Postal Workers, Community Allies Increase Pressure
as USPS Cuts Loom
Theresa Moran
As Congress dallies, some Postal workers and community activists are turning to civil disobedience to combat the sweeping cuts planned for the Postal Service. Union tops are sticking to a legislative strategy.
Ten postal worker and community activists in Portland, Oregon, were arrested May 24 when they occupied the city’s University Station Post Office, refusing to leave and blocking the closure of the office’s retail desk.
Nearly 100 supporters rallied outside as the activists inside held their ground, singing and holding banners proclaiming “Occupy the Post Office” and “No Closures! No Cuts!”
Police hauled them out after an hour and a half.
The occupation was organized by members of Communities and Postal Workers United, a cross-union network of postal worker activists. Other groups active in the “Occupy the Post Office” coalition include Jobs with Justice, the Rural Organizing Project, and Occupy groups.
The arrests, the first in the fight to save the post office, mark an escalation in tactics that CPWU organizers hope will spread to communities across the country.
According to Jamie Partridge, an arrestee from Occupy Portland and a retired postal worker, the action was meant to press Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe to halt his announced cuts and closures, which could slow mail and cost thousands of jobs as soon as this summer.
“It’s Congress and the President who can fix postal finances, but our immediate target is the Postmaster General,” Partridge said.
Activists with the Rural Organizing Project have occupied rural post offices in Oregon, and c+ommunity/labor coalitions against cuts have been active in New York, Baltimore, and rural Vermont.
The four postal unions (Mail Handlers, Postal Workers, Letter Carriers, and Rural Letter Carriers) have stuck to traditional rallies, jointly organizing a September 27 day of action with events in nearly 500 cities.
NO LEGISLATIVE FIX
The arrests come a month after the Senate passed a bill meant to provide relief to the financially struggling post office, a bill CPWU activists criticize for not going far enough.
Absent a fix from Congress, Donohoe’s plans for massive cuts to jobs and services will soon be underway. The Senate’s bill would do little to chase away the albatross dragging on USPS finances: an obligation passed by Congress in 2006 that requires the postal service to pre-fund the health benefits of retirees up to 75 years in the future. This requirement, not shared by any other federal agency, costs the postal service a hefty $5.5 billion per year.
The bill aims to ease the burden by allowing the postal service to make payments over a longer period of time but would also slash 100,000 postal jobs, largely through buyouts. If made law, the bill would make it harder for USPS to close small rural post offices and would preserve overnight delivery standards for three more years and Saturday delivery for two.
While some laud these provisions as victories—if enacted—there’s nothing to prevent the USPS from slashing standards after the protections expire. Indeed, postal managers have already said eliminating overnight delivery is one key strategy for cost savings in the near future.
Postal activists like Partridge, who’s on the Letter Carriers Branch 82 organizing committee, doubt the bill would do much to help. “It doesn’t actually take anything off the chopping block and it doesn’t fix the pre-funding issue,” he said.
Even leaders of the Postal Workers and the Letter Carriers criticized the bill as “flawed” and “deeply flawed” for allowing cuts and not doing enough to relieve the financial burden that Congress itself placed upon the USPS.
CAN’T CATCH A BREAK
Of course, none of these provisions will become law until postal relief legislation passes in the House, which seems unlikely anytime soon. That’s just as well, as the leading bill is one sponsored by California Republican Darrell Issa, who seeks to slash postal jobs and services into oblivion. Issa has refused to let a more favorable bill with broad support among House members come to a vote.
In the wake of Congress’s failure to pass timely relief legislation, Donohoe is moving ahead with major cuts. Plans to slash hours at post offices and to close processing plants were announced just in time for expiration of a May 15 moratorium on cuts and closures.
On May 17, the Postal Service announced it would go forward with plans to close half of its 461 mail processing plants over the next two years. The first round of 48 closures will happen this summer. On the chopping block are the 28,000 jobs in those plants, positions represented by the Postal Workers.
The week before, USPS announced it would reduce hours at 13,000 rural post offices across the country. There are 31,500 post offices nationwide. In the rural locations, full-time postmasters will be replaced with part-timers. The USPS is pushing early retirement for 21,000 postmasters. It’s not yet clear how many other jobs will be lost.
The newly announced cuts are a departure from the Postal Service’s original plan. Last July, Donohoe said he would close 3,700 rural, urban, and suburban offices that the USPS identified as low-revenue.
In a May 9 press release, Donohoe said the switch from closures to shorter hours was made in response to public opposition and that the agency would not shutter any offices “without having provided a viable solution.”
NOT A VICTORY
Postal activists caution, however, against labeling Donohoe’s new plan a win.
“This is no victory at all. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re closing 3,700 or cutting hours at 13,000—you’re still cutting service,” says Tom Dodge, a truck driver at the Baltimore mail processing center and an organizer with Communities and Postal Workers United.
At most offices, service cuts will come in the form of slashing operating hours. Many retail desks could see their open hours whittled down to as little as two a day. Such drastic cuts will effectively render post offices inaccessible to “anybody who has to work for a living,” Partridge said. Towns with offices on the cuts list also have the option of replacing the office with a “village post office,” a retail desk located within a private business such as a gas station or Walmart. Village post offices can sell stamps and ship flat-rate packages, but can’t handle weighing packages, shipping express or registered mail, or selling money orders.
The desks are staffed not by unionized USPS workers but by non-union employees of the business where they’re located. Processing plant closures also mean serious problems for customers. Dodge knows firsthand how problematic these “consolidations” are. In November, the Frederick, Maryland, plant was closed and its mail sent to the Baltimore plant where Dodge works, 50 miles away.
The facility was so ill-prepared to accommodate the deluge of mail from Frederick that soon 22 semi trucks full of mail were lined up outside waiting to be unloaded. Mail has been delayed, sometimes comically so. Customers reported receiving circulars for Thanksgiving sales as late as February. Even after mail was diverted to Virginia and D.C. facilities, postal workers received reports of people receiving coupons weeks after they’d expired.
As Congress stalls in fixing the financial mess it created, activists are targeting Donohoe, who has ultimate authority to stop the closures and cuts. Some hope actions like the Portland occupation may pressure him into halting the cuts, while others are calling for his ouster.
Activists believe that Postmaster Donohoe’s cuts, by increasing customer dissatisfaction with the Postal Service, fit in to his master plan to shrink it to a fraction of its current self.
Labor Notes Theresa Moran
Friday, June 1, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Gov Brown Threatens ILWU + Inland Boatmen's Unions
Anti-Labor Gov Brown Threatens Investigation To Attack IBU-ILWU Ferry Boat Workers Strike Action
By JOHN S. MARSHALL, Associated Press – 5 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i0K-dhahV5cGd5qHZlfL9RxU1WPQ?docId=9b7e7c83cf1a46b0b5197ab8496e4aff
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Thousands of people flocked to San Francisco's waterfront and onto Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday to celebrate the famous span's 75th birthday.
The daylong party attracted pleasure boats, tug boats and other vessels to the water as people on shore enjoyed a number of events stretching from Fort Point south of the bridge to Pier 39 along The Embarcadero. Many walked and biked across the bridge before capping the day by watching a fireworks display over the city's enduring symbol.
The bridge was shrouded in fog during part of the day, but skies were clear by nightfall for the 18 minute-long fireworks show.
"It's such an iconic structure, depending on the day or the hour, it just looks like it changes continuously," San Francisco resident Daniel Sutphin said as he walked through the Fort Point area with his wife and their three young children.
Since it opened in 1937, more than two-billion vehicles have crossed the 1.7-mile-long bridge named after the Golden Gate Strait, the entrance of water to San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean, and championed by engineer Joseph Strauss in the 1920s.
In a stark contrast to the thousands of celebrants, members of the group the Bridge Rail Foundation, an organization dedicated to stopping suicide jumps from the bridge, erected a display of 1,558 pairs of shoes, representing the number of people who died in leaps form the bridge since it opened in 1937. "It's a symbol of how deep and serious this problem has been," said Paul Muller, a spokesman for the group. "We're still losing 30 to 35 a people a year off the bridge," he said.
STRIKE
Meanwhile on the water, Golden Gate ferries were running again after a one-day strike disrupted service across San Francisco Bay on Saturday.
Workers represented by the Inlandboatmen's Union walked off the job on a day strike, forcing the cancellation of ferries operated by Golden Gate between Larkspur, Sausalito and San Francisco.
The strike was called after nearly a year of negotiations over workloads and other matters, said Marina Secchitano, the Union's regional director.
California Gov. Jerry Brown issued a statement Saturday evening, saying that he was appointing a Board to investigate the strike, which, he claimed, created a disruption to public service.
Secchitano disputed the governor's claim, questioning the motivation to call for an investigation after a one-day strike. "(This is) an action to try to silence us," she said.
"They're counting on this process to back our membership off the issue," she said.
Service resumed Sunday when workers returned to work.
Friday, May 25, 2012
CWA Fires Up Wisconsin
Next Generation Activists Storm Minneapolis
CWA's 2012 Next Generation class. Nearly 50 young phone Workers taped dollar bills over their mouths, marched into a Wells Fargo lobby and laid down in front of the bank's trademark
stagecoach in protest.
The "die-in" was part of CWA's Next Generation conference in Minneapolis, where activists attended a four-day training on organizing and political action. They learned how to lobby, use social media for union work and build coalitions. Workers discussed the economic slump, foreclosures, voter suppression and how to mobilize more young people.
And those concerns drove them to Wells Fargo last Friday afternoon, where they challenged the bank's detrimental financial influence in politics, including its involvement in getting a voter ID amendment on Minnesota's ballot this November. Jake Lake of CWA Local 1101, who serves on the national AFL-CIO's Young Workers Advisory Council, read a list of the group's demands.
"We demand the top 1 percent of this country stop destroying our country," he said. "Wells Fargo, the Chamber of Commerce, the Minnesota Business Partnership and the politicians they front have
launched an assault on our democracy."
Workers left the lobby chanting, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "We are the 99 percent!"
Youth unionization rates are two and a half times lower than those of Workers ages 40 to 65.
So in order to grow the movement, it's critical to involve more young Workers. Through Next Generation, CWA is working to develop young leaders, take advantage of new technologies for communication, organize a growing generation of workers who are not in a traditional employment relationship and launch grassroots groups across the country.
"I didn't know what to expect going into this training. Maybe some background on union history?" said Aiden Sheffield of AFA-CWA 29012. "Well, I learned that — and so much more! I realize how important it is that we stand up together and take part in our democracy — that must be taken back by labor. They say it takes a village, and it really does. I have a better understanding of what I need to do.
CWA's 2012 Next Generation class. Nearly 50 young phone Workers taped dollar bills over their mouths, marched into a Wells Fargo lobby and laid down in front of the bank's trademark
stagecoach in protest.
The "die-in" was part of CWA's Next Generation conference in Minneapolis, where activists attended a four-day training on organizing and political action. They learned how to lobby, use social media for union work and build coalitions. Workers discussed the economic slump, foreclosures, voter suppression and how to mobilize more young people.
And those concerns drove them to Wells Fargo last Friday afternoon, where they challenged the bank's detrimental financial influence in politics, including its involvement in getting a voter ID amendment on Minnesota's ballot this November. Jake Lake of CWA Local 1101, who serves on the national AFL-CIO's Young Workers Advisory Council, read a list of the group's demands.
"We demand the top 1 percent of this country stop destroying our country," he said. "Wells Fargo, the Chamber of Commerce, the Minnesota Business Partnership and the politicians they front have
launched an assault on our democracy."
Workers left the lobby chanting, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "We are the 99 percent!"
Youth unionization rates are two and a half times lower than those of Workers ages 40 to 65.
So in order to grow the movement, it's critical to involve more young Workers. Through Next Generation, CWA is working to develop young leaders, take advantage of new technologies for communication, organize a growing generation of workers who are not in a traditional employment relationship and launch grassroots groups across the country.
"I didn't know what to expect going into this training. Maybe some background on union history?" said Aiden Sheffield of AFA-CWA 29012. "Well, I learned that — and so much more! I realize how important it is that we stand up together and take part in our democracy — that must be taken back by labor. They say it takes a village, and it really does. I have a better understanding of what I need to do.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
CWA Cohen on Collective Bargaining
on emailMore Sharing Services
The crushing of collective bargaining rights—which started 40 years ago with attacks on the rights of private-sector workers and which is aimed today at public employees—has destroyed the demand curve in America, and it will take a mass political movement to fix it, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen said today.
Cohen led an informal discussion at the Center for National Policy examining strategies for addressing America’s jobs crisis. He was joined by Leo Hindery Jr. of InterMedia Partners, and the audience included former Sen. Donald Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.). Speaking candidly and, at times, passionately, Cohen estimated that the true number of U.S. jobless workers—if the under-employed and workers who have given up searching for jobs are counted—is 26 million or 27 million, at least twice the official number of 13 million active job seekers. It will take demand-fueled growth to create the kind of long-term economic upswing to provide sufficient jobs.
Yet, the political movement for workers’ rights also must address the flood of corporate cash in the electoral process, Cohen said.
“Money in politics, we’ve got to get it out,” he said, while saying open seats for the U.S. Senate easily cost $25 million and congressional seats cost $5 million.
Also, the rules of the Senate must be streamlined, or necessary bills will never reach the desk of the president, he said.
"The Senate is the worst it’s ever been,” he said. In 2008 and 2009, 400 bills that passed the House never even got to the floor of the Senate.
In addition, the union movement must also target new state-level laws intended to limit the voting rights of young people, the elderly, poor people and people of color.
CWA's Cohen: America Needs a Mass Movement for Workers' Rights
The crushing of collective bargaining rights—which started 40 years ago with attacks on the rights of private-sector workers and which is aimed today at public employees—has destroyed the demand curve in America, and it will take a mass political movement to fix it, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen said today.
Cohen led an informal discussion at the Center for National Policy examining strategies for addressing America’s jobs crisis. He was joined by Leo Hindery Jr. of InterMedia Partners, and the audience included former Sen. Donald Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.). Speaking candidly and, at times, passionately, Cohen estimated that the true number of U.S. jobless workers—if the under-employed and workers who have given up searching for jobs are counted—is 26 million or 27 million, at least twice the official number of 13 million active job seekers. It will take demand-fueled growth to create the kind of long-term economic upswing to provide sufficient jobs.
Yet, the political movement for workers’ rights also must address the flood of corporate cash in the electoral process, Cohen said.
“Money in politics, we’ve got to get it out,” he said, while saying open seats for the U.S. Senate easily cost $25 million and congressional seats cost $5 million.
Also, the rules of the Senate must be streamlined, or necessary bills will never reach the desk of the president, he said.
"The Senate is the worst it’s ever been,” he said. In 2008 and 2009, 400 bills that passed the House never even got to the floor of the Senate.
In addition, the union movement must also target new state-level laws intended to limit the voting rights of young people, the elderly, poor people and people of color.
This is voter suppression. It’s not about voter fraud, and everybody knows it.
Yet the nation's underlying economic problems all come back to a basic structural problem—without the ability to bargain, workers’ wages have flat-lined for nearly 40 years. That’s why credit got out of hand—as a way for the country to continue buying without wage growth. He also said manufacturing was needed to rebuild a new American economy.Tuesday, May 22, 2012
AFL-CIO on Labor Movement
Labor Movement Must Be Broad, Inclusive, Innovative Worker-driven Organization...
Mike Hall
The future of the union movement, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told some 600 members of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), depends on showing the public that through our actions on the ground we are a: broad, inclusive, innovative worker-driven organization….We need to build a broader, stronger, more effective movement for all working people—union and nonunion. That means organizing. It means advocacy. It means grassroots mobilization.
Shuler said the AFL-CIO’s young worker initiative, Next Up, is "connecting with the next generation of union activists, engaging them, activating them, helping bring them into leadership, making sure union policies and priorities reflect the realities young people face in the workplace today.”
So many of the Next Up generation can’t find jobs at all, and when they do, they’re often in nontraditional work arrangements—freelancing in benefit-free, low-paying “gigs.” But the AFL-CIO, our affiliates and labor councils are helping young people set up young worker groups all across the country, and the LCC does a fantastic job mentoring young lawyers.
Speaking at the group’s annual meeting in Chicago this morning, Shuler pointed to the AFL-CIO’s “Work Connects Us All” outreach initiatives in Austin, Texas, Portland, Ore., and Pittsburgh, Pa.
As part of this new effort, a comedy show in Portland with Laughing Liberally and a demonstration supporting the city’s cab drivers “took the Portland community by surprise—and they liked us.”
In our everyday work, we have to show that Unions are working people, not outside institutions.
She also said the union movement continues to connect with nonunion workers and families through the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America and by working closely with: Nontraditional and even excluded workers—like the immigrant taxi workers in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco who have formed the AFL-CIO’s newest union, and the domestic workers and day laborers who are organizing, and the low-wage immigrant carwash workers in Los Angeles who now have access to health care through collective action.
She also praised the work of the LCC for “being the guardian angels of the 99 percent.”
I know that your work is not a job—it’s a calling. You are not just excellent lawyers, whose legal skills help workers and their unions, day in and day out. You are activists and advisers, educators and mobilizers—protecting the right to vote on Election Day, protecting the rights of the Occupy protesters, leading teach-ins. Working people and the labor movement are fortunate to know that the lawyers of the LCC have our back.
Mike Hall
The future of the union movement, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told some 600 members of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), depends on showing the public that through our actions on the ground we are a: broad, inclusive, innovative worker-driven organization….We need to build a broader, stronger, more effective movement for all working people—union and nonunion. That means organizing. It means advocacy. It means grassroots mobilization.
Shuler said the AFL-CIO’s young worker initiative, Next Up, is "connecting with the next generation of union activists, engaging them, activating them, helping bring them into leadership, making sure union policies and priorities reflect the realities young people face in the workplace today.”
So many of the Next Up generation can’t find jobs at all, and when they do, they’re often in nontraditional work arrangements—freelancing in benefit-free, low-paying “gigs.” But the AFL-CIO, our affiliates and labor councils are helping young people set up young worker groups all across the country, and the LCC does a fantastic job mentoring young lawyers.
Speaking at the group’s annual meeting in Chicago this morning, Shuler pointed to the AFL-CIO’s “Work Connects Us All” outreach initiatives in Austin, Texas, Portland, Ore., and Pittsburgh, Pa.
As part of this new effort, a comedy show in Portland with Laughing Liberally and a demonstration supporting the city’s cab drivers “took the Portland community by surprise—and they liked us.”
In our everyday work, we have to show that Unions are working people, not outside institutions.
She also said the union movement continues to connect with nonunion workers and families through the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America and by working closely with: Nontraditional and even excluded workers—like the immigrant taxi workers in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco who have formed the AFL-CIO’s newest union, and the domestic workers and day laborers who are organizing, and the low-wage immigrant carwash workers in Los Angeles who now have access to health care through collective action.
She also praised the work of the LCC for “being the guardian angels of the 99 percent.”
I know that your work is not a job—it’s a calling. You are not just excellent lawyers, whose legal skills help workers and their unions, day in and day out. You are activists and advisers, educators and mobilizers—protecting the right to vote on Election Day, protecting the rights of the Occupy protesters, leading teach-ins. Working people and the labor movement are fortunate to know that the lawyers of the LCC have our back.
Monday, May 21, 2012
NNU's Robin Hood Tax
Nurses Lead Chicago Rally for Robin Hood Tax
by Mike Hall
Thousands of National Nurses United (NNU) activists and others called for a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street in a massive demonstration in Chicago. Said NNU co-President Karen Higgins, during the rally in Daley Plaza: We are watching and seeing Wall Street throwing our money away as we see people suffer and die. It will not continue. We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax. The small financial tax on speculation by banks and financial institutions would create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. As NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told reporters: We want a financial transaction tax where we can restore our communities and jumpstart a new strategic approach to the economy invested in the people in this country.
Worldwide, we're joined in movement with 40 countries that are already part of the Robin Hood movement and the Robin Hood tax and we're bringing it to America. The rally coincided with this weekend’s G-8 Summit of the eight top western economic powers, originally set for Chicago, and the NATO summit immediately following. But the G-8 moved to Camp David, Md., to avoid the large crowds of protesters.
Tom Morello spoke and played. After the rally, actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith performed, “Tell Us Where It Hurts, America’s Nurses Are Listening,” a theatrical piece derived from real-life stories of nurses and their patients gathered by NNU. “Tell me where it hurts? I'll tell you were it hurts," Smith said, her voice roaring from the stage. "It hurts when you see how privilege works...and when poor people die."
by Mike Hall
Thousands of National Nurses United (NNU) activists and others called for a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street in a massive demonstration in Chicago. Said NNU co-President Karen Higgins, during the rally in Daley Plaza: We are watching and seeing Wall Street throwing our money away as we see people suffer and die. It will not continue. We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax. The small financial tax on speculation by banks and financial institutions would create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. As NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told reporters: We want a financial transaction tax where we can restore our communities and jumpstart a new strategic approach to the economy invested in the people in this country.
Worldwide, we're joined in movement with 40 countries that are already part of the Robin Hood movement and the Robin Hood tax and we're bringing it to America. The rally coincided with this weekend’s G-8 Summit of the eight top western economic powers, originally set for Chicago, and the NATO summit immediately following. But the G-8 moved to Camp David, Md., to avoid the large crowds of protesters.
Tom Morello spoke and played. After the rally, actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith performed, “Tell Us Where It Hurts, America’s Nurses Are Listening,” a theatrical piece derived from real-life stories of nurses and their patients gathered by NNU. “Tell me where it hurts? I'll tell you were it hurts," Smith said, her voice roaring from the stage. "It hurts when you see how privilege works...and when poor people die."
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Chomsky on Occupy and Labor
The Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded. (Don't forget the workers' takeover at Republic Windows and Doors. -ed)
And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.
We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous best-selling political works, most recently, Hopes and Prospects, Making the Future, and Occupy, published by Zuccotti Park Press, from which this speech, given last October, is excerpted and adapted. His web site is www.chomsky.info
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded. (Don't forget the workers' takeover at Republic Windows and Doors. -ed)
And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.
We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous best-selling political works, most recently, Hopes and Prospects, Making the Future, and Occupy, published by Zuccotti Park Press, from which this speech, given last October, is excerpted and adapted. His web site is www.chomsky.info
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