Longshore Workers Union Quits the AFL-CIO

GOOD FOR THEM. GETTING OUT OF THE SELL-OUT AFL-CIO IS THE BEST DECISION THEY COULD MAKE!

Breakup offers the Longshore workers a chance to stand for principles over bureaucratic decorum.

 

 

In a surprise move, the 40,000-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union announced its disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO yesterday. The news comes just a week before the federation is set to hold its national convention in Los Angeles, the nation’s biggest port and an ILWU stronghold.

The ILWU, known for its militant traditions and progressive politics, has been drawn into turf wars with other unions in recent years—particularly in the grain export terminals of the Pacific Northwest, where longshore workers have been locked in a high-stakes battle over master contract standards since 2011.

In an  August 29 letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, ILWU President Robert McEllrath cited these ongoing juristictional battles as part of the union’s decision to disaffiliate. The skirmishes hit close to home: McEllrath comes out of Vancouver, Washington’s Local 4, where members of rival unions are crossing ILWU picket lines, and debate over the disputes was squelched at this summer’s state labor convention.

The letter also cited the federation’s compromised positions on health care and immigration reform. Invoking the union’s radical and independent history, McEllrath noted the ILWU did not join the AFL-CIO until 1988—after being kicked out of the CIO during the McCarthy era for being “too red.”

Lockstep with Obama

“[The AFL-CIO] wants to organize these big conventions, and rally to pat themselves on the back, doing nothing to promote the working-class,” said ILWU Coast Committeeman, Leal Sundet, who supported the union’s decision to disaffiliate.

The ILWU supports a national single-payer health care system, while the AFL-CIO is “in lockstep with Obama,” Sundet said. He criticized the federation for being unwilling to discuss the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act, which  discriminates against union Taft-Hartley benefit plans and will impose a so-called “Cadillac tax” on generous benefit plans.

Sundet also chided the federation’s position on immigration reform. The AFL-CIO is backing a bill that he contends  will only make things harder for working-class immigrants, because it is “designed to give [only] highly-paid workers a real path to citizenship.”

It’s clear, however, that the overriding factor in the break is fallout from the ILWU’s ongoing struggle to maintain its longstanding contract standards—and jurisdiction—for 3,000 longshore workers who handle grain along the Puget Sound and Columbia River. Sundet is in the middle of the storm, heading up grain negotiations for the union.

Grain Strain

Longshore workers in the region move nearly 30 percent of all U.S. grain exports, including half the nation’s wheat shipments.

After talks broke down in December between the ILWU and the Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association, two of the four employers—United Grain and Columbia Grain— imposed their “last, best, and final offer,” in hopes of provoking a strike. Meanwhile the union hammered out a separate deal with TEMCO, a joint venture between global agribusiness companies CHS and Cargill.

In February,  United Grain locked out ILWU Local 4 members in Vancouver, Washington. In May, Columbia Grain did likewise with ILWU Local 8 members in Portland, Oregon.

In both cases ILWU members have been rankled by Electrical Workers (IBEW) and other union members crossing their picket lines, escorted in by the company’s private security forces. Adding insult to injury, the IBEW has initiated internal AFL-CIO procedures to contest ILWU jurisdiction over maintenance and repair work in multiple ports in the region.

The lockouts follow on the heels of a pitched battle over 25 jobs in Longview, Washington, in 2011. ILWU members squared off with grain giant EGT after the company announced it would operate its new state-of-the-art terminal with the more compliant Operating Engineers (IUOE) union. After  months of picketing and direct action—including occupation of the grain terminal, a blockaded train shipment, and scores of arrests—the ILWU  finally reached an agreement. ...

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Why Global Warming Will Be Far Worse, Far Sooner, Than Forecasts Predict

Published on Tuesday, September 3, 2013 by Common Dreams

by John Atcheson

As the climate change crisis deepens, is the slow pace of scientific consensus being outrun by the planet's fast-moving warming?The International Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report on global warming – dubbed AR5 – is due out in 2014, but information is leaking out already, and once again, it is likely to be outdated on the day it’s released.

Worse, it will substantially understate both the rate and pace of warming, and it’s consequences.  Here’s why.

Outdated on day of release: The IPCC process virtually assures that all the research used in the report will be several years old.  Since it only uses peer reviewed work and a consensus process, it has a long lead-time and a least common denominator data set.  The latest research and any research that challenges established theory is left on the cutting room floor.

For example, in the AR 4 – released in 2007 -- the IPCC forecast sea level rise to be, at most, 59 centimeters. Conventional wisdom up to that time suggested that continental ice sheets took thousands of years to melt.  But well before that report was issued, research had revealed that dynamic forces were causing these ice sheets to melt much faster.  As a result, even as the AR4 was being released, some researchers were forecasting sea level increases of as much as 3 meters – nearly 5 times the worst-case AR4 estimate.

These excessively conservative forecasts are baked into the IPCC process.  In fact, some suggestthat's the point of the IPCC – to take control of the scientific debate out of the hands of scientists and turn it over to governments.

Ignoring known feedbacks: But that’s only part of the reason the IPCC reports have been out-of-date-on-date-of–issue: for the most part, they still ignore the effects of positive feedbacks on warming. 

For example, the AR 5 will not consider the potential warming from methane released from melting permafrost and volatizing clathrates.  Yet we know this could add more than 2F to projected warming by 2100. 

Indeed, when we look at the geologic record, we see sea level increases, extinctions and climate shifts that are at or beyond our most extreme predictions from models. The amount of carbon causing these geologic events was comparable to what we’re releasing now, but we’re releasing it far faster than occurred in even the worst of these ancient warmings. 

In short, empirical evidence suggests today’s worst-case scenarios are tomorrow’s most-likely outcomes.  The same is true when we do ex-ante analysis of modeling done in the early stages of climate research. Today’s reality goes well beyond even the most dire past predictions. 

Feedbacks probably explain why.

There are at least 12 significant feedbacks that will have a substantial effect on the rate and pace of warming. Yet feedbacks are often too complex to fully characterize, let alone model.  Yet their effects are serious.  For example just 3 of these feedbacks could add as much as 4.5 degrees to the warming forecasts for 2100.

The first is a result of decreases  in sulfur aerosols from phytoplankton, as the seas become more acidic and these critters begin to die off.  Sulfur aerosols are known to moderate solar gain and mitigate global warming.  This could increase warming by close to 1F by 2100. 

Extreme weather events could add another 1.5 F since they effect the Earth’s ability to sequester human emissions and in some cases increase those emissions directly.

Add these to the 2 F expected from methane releases – a conservative number if one compares the results of similar events in the geologic record – and these 3 feedbacks alone could add 4.5 F to our worst-case projections for 2100.

And of course, warming doesn’t simply stop in 2100, merely because we stop modeling beyond that.  It continues and accelerates, and, unchecked, becomes self-reinforcing and irreversible.  We’re already locked into thousands of years of sea level rise from the carbon we’ve put into the system to date. 

Using Nuance to misinform: To the untrained or uncritical eye – which is to say most of the press which has been gutting cutting back on environmental coverage -- the IPCC’s AR5 report could also be seen to reinforce the idea that global warming is “slowing down” or “stopped.” 

The AR5 notes an “observed reduction in surface warming.” The key word here is surface warming.  The reality is, at the moment, because of oscillations in the Pacific, more heat is being absorbed by deeper ocean layers.  The oceans account for about 93% of all warming, so a slow down in the rate of surface warming is relatively insignificant.  On net, the Earth is still warming and, if anything, the rate of warming has accelerated. 

But deniers will be seizing on that phrase and trumpeting it all over their anti-science networks.  And credulous reporters will repeat it endlessly to be “balanced” and to “cover the controversy.”

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Earth will continue to hurtle toward a rendezvous with pre-historic tragedies like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Bottom line: The future we’re fashioning is completely incompatible with the civilization we’ve built, and the IPCC slow-walks , understates and  outright ignores much of the science that screams at us to do something about it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.

SOURCE

The Coalition of the Screwed

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

We live in a society that allows one man to make $15 million a day while a low-income mother gets $4.50 a day for food, and much of Congress wants to cut the $4.50.

Are political and corporate leaders even remotely awareof the conditions of society beneath the wealthiest 10% or so?

The following are some of the victims of an economic system that has forgotten the majority of its people.

Children

One out of every five American children now lives in poverty, and for black children it's nearly one out of TWO. Almost half of food stamp recipients are children.

UNICEF places us near the bottom of the developed world in the inequality of children's well-being, and theOECD found that we have more child poverty than all but 3 of 30 developed countries. It's rather embarrassing to view the charts.

Students

Over the last 12 years, according to a New York Times report, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest. The number of college grads working for minimum wage has doubled in just five years.

Higher education was cut by nearly $17 billion in the years leading up to 2012-13. Through those same years large corporations were avoiding about $14 billion annually in taxes. To make up the difference, students face tuition costs that have risen almost ten times faster than median family income, leading them into their low-wage post-college positions with an average of $26,000 in student loan debt.

The Elderly

Three-quarters of Americans approaching retirement in 2010 had an average of less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. The percentage of elderly (75 to 84) Americans experiencing poverty for the first timedoubled from 2005 to 2009.

The folly of cutting Social Security is reflected in two facts. First, even though Social Security provides only an average benefit of $15,000, it accounts for 55 percent of annual income for the elderly. And second, seniors have spent their working lives paying for their retirement. According to the Urban Institute the average two-earner couple making average wages throughout their lifetimes will receive less in Social Security benefits than they paid in. Same for single males. Almost the same for single females.

Wage Earners

Workers have 30% LESS buying power today than in 1968. If the minimum wage had kept up with employee productivity, it would be $16.54 per hour instead of $7.25.

Almost unimaginably, conditions for workers have gotten even worse since the recession. While 21 percent of job losses since 2008 were considered low-wage positions, 58 percent of jobs added during the recovery were considered low-wage.

As for members of Congress who say "get a job," only one of them was present at the start of a recentunemployment hearing.

The Sick and Disabled

Over 200 recent studies have confirmed a link between financial stress and sickness. In just 20 years America's ranking among developed countries dropped on nearly every major health measure. Victims suffer both physically and mentally. A recent study found that unemployment, whether voluntary or involuntary, can significantly impact a person's mental health. Even grimmer, from 1999 to 2010 thesuicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 increased by almost 30 percent.

In the long run, the only Americans to increase their life expectancy have been seniors covered by Medicare.

Women

Recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that women earn just 80% of men's pay. In Washington, DC and California, Hispanic women make only 44 cents for every dollar made by white men. The only deviation from the norm is that in 47 of 50 large metropolitan areas, well-educated single childless women under 30 earn more than their male counterparts.

But the overall disparities have worsened since the recession, with only about one-fifth of new jobs going to women, and with median wealth for single black and Hispanic women falling to a little over $100. And there's no respite with advancing age. The average American woman's retirement account is 38 percentless than a man's, and women over 65 have twice the poverty rate of men.

Minorities

The Economist states: Before the 1960s...most blacks were poor, few served in public office and almost none were to be found flourishing at the nation's top universities, corporations, law firms and banks. None of that is true today.

Wrong. Much of that is true today. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), median wealth for black families in 2009 was $2,200, compared to $97,900 for white families. (Pew Research reported $5,677 for blacks, $113,149 for whites). EPI said median financial wealth (stocks, etc.) was $200 for blacks, compared to $36,100 for whites.

Since the recession, black and Hispanic wealth has dropped further, by 30 to 40 percent, while white family wealth dropped 11 percent.

Blacks and Hispanics, with 29% of the population, are also severely under-represented on corporate boardsand in higher education.

One of the reasons it's so hard for young blacks to be successful is that they're viewed as criminals by many white authority figures. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander documents the explosion of the prison population for drug offenses, with blacks and Hispanics the main targets even though they use drugs at about the same -- or lesser -- rate as white Americans.

The Homeless

The super-rich want homeless people to get jobs. But they don't want to pay taxes to support job creation. If the richest Americans - the Forbes 400 - had paid a 5% tax on their 2012 investment earnings, enough revenue would have been generated to provide a full-time minimum wage job for every person who washomeless in America on a January night in 2012.

Instead, it keeps getting worse for the homeless. North Carolina made it a crime to feed them. Columbia, South Carolina approved a plan to remove them. Tampa, Florida passed a law that makes it a crime for them to sleep in public.

So who's left after all this? Oh yes, rich white men.

(Photo: Phillies1fan777)

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Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, a writer for progressive publications, and the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org).

SOURCE

Three Inventions That Could Save The World [Good News Part 2]- MOC#260 v...

Published on Sep 3, 2013

This is part two of the good news episode. Three inventions that could save the world.
1) Artificial leaf could power civilization - http://abcn.ws/17LfIFd
2) How to clean up the oceans - http://bit.ly/1a4B52y
3) Butt-chugging - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/but...
4) Urine-powered generator - http://bit.ly/14WijK5

The Copyright Monopoly Was Created As A Censorship Instrument – And Is Still Used As One

Many proponents of the copyright monopoly falsely state that it was created in 1710. That’s not true; it was merely re-enacted in that year. It was created in 1557 as a censorship instrument to suppress political dissent.

When the printing press hit Europe, royalty and clergy panicked.

All of a sudden, they had lost the gatekeeper position of determining what culture and knowledge was available to the masses, and by extension, lost control of the political discourse of their time.

At the time, different regimes reacted differently to the threat. France reacted by banning book shops altogether and banning the use of the printing press under penalty of death. The ban was utterly ineffective. (Yes, you read that right: the penalty for unauthorized copying has been escalated as far as the death penalty, still without effect.)

On the other side of the British Channel, Mary I had inherited a Protestant England from her father, who had converted the entire country from Catholicism just in order to divorce her mother (and moved on to marry a half-dozen other women in sequence). Mary wasn’t very happy with the treatment of her mother and had been raised a Catholic; she saw it as her duty to convert England back to Catholicism, no matter the cost in blood.

She took the throne from her cousin in 1553 and started a crackdown on political dissidents that still to this day earns her the nickname “Bloody Mary”. In the time, there was no difference between political and religious dissent – it was a war of power, superficially over Catholicism or Protestantism. Over 280 dissenters were burned alive on Mary I’s orders as a warning to others. ...

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Sovereign Living: The Show Sizzle Reel

Self-Sufficiency Reality Show Featuring Liberty Activists Sovereign Living Sovereign Living: The show is a reality based television program that follows the Blush Family (John Bush, Catherine Bleish and their children) in their quest to become self-sufficient and lead a more voluntary and natural life. The twelve episode series is a project of The Center for Natural Living 501c3 and was produced by Karmakaze Productions. The purpose of the show is to educate, entertain, and inspire people to take responsibility for their lives, their families, and their communities. Subscribe to SovereignLivingTV Channel DONATE to this project.

6 Important Stories Silenced by Syria War Drums

The news cycle has been completely hijacked by the one-two punch of Miley Cyrus twerking at the VMAs and the relentless march to war in Syria. 

Thankfully, the Miley Cyrus non-story has receded. But if the U.S. Congress votes against striking Syria and the event essentially fades into the background, what then was accomplished by all this uproar?

 Has it all been one big distraction from other important stories? Here are six important stories that have been muffled by the drumbeats of war: 

1. NSA Spying on the World. The biggest story in the world prior to Syria's chemical weapons attack, a story that the Administration moaned they could not get out in front of, are the relentless leaks exposing how the U.S. is spying on the world.  In addition to American citizens being targeted with warrantless spying, it has been revealed that the NSA is also spying on the EU, the UN, G20 (Russia), Germany, Brazil, and the Olympics just to name a few documented targets of illegal spying by the United States. The recent developments since the Syria conflict blacked out any serious coverage has been the release of the black budget for spying of $52 billion, and more countries like France (announced yesterday) and Latin American presidents being added to the growing list of NSA's victims. What's more, the NSA conducted 231 offensive cyber-ops in 2011, hailed as 'active defense'.  Finally, the vast use of illegal wiretaps by the DEA is also coming to light.

Read more at http://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/6-important-stories-silenced-by-syria.html#5av65I5v1qLiX6aU.99