt Romney and the like and where the president is,” said SEIU Political Director Brandon Davis.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75626.html
For years Big Labor has been looking small, but it doesn’t feel that way now.
Unions won an Ohio referendum overturning Gov. John Kasich’s effort to restrict collective bargaining for government employees.
They built a recall campaign that could still knock Republican Scott Walker out of the governor’s mansion in Maple Bluff, Wis.
And on Tuesday night, they kneecapped Rep. Jason Altmire in a Pennsylvania Democratic primary — getting payback for his vote against the president’s health care law.
Not bad for a movement that had been read its last rites.
“The labor movement has huge momentum in terms of electoral politics,” said Robert Reich, former Clinton administration labor secretary. “Many union members have been stirred up by the anti-union animus of the Republicans.”
It’s the GOP that threw the unions a lifeline by going too far when it took office after the 2010 election, labor sources say, and it has only itself to blame if the public is more sympathetic to working stiffs than free-marketers.
“I think it was a clear overreach by some of these right-wing Republicans,” said Ricky Feller, the associate political director at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Former Wisconsin Rep. Dave Obey, a labor-loving Democrat who ran the House Appropriations Committee, said Unions are fighting for survival against a brand of conservative Republicans — he named Walker, Kasich and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan — whose ideology makes no room for them.
“They genuflect Ayn Rand three times a day before they go to work and they come in, whether it’s at the federal level or the state level, and they screw working people every time they turn around. It shouldn’t mystify people why [unions] are more active,” Obey said. “They have their backs against the wall. The governor has a switchblade out and it’s at their throat. So they’re going to fight back with everything they have.”
What they have — money and people — are the two sources that legendary organizer Saul Alinsky said create power.
The people power was evident at the ballot box and on petitions in Ohio and Wisconsin, and it has taken hold in the rise of populist sentiment both within the Democratic Party and outside it.
“When you see these right-wing attacks on everything and then the attempts to blame the victim … it mobilizes our people,” said United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.
Unions’ money and extensive ground game operation, long used to boost Democrats in national races, have been flowing to the states of late.
It helped fuel the ouster of several Republican state senators in Wisconsin last year and the effort to boot Walker.
“People are pumped up and that’s what our friend Scott Walker caused,” Feller said, adding that Walker’s opponents have a “good shot at him,” in the June recall election. “I think there’s some buyer’s remorse out there.”
Cash reserves are also being used selectively in races for federal office and in Democratic primaries. A labor coalition called Working for Us, which is headed by former AFL-CIO operative Steve Rosenthal, spent more than $50,000 on telephone calls and mailers aimed at helping Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.) beat Altmire in Tuesday’s incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary in western Pennsylvania.
Nearly 20 labor groups, including the United Steelworkers, the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, threw their weight behind Critz. Gerard of USW attended a pro-Critz rally earlier this month and SEIU launched a get-out-the-vote operation on his behalf.
With new forms of soft money exploding onto the political scene, Unions’ help is in heavy demand.
President Barack Obama, who turned up his nose at contributions from corporations and lobbyists, wants unions to help underwrite the cost of the party’s national convention this year, according to Bloomberg News. The request comes even as major labor groups are boycotting events in Charlotte because the city and the state of North Carolina are hostile to unions.
But Obama has nowhere else to turn, according to Democratic sources.
“The only groups that have a significant amount of money that they can play with is labor,” said a Democratic operative familiar with labor politics. “It puts labor in a good position.”
Labor groups say they can’t compete in the air wars against conservative groups that intend to pour hundreds of millions into defeating Democrats this year.
But they’ve long used their own extensive cash reserves to support candidates — principally Democrats — on the ground.
“The only way to fight big money is with lots of ordinary folks,” Gerard said.
Union leaders say that while they’re relishing some of their recent victories, they’re not getting comfortable just yet.
“We’re not at all cocky about this,” said AFL-CIO Political Director Michael Podhorzer. “I definitely think that it’s a very uphill fight.”
Some of organized labor’s critics doubt whether unions’ latest victories mark a true resurgence.
“I guess it depends on your definition of ‘resurgence,’” said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the anti-union National Right to Work Committee. He noted that unions failed to block Indiana from becoming the 23rd right-to-work state and couldn’t hold off efforts to curtail labor’s power in traditionally union friendly states like Ohio and Wisconsin, even though the Ohio measure was later defeated on the ballot.
Over the long term, the numbers aren’t looking great for labor as the percentage of the unionized workforce nationwide continues to dwindle.
“So while organized labor is fired up and has a lot of ground troops and is still able to donate relatively generously to campaigns, the ranks of organized labor are still declining overall,” said Reich, who is now a public policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
And he’s not expecting the GOP to discontinue its attacks. “We could be witnessing the start of a kind of no-holds-barred gloves off Republican assault on organized labor,” Reich said. “If politics is war by another name and if you want to knock out the enemy, then what better way to do it than to directly attack organized labor?”
Still, union leaders say they’re in a much better place than they were two years ago, and some are looking forward to a fight against Mitt Romney, which promises to put their issues front and center in the campaign.
“You never know what kind of gifts Mitt Romney is going to give you,” said Feller of AFSCME. The millionaire former private equity investor is known for off-the-cuff statements that make him seem out of touch with the working class, and the Obama campaign is certain to hammer him on the income inequality gap.
“I think there’s a great opportunity to draw contrasts between the extreme ideas of Mitt Romney and the like and where the president is,” said SEIU Political Director Brandon Davis.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75626.html
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