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Union City News: Women’s Rights Are Human Rights
500,000-plus people, including unionists, descend on D.C. for historic mass march for women’s rights; sister marches occur nationwide: “Show us what America looks like! This is what America looks like!” With that chant – a variation on one that unionists first coined – and more than 500,000 people, including unionists from as far as Los Angeles, descended on Washington on Jan. 21 for a massive march for women’s rights. But that wasn’t the only cause espoused by the D.C. marchers, who were joined by sister marches in cities from New York to Chicago to Minneapolis to St. Louis to Cleveland to Los Angeles – and by busloads and planeloads of marchers who traveled from New York Chicago, L.A., Toronto, Boston, Portland, Ore., and elsewhere.
Latest estimates put the number at over 1 million around the world. And women’s rights wasn’t the only cause that prompted the D.C. march. Campaigners for worker rights, gay-lesbian-bisexual rights, immigrants’ rights, freedom from police brutality against African-Americans, veterans who protested wars and Muslim-Americans protesting discrimination overwhelmed the nation’s capitol. Their numbers dwarfed the 100,000 people whom new Republican President Donald Trump drew the day before. The D.C. march drew members of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Teachers, the Steelworkers, the Office and Professional Employees, AFSCME District Council 24, the Mine Workers, the Food and Commercial Workers, IATSE, the Electrical Workers, the Professional and Technical Employees, Pride at Work and the Auto Workers, among others. Click here for our Facebook album of photos and here to read more: http://bit.ly/2jSII9x
Stop Trump’s Hiring Freeze for Federal Workers
From The AFGE, https://www.afge.org/
Petition: http://bit.ly/2klv7oe
Some members of Congress aren’t wasting any time.
They’re coming for your job. They’ve already introduced bills to silence you in the workplace by chipping away at your workplace rights. And, they have stacked the deck to make it easier for managers to fire you. It may seem like a lot, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Now, President Trump has joined them too. He just signed an executive order that stops federal agencies from hiring new employees.
This hiring freeze won’t make government more efficient. It will add to your already heavy workload. It will block working people who served in the military from accessing the largest employer of veterans in the country. And instead of saving taxpayers money, it will cost millions in contractor fees when our jobs are outsourced to private corporations.
We must act NOW. Please click here and take 5 minutes to write to your member of Congress. Tell them to stand up for workers like us, and defend our jobs. Our communities depend on the services that we provide.
We can’t let Congress or President Trump put that in jeopardy.
Petition: http://bit.ly/2klv7oe
P.S. For news coverage of these cuts, and what Congress and President Trump have planned for working people, click the links below.
- “Trump Team Plans Dramatic Cuts” (Source: The Hill)
- “Revenge of the Bureaucrats” (Source: POLITICO)
- “Newt Gingrich wants to fire federal employees who voted for Clinton” (Source: Salon)
February 4: Milwaukee Art Build for Public Education
“We need teachers, we need books! We need the $ that Walker took!
Join us for a weekend of art in support of the fully funded public schools all our children derserve. We will be making banners, posters, and other pieces in preparation for the coming two-year Wisconsin state budget battle as we demand fair funding for Milwaukee Public School students.
Wisconsin Public Schools have seen a billion dollars cut since 2011, as well as a 2015 public takeover of MPS that was snuck into the last state budget and met fierce resistance and eventually was defeated. MPS students currently receive $1,000+ less per pupil in state funding when compared to their surrounding suburban colleagues. These massive disparities must be erased! We will make sure our state politicians hear and see us in support of fair funding for our students and with this art build we will be impossible to ignore.
Join us on Saturday or Sunday or both days to help us. We’re located in the upstairs of 735 E. Center St., which is above Company Brewing.
Tentative build schedule:
Saturday, February 4: 10am – 10pm
Sunday: February 5: 10am – 10pm
Women Join Marches in Cities Across Wisconsin January 21
Larry Holmes on the National Question 2017
Milwaukee, January 23: Anti-Solitary Demo
There’s a national call for monthly actions against solitary confinement on the 23rd of every month.
This month Milwaukee IWOC is going to chalk outline a solitary cell at the courthouse downtown, circulate a petition and hand out flyers for our letter writing night.
It is very short notice, but if you can make it out, please join us. Just a few people will be something and we can talk about growing for next and future months.
Milwaukee County puts people into solitary under the control of Sherriff Clarke and Jon Litscher, who each have long records of killing and torturing people in their facilities. Creating a sustained presense around this issue, in association with national-level organizing can increase the leverage of a few people spending an hour together.
This is the national call: http://nrcat.org/about-us/take-action-current-legislation/563-together-to-end-solitary
Please comment / contact Ben if you can make it.
JOIN THE SECOND SOLIDARITY CARAVAN TO LOCKED-OUT UAW WORKERS SOUTH BEND, IN – SAT. FEB. 11
white-shirt-day-at-local-9-feb-11-2017
In early January 2017, auto workers from Chicago and Detroit made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of auto workers’ sit-down strikes to lend solidarity to workers who’ve been locked out for eight months and counting. The UAW locked out member of Local 9 told us our trip helped their morale tremendously. Therefore, we are going back again! Please join us!
For more information, please call 313-863-3219, or email autoworkercaravan@gmail.com.
Find us on facebook at: Autoworker Caravan
February 11th 1937 was the day the Flint Sit-down Strike ended in victory for the UAW. This year we will join in solidarity with a local that was an inspiration to Flint. UAW Local 9 staged the first sit-down strike in the UAW on November 17th 1936 at Bendix in South Bend Indiana. Today the historic UAW Local 9 is in the midst of a lock out by Honeywell Corp for the past nine months.
A Solidarity Caravan to UAW Local 9 leaves from UAW Local 22, 4300 Michigan Ave
Detroit, MI, 8:00am,. We will have lunch with UAW Local 9 members, watch a movie about the Flint Sit-down that put the UAW on the map, and join the picket line. Sat., Feb. 11th
Here is a Labor Notes article about our trip by Dianne Feeley and a Real News interview with Todd Treder, Local 9 President, and Bryan Rodgers, Recording Sec’t. interviewed by Autoworker Caravan members Melvin Thompson and Frank Hammer.
http://labornotes.org/blogs/2017/01/birthplace-sit-down-strike-locked-out-eight-months-and-counting
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:18161:UAW-Local-9-Members-Speak-Out-Against-8-Month-Long-Lockout
The 300 workers at Honeywell Aerospace factory in South Bend, Indiana (UAW Local 9) and the 40 or so workers at their sister plant in Green Island, NY (UAW Local 1508) have been locked out since May 9, 2016 over a contract dispute. These workers make braking systems and wheels for commercial and military aircraft, including the Boeing 737, the Boeing B-52, and Lockheed Martin F-35. The average wage was $21.83 per hour.
Honeywell CEO, David Cote, who will retire in March 2017, makes $15,865 per hour. His compensation package includes a base salary, an annual bonus and stock options. When he retires we will receive a monthly retirement check of $908,712. In 2015 Honeywell made a record profit of $4.77 billion and the income in its aerospace division rose–yet the corporation claims it needs to rein in costs because of “turbulence” in the aviation industry.
Honeywell had demanded workers approve a contract that would eliminate cost-of-living increases and pensions, curtail overtime pay, subcontract out union work and restrict representation rights, effectively gutting sixty years of negotiated language. The company wanted the right to unilaterally change health coverage, premiums and deductibles without the union’s approval.
Honeywell was well prepared to play hardball. Well before the contract vote, they began outsourcing work and bringing in workers hired by Strom Engineering who followed workers around, attempting to learn their jobs. But it was a scare tactic, which backfired and unified the work force. Local 9 voted no on the concessionary contract by 270-30.
Two days later the company locked out the workers and bused in scab labor. Workers estimate that even today production is down fifty percent.
Honeywell did not even begin another round of negotiations until September. Their second contract offer was slightly better but still concessionary. The South Bend local voted it down once again by 70% even though their state unemployment benefits have run out. (When the locked out workers in Indiana originally filed for UC benefits, it was Governor – and now Vice-President elect – Mike Pence who tried to have them denied, not Honeywell).
We encourage autoworkers & friends to join the picket line at Honeywell South Bend (3520 Westmoor St, South Bend 46628)
Sat., Feb. 11 a group from Detroit will be leaving from the UAW Local 22 parking lot, 4300 Michigan Ave at 8:00 AM We’ll return in the PM. Please carpool with us, or come on your own! If you’re not from Detroit organize a caravan from where you’re at and come to South Bend Feb. 11 to build solidarity.
UAW Members at Honeywell in South Bend, Indiana Fight Lockout, Stand Strong on Picket Lines, Need Labor-Community Support
Tonight’s guest on Riverwest Radio’s the Grass is Greener is Todd C Treder Vice President of UAW LOCAL 9 in South Bend, IN currently locked out of work by Honeywell since May 9, 2016.
Their plant in South Bend, IN makes airplane brakes for several commercial and military planes.
Honeywell also has UAW LOCAL 1508 in Green Island,NY their sister plant which is locked out as well.
Todd Treder will be telling us some of the background to the lockout and where they go from here. Join us tonight, Sat at 8pm CST 104.1 FM in Milwaukee or http://www.riverwestradio.com/ from anywhere online.
NOTE: Richard W. Graber, the new President and Chief Executive Officer of the $850 million hate machine, the Bradley Foundation, is a former vice president of global relations for Honeywell. The Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation is one of the biggest right-wing racist “think tanks” in the world funding and grooming the Scott Walker administration to attack unions and is behind numerous other attacks on poor and working people including so-called “school choice,” “welfare reform,” de-funding Planned Parenthood and attacking LGBTQ rights. Bradley funded the authors of “The Bell Curve…” a racist eugenics book that claims Black people are genetically inferior to whites. Bradley ideologues and their servants like Scott Walker frequently use terms such as “flexibility” and “reforms” which really means union-busting, pension stealing, de-regulation, eviscerating safety laws, less money for education and other people’s needs among other vicious austerity. More on Bradley here: Stop The Bradley Foundation!
