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AFL-CIO hails vote on immigration bill, vows work to improve

Richard Trumka — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:02:00 -0400

Editor's note: The following are two statements from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: the first was issued May 22, recognizing Senate Judiciary Committee 13-5 vote to send the immigration reform bill to the floor. The second, issued May 21, explains the labor federation's opposition to the amendments from Republican Senator Orin Hatch on skilled worker H1-B visas.

Today brings to mind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s wise and hopeful words, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

More than 11 million aspiring Americans took a big step toward becoming citizens today with the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote. That reflects an enormous step toward healing an injustice, the deportation crisis that has wrecked families, communities, and workplaces for far too long.

The next step, of course, is not to rest on this accomplishment, but rather to redouble labor's campaign for a roadmap to citizenship. That will mean everything from old school lobbying to new school social media in conjunction with new and longstanding allies.

We appreciate the work done by the Gang of Eight, as well as all those senators - both Democrats and Republicans - who engaged in good faith in the arduous job of advancing this bill. We applaud the progress by the Judiciary Committee, but we will still work to make a good bill even better. We will continue to pursue constructive amendments where needed - whether on family reunification, skilled-worker visas [see statement below], worker protections, or the Uniting American Families Act.

But our bottom line remains the same: a reliable, inclusive roadmap to citizenship for sisters and brothers who are American in all but paper. The Senate Judiciary Committee clears that bar readily and we look forward to helping move it to President Obama's desk expeditiously.

Hatch H-1B amendments are anti-worker

The labor movement has no higher priority in 2013 than a workable immigration system that will allow 11 million aspiring Americans to become citizens. That's why labor has been working tirelessly with faith groups, DREAMers, and the civil rights community to ensure that we move forward this year and create a roadmap to citizenship.

The progress on this bill so far has been commendable. With the hard work of so many for so long, our broad and diverse coalition has become unstoppable.

There is no reason why this strong coalition should accept anti-worker amendments. And let's be clear: Senator Orrin Hatch's H-1B amendments are unambiguous attacks on American workers.

Hatch's amendments change the bill so that high tech companies could functionally bring in H-1B visa holders without first making the jobs available to American workers. Hatch's amendments would mean that American corporations could fire American workers in order to bring in H-1B visa holders at lower wages.

The next Sergei Brin might be sitting in an American classroom right now. But if that future innovator cannot get an entry-level job in high tech because employers prefer importing temporary workers, entrepreneurial innovations will not occur in the United States.

Tech tycoons like Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg have gotten rich while wages in the technology sector have stagnated. Today's H-1B amendments are being considered on the same day that Apple's CEO is testifying about Apple's multi-billion dollar tax avoidance schemes. If the hard work of America's tech workers is ever to pay off, we need to craft policy that benefits the people who actually write code, rather than just rewarding industry honchos who write checks to politicians. Our goal should be an America in which our young tech workers can pay off their student loans, not one in which Larry Ellison can build ever more extravagant yachts. We expect better, we deserve better, and if necessary, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, we will get better.

We are thankful that the Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to report out a bill today that supports a real roadmap to citizenship. We will continue to work with our allies to pass immigration reform with a roadmap to citizenship in 2013.

Photo: Unite Here and other labor unions participate in Chicago's May 1, 2006, mega-immigrant rights march (PW/Pepe Lozano).

Today in labor history: Debs imprisoned

Special to PeoplesWorld.org — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:02:00 -0400

Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned May 22, 1895, for his role in the Pullman strike.

Debs was a labor activist in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries who had wide support from workers all over the country.

He was a founder of one of the nation's first industrial unions, the American Railway Union, and he went on to help launch the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies.

He ran for president of the United States five times on the Socialist Party ticket, attracting six percent of the popular vote in 1912.

On the same date in 1920, the Civil Service Retirement Act was signed into law, giving federal workers a pension.

And on May 22 in 1964, Democratic president Lyndon Johnson announced the goals of his "Great Society": to bring "an end to poverty and racial injustice" in America.

Photo: Pullman strikers outside Arcade Building in Pullman, Chicago. The Illinois National Guard can be seen guarding the building during the Pullman Railroad Strike in 1894. Wikimedia Commons.

Students can now earn a college degree in heavy metal

Blake Deppe — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:50:00 -0400

The music genre of heavy metal, known colloquially as metal, is increasingly becoming the object of study and analysis. Now, England's New College Nottingham has introduced the Heavy Metal Music Performance degree, which will prepare them for careers in the music industry.

Students enrolled in the degree program will learn the history of metal, from past censorship issues to major events and achievements. They will also study metal genealogy (or the lineage of bands and subgenres), metal's relationship with philosophy and religion, composing the music, and learning the ins and outs of the music business, with an emphasis on the metal/hard rock side of things.

Course lecturer Liam Maloy spent seven months putting the course together. He remarked, "In the past, heavy metal has not been taken seriously and is seen as lacking academic credibility when compared with other genres such as jazz and classical music. But that's just a cultural construction."

Nottingham is a major music hub in England, with a particularly strong focus on metal. The annual Download Festival there attracts an average of 75,000 rock and heavy metal fans per year. Metal record label Earache Records was also founded there in 1985. Also, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, who led the music movement known as The New Wave of British Heavy Metal ("NWOBHM"), hails from that city.

This is, however, not the first time that metal has been observed from an academic standpoint. In a 2007 study, University of Warwick psychologist Stuart Cadwallader found that many intelligent teenagers and young adults increasingly turn to heavy metal, above other musical genres. He presented his findings to a British Psychological Society conference in York after research that surveyed 1,057 members of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth. He also held an online discussion involving 19 students in the academy, 17 of whom were metal fans.

Cadwallader said, "Participants [in the study] said they appreciated the complex and sometimes social or political themes of metal more than perhaps the average pop song. There is a perception of gifted and talented students being into classical music, but I think that is an inaccurate stereotype."

Metal was also the subject of a February 7 study this year by a group of physicists from Cornell University. That project's goal was to determine how humans behave in extreme social conditions, including riots and organized protests and demonstrations. The focus, in particular, however, was on the collective behavior of more energized, panicked crowds. Since scientists couldn't exactly start a riot for the purpose of research, they used mosh pits at metal shows as the basis of their study.

For those not acquainted with metal culture, mosh pits are highly-energized sections of a crowd at concerts, in which participants push and slam into one another, often in a circular motion. It is considered a form of aggressive dancing connected primarily with metal, hard rock, and hardcore.

Researchers found that traditional mosh pits were highly unpredictable and random as far as movement was concerned, while circle pits (where participants moshed in a more circular motion) had a sense of order and regulation; computer simulations were able to reproduce circle pits based on that orderliness. Researchers hope the work will lead to a better understanding of "crowd mentality."

However, metal's associations with academia have taken plenty of flak from detractors. Chris McGovern, chairman for the Campaign for Real Education, remarked, "I'm not against metal, I just don't think it will impress an employer to find that a youngster has a degree in heavy metal. It could become a 'disqualification.'"

Metal Music Blog writer \m/ecca wrote, however, that while "people with this degree may be discriminated against in the job market, the real target market for this degree are people who possess the passion for the heavy metal genre. Many of the best musicians in the genre do in fact have a strong musical education background. Don't write off this degree upon your first glance."

Maloy concluded, "Here in Nottingham, we wanted to offer something special that reflects our city's culture and employment opportunities. Metal is an extremely technical genre of music, and the study of its culture and context is a rising academic theme, so we're very excited to be at the forefront of its integration with education."

Photo: Thrash metal band Slayer performs at a show. Wikipedia

Senate judiciary committee approves immigration bill

Emile Schepers — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:44:00 -0400

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted 13 to 5 to send the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization act of 2013, S 744, to the full Senate for debate and a vote, a process that will probably begin in early June.

The vote came after the committee performed its "markup" function of dealing with most of the 300 amendments to the mammoth bill. Voting "no" were Republican Senators Sessions (Alabama), Grassley (Iowa), Cruz (Texas), Cornyn (Texas), and Lee (Utah).

The bill was supported by a bipartisan group of eight senators (the "Gang of Eight"), which included Democrats Bennett (Colorado), Durbin(Illinois), Schumer (New York) and Menendez (New Jersey) as well as Republicans McCain (Arizona), Flake (Arizona), Graham (South Carolina) and Rubio (Florida). Durbin, Schumer, Graham, and Flake are also Judiciary Committee members.

The markup process consisted of efforts by the Republican right to achieve two main objectives: To make the bill much harder on undocumented immigrants, and to make it easier for U.S. corporations to bring in more foreign workers in both high skills and lower skills categories.

In the first category was an amendment offered by Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to make it impossible for anybody who has ever knowingly been in the United States without papers to become a U.S. citizen. Other anti-undocumented amendments would have excluded from legalization anyone whose income was less than four times the poverty rate, forbidden immigrants in the process of legalizing themselves from even briefly visiting their relatives in their countries of origin, denied all means tested public benefits to such immigrants even after they become citizens, and not allowed the process of legalization to begin until the government could attest that it had the border "sealed" to the point that 90 percent of unauthorized entries were stopped.

Most of these were defeated handily. The one on "sealing the border" and another that requires the government to set up a system of biometric data collection to make sure that people who come here on temporary visas leave when they are supposed to, were decoupled from the legalization process. If the bill becomes law, all this will not delay the process of legalizing the estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants.

But the committee largely acceded to Republican demands to make it easier for corporations to bring in new guest workers, and to retailor visa procedures to suit the interests of business. For example, the original minimum of 65,000 new H-1B visas for highly skilled workers was raised to 110,000 to please high tech industries. This is strongly opposed by organized labor, which strongly supports, on the other hand, the legalization of the undocumented. This concession was supposedly made to get the support of influential Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, for passage of the bill. Even though S 744 passed the Judiciary Committee stage quite easily, a bigger fight is expected in the full Senate. The Democrats have a majority there of 53 to 45 Republicans, plus two independents who will probably vote in favor. However, this is not enough to ensure cloture and a vote, which is the reason given for the further concessions to the Republicans on what is already a problematic bill.

A major progressive amendment to the bill, presented by Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, would have allowed U.S. citizen spouses of same-sex couples to petition for green cards (permanent legal resident visas) for their spouses. This was seen by the White House, the other members of the "Gang of Eight" and Leahy's fellow Democrats on the committee as endangering the passage of the bill because of the level of Republican animosity it would generate, and Leahy reluctantly withdrew his amendment.

The bill as passed by the Judiciary Committee, is already very problematic, although the AFL-CIO leadership and most immigrants' rights organizations see it as better than nothing, and as a start.

To legalize themselves, undocumented immigrants will have to jump through many hoops. They must first register as "Registered Provisional Immigrants" (RPIs), from which they are barred if they were not already in continuous presence in the country since December 31 2011 at the latest. They must pay a $500 fine, then manage to live and work here for 6 years without being unemployed for more than 60 days and with an average income of at least 125 percent of the poverty line. They also must not have felony convictions or more than two misdemeanor convictions (defined differently depending on the state). After the initial 6 years, they can apply to stay for another 4, paying another fine. After 10 years as RPI's, they can apply for green cards, and after that, they can apply for U.S. citizenship in another 3 years (2 years less than the regular wait). There are more generous conditions for "dreamers" (undocumented youth who were brought here without papers before they were 16 years old will have only a 5 year wait as RPIs), and farm workers.

But the main problem is that during this entire 10 year initial waiting period, "Registered Provisional Immigrants" will be at the mercy of their employers as well as of economic conditions. This time period needs to be much shorter, and the income and employment requirements eliminated. Otherwise this is just a gift to the most unscrupulous employers.

What is a "felony" and a "misdemeanor" for immigration purposes needs to be clearly defined. We cannot assume that in every state of the union a regime of perfect justice prevails, and that there are no bigoted or corrupt police officers, prosecutors or immigration agents. There are plenty of cases of U.S. citizens being "accidentally" rounded up and deported because they look "Hispanic" or have Spanish names, let alone non-citizens who should be protected by the legislation.

The extension of E-Verify to eventually include all employers, and thus all employees, is also a problem. So is the elimination of the "diversity lottery" of visas, which will make coming to the United States much harder for most would be-immigrants from Africa.

And there will be strong pressure in the House of Representatives to move the legislation further to the right, because of the 233 to 201 Republican majority. That fight now starts.

But immigrants' rights and labor activists say they will fight to make further changes, and point out that whatever happens in Congress this year is not the end but the beginning of the struggle for justice for immigrants. Even if some are unjustly excluded from legalization (and then are faced with greater repression), the prospect of millions acquiring the right and ability to defend themselves legally, in workplace and community, makes the effort worthwhile.

As the legislative struggle continues, so does the struggle to get the government to stop the current high level of deportation of immigrants who, under the new law, would be eligible to apply for legalization.

Photo: Activists in Washington, D.C. march for immigrant rights. ep_jhu/Flickr

A call for “foreclosure-free zones” at Detroit “people’s hearing”

Dave Elsila — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:26:00 -0400

DETROIT - United Auto Workers International Vice-President Cindy Estrada has called on union members to mobilize to create "foreclosure-free zones," to halt the eviction threats that have affected more than 16,000 families in southeastern Michigan since 2008.

Addressing a "People's Hearing" attended by more than 150 Detroit-area residents May 20, Estrada and two dozen homeowners, neighborhood leaders, and legal workers shared their experiences in facing down the attempts by banks, mortgage holders, and the federal-backed mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to kick people out of their homes.

Northwest Detroit resident Jerry Cullors testified how he and his wife awoke on Halloween last fall to see a dumpster and wrecking crew outside their home. Anti-eviction fighters from the UAW, the Detroit Eviction Defense group, and others quickly filled the dumpster with fallen leaves, leaving no room for the family's possessions. At the same time, legal workers were in court to win a stay of the eviction.

"Right now, despite Fannie and Freddie, we're still in our house," Cullors said. "And we're not leaving."

"Our dream as Americans is to own what we work for," he added. "There's nothing wrong with owning your dream. Why do banks think they should have the right to destroy the dream?"

While Cullors and some other threatened residents have been able to stay in their homes thanks to community supporters blocking dumpsters, and legal efforts seeking stays of evictions, thousands of others are facing the imminent loss of their homes. Ted Phillips of Detroit's United Community Housing Coalition testified that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made 3,203 requests for bailiffs to evict families in Wayne County's 36th District Court alone.

Victims of foreclosures often are families who have suffered unemployment or medical problems and who have asked for loan modifications or reductions in principal. But, as many homeowners and community leaders testified, more often than not, banks will deny or stall such requests and then, without proper warning, will foreclose on the homes and put them up for sale at sheriff's auctions.

Edward Khammo of suburban Sterling Heights testified that after becoming seriously ill, he asked for help from his bank to modify his "underwater" mortgage. "They told us they'd work something out with us," he said. "Instead they sent people to our house, took pictures, and told us we owed $240,000, even though houses on our block are selling for $40,000. We've been in our home 20 years, but to them it's like we don't exist. We've made our payments but they're still trying to evict us."

"But we're fighting back," he said. "We're like David and Goliath, and you know how that story ended."

Once homes are foreclosed and sold at a sheriff's auction and families are evicted, one of two things happen, Phillips said. The houses sit vacant, adding to neighborhood blight, or are sold for bargain-basement prices to outside investors who often "flip" them to sell at market rates. Even if the occupants of the foreclosed homes offer to buy them back at market prices to avoid eviction, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not deal with them.

Representatives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had promised to attend the hearing. But at the last minute, they refused to come, and two vacant chairs labeled with the agencies' names faced the audience.

"They can't face us," said Estrada. "Shame on them."

Referring to the UAW's history of fighting injustice, Estrada urged the many union members in the audience, "Go back to our local unions and tell the stories you've heard here. Go back and make foreclosure-free zones. Anything we can do, we're going to do." (The UAW has a long record of fighting evictions; during the 1930s it was not uncommon for union members to pick up furniture that bailiffs had put curbside and take it back into the evicted families' homes.)

Detroit attorney Jerry Goldberg reminded the audience that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Michigan had a law providing a five-year moratorium against foreclosures. "We need such a law again in Michigan and across the country," he said.

Hanging in front of the union hall was a banner urging President Obama to issue an executive order for a two-year moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Organizers of the hearing distributed a publication, "A Hurricane Without Water," that points out the federal government halted foreclosure and reduced mortgage principal for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Organizers said they would send a videotape of the hearings to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so they could see and hear the testimony that they refused to hear in person, and that they would plan demonstrations at the agencies' headquarters.

Detroit Eviction Defense meets every Thursday. Further information is available at www.DetroitEvictionDefense.org.

Photo: "People's Hearing" on foreclosures, May 20 in Detroit. At right is attorney Jerry Goldberg. Photo courtesy of Bob Ingalls.

Catholic “union” refuses to back Carla Hale, but AFL-CIO will

Bruce Bostick — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:06:00 -0400

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Carla Hale, the 19-year teacher at Columbus Bishop Watterson High School who was fired after her mother's obituary stated that she was "survived by Carla & her partner," received word this week that the phony Catholic teachers "union" to which she has paid two decades worth of dues will not support her in her fight to be reinstated. In a public statement, the Central Ohio Association of Catholic Educators stated thru spokesperson Kathleen Mahoney they would not appeal her case to arbitration.

This will not affect her ongoing fight to reverse her firing at the hands of the Central Ohio Catholic Diocese, stated Tom Tootle, the attorney representing Hale. According to Tootle, "COACE has never in its history appealed any grievance for any of its members to arbitration."

It was learned through confidential sources that a number of teachers, members of COACE at Bishop Watterson High School, had initiated a petition to decertify that group as representing the teachers at that school.

The AFL-CIO Central Labor Council for Central Ohio, meanwhile, unanimously passed a strongly worded resolution this past week supporting Hale in her fight to be reinstated. The AFL-CIO is made up of actual independent unions in the central Ohio area.

Also this past week, the first hearing was held with the Columbus Human Rights Commission on Hale's case. Columbus, Ohio has strong language that includes specific wording outlawing discrimination in housing or employment because of sexual orientation. Conviction under the HRC legislation could result in jail time and up to $10,000 in fines. Tootle stated that a first meeting was held with Nelson Hewitt of the HRC.

"We came away very encouraged," stated Mr. Tootle.

A fund has now been set up (carlahalefund.com ) to raise money needed for her legal case. The grassroots committee, mainly composed of Hale's students, parents of students, alumni, and former teachers at Watterson H.S., is planning a series of fund raising projects, parties and other activities. T-shirts supporting Ms. Hale were being hawked at a recent rally.

More than 100 protestors rallied May 18 at the Catholic Diocese here, calling on the diocese to "Do what Jesus would do," according to organizer Amanda Finelli.

"Morality is not a list of restrictions, doctrines and rituals. That is not what Jesus said," Finelli stated. "We learned that we should treat others with dignity and respect. Jesus never would've fired Carla!"

Speaking for the AFL-CIO, Glen Skeen, an officer in CWA and president of Pride@Work Ohio, told the crowd that he is "a member of a real union, one that actually stands up and represents its members."

"We are here supporting Carla, not because we know her, like so many of you, but because nobody, whether we know them or not, should ever have to live in fear because their boss, whether it's a church or a company, can fire them for what they do in their personal lives," Skeen said.

"We are union, and we say that everyone should have rights on the job, everyone should have democratic rights & no one should ever have to face what Carla has."

Frank Wilson, a recently retired Watterson teacher, said that he knew Carla and served on committees with her, and greatly respected her for her work.

"She never quizzed me about my personal live and I never did about hers," he said. "Carla Hale is one of the best, most respected teachers I've ever known, and the decision to fire her was absolutely the worst administrative decision ever!"

It was announced that the online petition supporting Carla Hale on change.org had some 130,000 signatures.

Photo: Carla Hale ("I Support Carla Hale" Facebook page)

Unions: Keep immigration open to family members

Press Associates — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:49:00 -0400

WASHINGTON - Unions and their allies, led by the AFL-CIO, back changes to the draft comprehensive immigration law that would keep immigration rights open for family members of current permanent residents.

Whether the amendment, by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, will succeed, is open to question. Immigration bill crafters want to admit fewer family members and more workers with high skills. They have successfully fended off GOP-offered weakening amendments as the Senate Judiciary Committee worked its way through the draft.

But that doesn't mean every amendment was rejected. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., won an 18-0 vote for his amendment that - in so many words - says if immigration enforcement officials pick up undocumented parents of minor children, the parents should be given adequate time to make child care arrangements, and contact social service agencies. And the parents should not be shipped off to distant points.

Hirono's and Franken's amendments were among the hundreds that senators slogged through as they labored to finish committee work on the immigration overhaul before Memorial Day. If they succeed, the full Senate will debate it in June.

In their letter, the 204 unions, civil rights, immigrant rights and community groups told senators that "family-based immigration has significant economic benefits, especially for long-term economic growth."

But the proposed immigration law would "shut out siblings and married adult children" of current residents, including U.S. citizens, their letter adds. The immigration bill "also creates an experimental 'points'-based system that may not allow these family members to reunite with their U.S. citizen parents or siblings.

"With this system, even if you may have some of the 'right' attributes, such as a college degree and employment history, and are the sibling of a U.S. citizen, you still may not get a visa through this new system, depending on demand in any given year. In addition, given that women rely on the family-based system more, we are also con-cerned that women may be disadvantaged in this new system. Women from countries where women's educational and employment opportunities are limited will be unlikely to accumulate enough 'points' to gain entry into the U.S.," the groups' letter warns.

Besides the AFL-CIO, letter signers include: The American Federation of Teachers, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), an AFL-CIO constituency group, and its Nevada chapter, the CSEA-AFL-CIO, the Laborers, the National Education Association, the Service Employees and three SEIU locals (744, 775NW, and United Service Workers West) and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

"Americans should not have to choose between living and working in the U.S. with no family support and living in a country that offers few opportunities for families. Brothers and sisters and children of all ages are an inextricable part of any family. A narrow concept of family downplays the valuable contributions made by all family members. Any policy that would undermine critical family ties goes against our identity as a nation," the letter says.

Minimum wage earners: “You have to swallow your pride”

Michael Moore — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:40:00 -0400

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Minnesota state legislator who spent a week living on the minimum wage met that week with three Minnesotans for whom the minimum-wage challenge is an everyday reality.

Four days into his five-day walk in the shoes of the state's lowest-paid workers, Rep. Jason Metsa listened as three minimum-wage earners related the experiences Metsa wouldn't have during his experiment.

Things like health care, housing costs and the unpredictable nature of most low-wage jobs - those are the challenges Avita Samuels, Janiece Watts and Robert Schiff shared with Metsa, the DFLer from Virginia, Minn., who accepted Working America's challenge to live a week on Minnesota's minimum wage of $7.25.

Metsa spent a week in April living on the minimum wage to prepare himself for the state House debate, expected the week of May 24, on legislation to raise Minnesota's minimum to $9.95 hourly. Minnesota is one of several states whose lawmakers, disgusted with inaction by the U.S. Congress on proposals to raise the federal minimum of $7.25, have leaped ahead and proposed to do it on their own.

Seeing the higher minimum become law, Samuels said, would mean more than a bigger paycheck. It would mean respect for the work she does. "I take pride in my job. I want to do the best I can," the 23-year-old retail worker told Metsa. "I don't want to have to ask for a higher minimum wage, but I have to."

Metsa's minimum-wage budget of $290 for the week he spent in workers' shoes assumes a 40-hour workweek, but that's rarely a reality for retail workers like Samuels and Watts.

Samuels, a student at the University of Minnesota, juggles work with school. Watts, who works in a grocery store, found herself in a similar situation until she graduated last year.

Now she juggles work with trying to find another job. "Every so often I pick up some extra hours, but most of the time I work 24 hours per week," the 24-year-old said.

Schiff, a 31-year-old security worker, supports four children, ranging in age from 8 months to 12 years old, with his minimum-wage job. Metsa asked how he juggles fixed costs like rent and food with unexpected expenses like medical care. "Most of the time those medical expenses go on the back burner," Schiff acknowledged.

"When you've got four kids, you've got to pick and choose. There are times when your kids have to go without because you've got to pay rent."

Trying to find rental housing is a steep challenge for minimum-wage workers - something Metsa learned firsthand, when he tried finding apartments available for $359 per month. That's the amount Metsa, using the JOBS NOW Coalition's Family Budget Calculator, allowed himself for housing.

Using a search engine that collects data from several online apartment postings, Metsa found eight options in his initial search of the Twin Cities. Most were senior-living facilities or vacation units that rent by the week. Metsa is 32.

He tried calling the property manager of an apartment complex in Woodbury, but the number listed was no good. The only remaining choice was to sublet a room in a 4-bedroom house for $325 per month. Still, there was a catch: To inquire about the sublet, Metsa needed to pay a finder's fee to the website.

"I'm finding a lot of these intermediaries," Metsa said. "I think I'd rule out an apartment search online pretty quickly. It would be easier to network with friends and family to cut a deal, maybe stay on someone's couch."

That's a fairly common strategy, says Bree Halverson, statewide director of Working America. As the AFL-CIO's community affiliate, Working America represents 300,000 non-union Minnesotans, including many who work minimum-wage jobs.

"We know members who are living with family or friends while they try to find something else," Halverson said, adding Internet access, security deposits, utility costs and credit checks present more barriers to affordable housing for low-wage workers.

"The bottom line is if you're on this budget, you have to get help from somewhere, whether it's family or friends or public assistance," Chase Brandau, a Working America organizer based in Minnesota, said.

Schiff, Samuels and Watts, of course, know that better than most. Schiff said he's gone to his mother for help with groceries. Samuels talked about pleading with supervisors for the flexibility to take another job. Watts admitted she's "lucky" to be on her parents' health insurance. "You end up having to swallow your pride," Schiff said.

Metsa pledged to pass along the workers' stories to his colleagues - and do his part to "raise the amount in each of these columns," he said, pointing to a chart with his $290-per-week budget broken down into basic needs. "This budget would be a constant juggling act," Metsa said. "What do I give up today to get what I gave up yesterday?"

Michael Moore is editor of the St. Paul Union Advocate

Photo: Rep. Jason Metsa hears from minimum wage earners. Michael Moore, St. Paul Union Advocate

Second court further limits Obama recess appointments

Mark Gruenberg — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:26:00 -0400

PHILADELPHIA - A second federal appeals court further limited President Obama's power to make "recess appointments" to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when the Senate is out of session.

In its May 16 ruling, a two-judge majority of Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that such appointments are illegal even when the Senate is on recess for several weeks. The NLRB is considering how to appeal the court's decision.

The judges used that rationale to throw out an NLRB ruling in 2011 ordering New Vista Nursing Home in Newark, N.J., to recognize and bargain with the Service Employees 1199 United Health Care Workers East. They said one of the three members of that NLRB, Craig Becker, was an illegal recess appointee - and without him the board lacked a quorum to rule on New Vista's case.

The Philadelphia court's New Vista ruling came down the morning the Senate Labor Committee held a confirmation hearing on five Obama NLRB nominees. The Philadelphia ruling builds on a decision the NLRB lost this past January in the Noel Canning case, in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, often called the nation's second-most-powerful court because it handles most cases involving federal agencies.

Both cases are important to workers because without three sitting members, the NLRB can't function. Other courts have disagreed with the D.C. and Philadelphia courts on when the president can make "recess appointments."

Left unsaid in all the cases is that Senate Republican filibusters prevented permanent NLRB members from taking office. And without a functioning NLRB, cases involving workers and companies get delayed and justice is denied, unions point out.

The D.C. judges said two Obama "recess appointees," Richard Griffin and Sharon Block, were illegal, starting in Jan. 2012, because Obama named them when - the judges said - the Senate was still in session and could "advise and consent" to Obama NLRB nominees. That ruling could throw out hundreds of NLRB decisions.

The Senate was actually in short pro forma sessions, once every three days, lasting 35 seconds or so, where one senator would call the Senate to order and then quickly gavel it to a close. Obama appointed Griffin and Block between those sessions.

But Obama appointed Becker, now a co-counsel at the AFL-CIO and a longtime union lawyer, during a three-week Senate recess in 2010. The two-judge majority in Philadelphia said an appointment even during an officially declared three-week intersession recess isn't legal, so the board didn't have three sitting members when it sanctioned New Vista. It tossed out the NLRB's ruling against the nursing home.

Photo: Workers who suffer retaliation for trying to form a union require a fully functioning NLRB in order to protect their rights. AP

Texas plant blast explainable, not excusable

Bill Knight — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:09:00 -0400

The April explosion at the West, Texas, fertilizer plant that killed 14 people, injured about 200 others and destroyed dozens of homes was so powerful it could be felt 50 miles away, registering as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake.

The blast should continue to rumble throughout the country since the plant's owner apparently didn't disclose the dangers there, and the government agencies responsible for protecting the area also failed. Profoundly.

The regulatory failure was explainable but not excusable.

The catastrophe reveals an abdication of responsibilities by corporations and government to protect workers and communities. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigated and it seems likely the tragedy was an accident caused by ignorance, negligence, and greed.

Government agencies supposed to oversee such operations didn't, or couldn't, and underfunding them is no accident. Choices were made. A company's financial interests seemingly took precedence over public safety or the well-being of employees. A business played down or ignored the risks.

"It is unlikely that the owners of the West plant intended to kill anyone," said Penn State law professor Ellen Dannin. "But there was, at least, gross neglect in the siting of the plant in the midst of a town, where the company was situated - so close to the town, schools, and other infrastructure.

"There were many other red flags that cast doubt on the integrity of this company," continued Dannin, author of Taking Back the Workers' Law: How To Fight The Assault On Labor Rights. "Those flags can be found in the way they stored the ammonium nitrate, in construction of the building, and in their violation of federal law by failing to report the amounts of the chemical they had on hand."

Donald Adair's West Fertilizer Co. and its parent company Adair Grain, Inc., have a history of violations, according to Agence France Presse, which noted the company "paid more than $5,000 in fines in 2012 after being cited for mislabeled cargo tanks and inadequate transport practices, and had been cited by state authorities for a lack of permit in 2006."

In 2011, the company told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that there was no risk of fire or explosion (despite another 27 tons of toxic, flammable anhydrous ammonia there).

The EPA fined the plant in 2006, according to WFAA-TV news in Dallas, which cited evidence the facility paid a $2,300 fine then for "failing to have a risk management plan that met federal standards." That's just an outline to ensure chemical accidents don't happen and to show there are safeguards making such tragedies preventable.

Also, Adair failed to report it was storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate - 1,350 times the amount that should alert the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it should monitor the site, according to Reuters. Any facility holding 400 lbs. of ammonium nitrate is required to report that to DHS.

The danger was obvious. American terrorist Timothy McVeigh used the same fertilizer in 1995 to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building.

"Texas, at least, had every reason to take the hazard of fertilizer explosions seriously," reported the Society of Environmental Journalists. "An ammonium nitrate fertilizer blast in 1947 at Texas City, Texas, killed at least 581 people - the worst single industrial accident in U.S. history."

Where was the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or its state and local counterparts? OSHA last inspected West Fertilizer in 1985, according to Bloomberg News.

OSHA is hampered by anti-regulation zealots who hamstring its authority and cut its budget. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled OSHA needed search warrants to inspect employers' facilities, weakening the agency's mandate. Also, lobbied by the chemical industry, Congress during the GOP Bush administration made risk management plans mandated in 1990s Clean Air Act more difficult for the public to find.

Finally, although the worldwide trend is for "privatized regulation" where companies being examined fund the examiners, in the United States, the trend is to starve agencies.

Either way, the results can be deadly.

Required to ensure each worker has safe and healthful working conditions, OSHA has two main functions: Inspecting workplaces and furthering health and safety standards. But OSHA is woefully understaffed and underfunded. With 2,200 inspectors and more than seven million workplaces where 130 million people work, it would take more than 100 years for OSHA inspectors to look over each workplace, says the AFL-CIO.

Compare that to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

"Although Americans were 270 times more likely to die in a workplace accident than a terrorist attack in 2011, the DHS' budget that year was $47 billion, while OSHA's budget was only $558 million," wrote labor journalist Mike Elk.

Besides OSHA, EPA and DHS, various agencies should have kept track of the plant. "This tragic explosion points to the need for more resources allocated to OSHA," said Tom O'Connor, director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. "With adequate funding for more OSHA inspectors, more potentially dangerous sites - like this fertilizer manufacturing plant - can be inspected and hazards abated."

Former OSHA official Celeste Monforton told Elk that communicating just about terrorist threats shows a system that doesn't see workplace accidents as a danger.

"A wise public protection system would look at these risks in a more integrated way," she said. "If you are looking at the hazard of ammonium nitrate, you would look at from a variety of potential ways, it could be mishandled whether it could be stolen or used in a terrorist attack or being used by a company in a way that puts the community and workers at risk."

There are businesses that are safe and also profitable, of course. But there's also a mindset that there's never enough profit and that maximizing income must finally sacrifice safety, workers' rights and product quality.

So will neighborhoods continue to unknowingly have hazardous facilities near nursing homes, schools and apartment, like at West, Texas? They will if there's no counterweight to the power of unscrupulous employers.

Writing in the Progressive Populist, former broadcast journalist and business consultant James Moore said: "Generations from now...people may find it hard to understand what we allowed to happen in order to hold down our tax burden and to let industry create jobs and find energy without government meddling."

Bill Knight is editor of The Labor Paper

Photo: Investigators carry off debris from the destroyed fertilizer plant. LM Otero/AP

Scandal, smandal, sign me up for Obamacare!

John Case — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:01:00 -0400

A rumor in Washington reports that President Obama has ordered the White House staff to spend no more than 10 percent of its time on the rash of scandals which, in sum, amount to a desperate Republican attempt to unseat a sitting president, recalling the shameful Gingrich impeachment campaign against President Clinton, to stop the president's agenda - especially on health care.

I agree with the president's directive, if it's true. Here's my 10 percent even though I'm hardly part of the the White House staff!

With regard to Benghazi, it's a sideshow that's going nowhere, except as bait to suck the U.S. into military intervention Syria - an unwise course Obama has so far held at bay.

No doubt there are political splits in the military, as the cuts imposed by both the budget and sequester process have already been painful for many projects - and their civilian contractors and employees.

In fact, one of the most underreported aspects of the entire budget and sequester debate - and now scandal reporting - is the multitude of vile, hurtful, racist, homophobic and false insults hurled at federal workers of every description, especially by tea party types. They have been treated as the butt of reactionary one-liners ever since Reagan, and they are not happy.

Which takes us to the IRS scandal. For the ordinary person, I think he or she must be absolutely stunned to learn that it took more than 10 minutes to determine that the tea party should NOT be given a tax exemption as a "social welfare," "non-partisan" organization.

Now, it's true that liberal and progressive - frankly political - organizations have taken advantage of the 501(c)(4) tax exempt provisions too, though not on the scale of the tea party.

But consider, if the tea party can be called non-political for tax purposes, what's left of political organization and activity that you can't smuggle into tax-exempt status by one means or another? Why not just say political parties are also tax exempt? There is a vast disconnect between the public's perception of "political" and the current IRS policy.

Obama needs to repair that disconnect. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision now enables anonymous corporations and billionaires to funnel unlimited political funds through supposedly "social welfare" organizations, completely perverting the original intent of the classification. Either eliminate the "political" loophole, or rewrite it to block its corruption. Personally, knowing more than a few government workers, there is no question in my mind that the attacks, freezes, insults, and defunding maneuvers from Congress against the IRS have taken a large toll on the morale of its workforce.

Lastly, on the issue of bugging the Associated Press, we have yet to hear the real reason for it. Until then, the administration is guilty until proven innocent of excessive use of the "war on terror" executive privilege.

But what are the scandals really about? They're about Obamacare: they're about about doing everything possible to either kill it, or slow it down until the Republicans get another chance at the White House. They know, they know, what will happen politically to the millions who get insurance for the first time under Obama. They remember, they remember, that FDR and Social Security, gave the Democrats supremacy in Congress for 30 years until that scab Reagan backstabbed the country on the behest of GE and Business Roundtable.

The House has passed bills 37 times repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Think of how much time is taken up JUST investigating scandals and repealing the ACA? Add to that reactionary forces in 18 states have tried to stop the expansion of Medicaid.

Since the anemic, but still positive, growth in recent months has begun to reduce the budget deficit, and since the Republicans themselves have had to start doing complete turnarounds on the sequester of services that affected them, they find themselves without the budget issue to nullify Congress. As a last (legal) resort, they are drawing from the despicable Gingrich playbook with a plan to waste enormous amounts of precious time needed to improve the economic recovery and reckon with the obvious truths emerging in climate change research.

Full enrollment in the ACA is, I submit, a game changer for labor, the progressive movement and the progressive majority, and for working-class security and empowerment - for all the reasons that the right fears it!

The National Employment Law Association reports that the ACA contains important protections against firing or discriminating against for workers who assert their right to health benefits. Under the act OSHA is assigned enforcement responsibility for reinstatement and back pay awards of workers who are fired or discriminated against for exercising their rights. In addition, there is a very important provision in the law: Department of Labor sanctions against employers violating or evading the ACA cannot be enjoined or postponed by appeals to higher courts.

This would be a dramatic improvement of the National Labor Relations Board decisions on reinstatement -- which can be postponed years through appeals. Furthermore, representation before OSHA or the Department of Labor proceedings do not require lawyers - rank-and-file activists can be trained to perform most representation activities.

So, as my 10 minutes are up, ignore the scandals. Organize everywhere to enroll the millions and millions into the ACA. Today!

Photo: flickr.com/photos/progressohio/ / CC BY 2.0

Union and growers split on immigration plan

Mark Gruenberg — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:54:00 -0400

WASHINGTON - The United Farm Workers and the nation's farm growers' lobby, who bargained for 13 years between themselves to create a new program for bringing foreign farm workers temporarily into the U.S., have split on details of the issue, their testimony to the House Immigration subcommittee shows.

And that split could imperil immigration legislation overall, since the GOP-run House has made it clear that it may deep-six the Senate's comprehensive immigration overhaul - assuming that measure passes - and instead will take up immigration issues piece by piece. And even then, the House might not pass anything at all.

The problems are reflected in the first measure the House panel considered, HR1773, the farm worker visa bill. HR1773 would take the nation back to the bad old days of the infamous bracero program, which ended in 1964, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez told lawmakers. He opposed the House measure.

And in an interview the day before his testimony, Rodriguez warned that getting any immigration reform through the GOP-run House "would be a lot of hard work.

"We'll monitor it" he said, referring to the entire immigration legislation, "advocate for it and engage with farm workers and others to ensure victory. And we'll have to educate members of Congress, many of whom do not understand the issue," he added.

The future of farm workers and their rights is important to the entire country, Rodriguez told lawmakers on May 15, since farm workers toil under unhealthy backbreaking and hazardous conditions to produce the nation's food supply.

"To the extent a new path is needed to bring more professional farm workers from abroad to this country, we should look forward and not backward to the bracero program," Rodriguez told the House Immigration subcommittee.

"HR1773 is a step backward. Future agricultural workers who we invite to our country to work should be accorded equality, job mobility, strong labor and wage protections, and an opportunity to earn immigration status leading to citizenship."

The Senate proposal would let growers import 112,233 farm workers per year, and that's too low, the growers' witness told the GOP-run House committee. Growers want 500,000 imported workers. Rodriguez took no position on the numbers.

He also admitted UFW did not gain one demand: Bringing farm workers under the National Labor Relations Act. Farm workers were excluded when the NLRA passed in 1935, to win Southern Democratic votes. Those southerners feared African-American farm workers would unionize.

"Our agreement with grower associations is a compromise," Rodriguez said. "The agreement does have the basic wage and working protections we need to ensure that farm worker wages that are already low do not decrease." The wage is a "prevailing wage," which the growers' rep said would be above the minimum wage.

"No industry will benefit more from immigration reform than the agricultural industry," Rodriguez told lawmakers. " The issue is having enough people who are both willing and able to do difficult agricultural work. What we need in order to ensure we have enough people both willing and able to work in agriculture is to elevate farm work so guest workers or farm workers without legal status do not need to be the norm.

"We can elevate farm workers by making changes to immigration policy that do the following:

"Retain much of the existing workforce in agriculture. We can keep people in agriculture by honoring farm workers with the ability to earn permanent legal status. What we wanted in new immigration policy was higher wages and better protections. We did not get those changes in the agreement between grower associations and the UFW. What we need to have is the ability for the existing farm workers to earn permanent legal status to encourage people to stay in agriculture and to honor our American values."

"Include basic worker protections that ensure U.S. worker wages do not decrease and that stabilize the agricultural workforce," he said. The UFW and other farm worker groups "want an end to the more than 70 years of discriminatory labor legislation that excludes farm workers from basic protections like the right to organize, to act collectively, and to join a union." But they did not get it, he admitted.

They got the wage and working conditions protections that both Rodriguez and the growers rep, North Carolinian H. Lee Wicker, mentioned.

But Wicker endorsed HR1773. He called it "not perfect," but declared it "offers great employment opportunities and provides growers a" worker visa "program that is substantially more predictable and user friendly than" current H-2A farm worker visas.

"The delicate balance in this bill between program improvements for farmers and worker benefits and protections, represents a win for farmers, a win for farm workers and secures a safe food supply," Wicker claimed.

Photo: Gosia Wozniacka/AP

New York City mayoral hopefuls debate stop and frisk, union busting

Gabe Falsetta — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:50:00 -0400

NEW YORK -- A number of mayoral candidates in New York are making an effort to distinguish themselves from current Mayor Michael Bloomberg in some important policy areas. Unlike Mayor Bloomberg they are saying, for example, that unions are not to blame for the city's economic problems and at least one candidates says he does not like what the current mayor says is necessary to fight crime - a police department policy of "stop and frisk."

The policy differences emerged at a recent debate sponsored by DC 37, a big union representing many city workers.

The debate, held at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, drew not only workers who are members of unions but people impacted by the economic crisis in many different ways.

It opened with a statement by radio personality Bob Hennelly that "one in five New Yorkers live in poverty; the number of New Yorkers on food stamps more than doubled; in 2010, there were 800,000 people on food stamps, now, that number is closer to 1.8 million."

The Coalition for the Homeless reported that 50,000 people stay in shelters every night; half of those are children. Rents in the city account for 49 percent of income budgets.

The questions directed to the candidates came from the groups that sponsored the debate: the unions, and community and tenant group like La Fuente, TenantsPac and Community Voices Heard.

Sal Albanese (former city council member), Pastor Eddie Delgado (endorsed by Rubin Diaz), Bill DeBlasio (current Public Advocate), John Liu (current NY City Comptroller) and Bill Thompson (past NY City Comptroller) participated. DeBlasio, who arrived first, and Thompson last both received polite applause, but when Liu entered it was clear that he was the favorite of this audience. And during the question and response Liu received the most enthusiastic reaction.

Christine Quinn, the front runner, did not show and when the moderator made the announcement, the audience reacted with what seemed to be moderate disappointment but because of Quinn's positions-that are too close to Mayor Bloomberg's - they were not surprised.

The Bloomberg administration has said unions are the roadblocks to the recovery - not Wall Street. DeBlasio had this to say on this question, "I've fought Bloomberg every step of the way. This administration has been practicing union busting with a velvet glove. Contracting out and undermining not only the labor movement but the city's economy."

All of the candidates were in agreement with the above statement from DeBlasio. Liu said, "This is a discussion on the future of New York City, the future after Michael Bloomberg is out of here."

Liu was the only candidate that said he would end the Stop and Frisk policy of this administration while others talked in terms of modification. Raglan George, Executive Director of DC 1707, asked about the continuing cuts to early child care. "Are you going to try to have a line in the budget every year for children?"

Bill Thomson answered, "Restore 10,000 slots. This is a war against women and workers. We have to move this city in a different direction. Restoring and expanding these slots means openings for children and jobs for the people of New York."

Other major questions that will impact the quality of life for working class New Yorkers in the near future were also addressed, and all of the participants expressed basic agreement on those issues.

In spite of the conviction of two of Liu's fundraisers, Liu remains in the race and the clear favorite at this event in this campaign. However, it will become clear in the near future as to whether the convictions will be too much to overcome. City matching funds and/or big union endorsements are in the balance.

Photo: DC 37 Facebook page.

Massive twister ravages Oklahoma town

Blake Deppe — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:35:00 -0400

The people of Moore, Oklahoma, are still picking up the pieces after the May 20 monster tornado that tore its way through the town, just outside Oklahoma City. It left 24 dead - including at least nine children - and countless more missing. At one point, the tornado was 2 miles wide. In its wake, the town is a disaster area.

The tornado carved a 20-mile-long slash through Moore, leveling the Briarwood and Plaza Towers elementary schools. Moore Medical Center, though it survived, also sustained incredible damage. This has proven to be the deadliest tornado since the one that hit Joplin, Missouri, in 2011, and the worst Oklahoma tornado since the one that hit on May 3, 1999. It is also being called one of the worst tornadoes in world history.

President Obama talked about the tragedy today, remarking, "As a nation, our full focus right now is on the urgent work of rescue, and the hard work of recovery and rebuilding that lies ahead. But if there is hope to hold on to, it's the knowledge that the good people there are better prepared for this type of storm than most. And what they can be certain of is that Americans from every corner of the country will be right there with them, opening our homes and our hearts to those in need."

T h e Oklahoma AFL-CIO is working with the United Way of Central Oklahoma, which has activated its disaster relief fund. Donations can be made through their website, and also by traditional mail to United Way of Central Oklahoma, P.O. Box 837, Oklahoma City, OK, 73101, with attention to May Tornado Relief. The Oklahoma AFL-CIO is asking every local union to notify the federation if any union member was affected by the storm.

One of the surefire ways that Oklahoma will pull through is through federal aid, something that might put the state's U.S. senators Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn - both Republicans - in an uncomfortable position. The two senators have repeatedly voted against funding federal disaster aid for other parts of the country, and both backed a plan to cut disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, with Coburn calling it "wasteful spending." They have also opposed increased funding for FEMA, which is on the ground now in Moore, along with the National Guard, organizing search and rescue efforts.

In a fit of hypocrisy, Coburn sang a different tune in regard to his own state. After a powerful ice storm in January 2007, he urged federal officials to speed up disaster relief aid for Oklahoma. He is expected to do the same in regard to the disaster in Moore, though his spokesman John Hart has tried to justify the hypocrisy by noting, "The senator will seek to ensure that funding for tornado disaster relief in Oklahoma will be offset by cuts to federal spending elsewhere in the budget."

For Inhofe's part, this Republican insisted that federal aid for Oklahoma will be "totally different" than the Hurricane Sandy aid. He claimed that the Sandy relief bill was "supposed to help New Jersey, but they were getting things in the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C." What he failed to acknowledge was that, while New Jersey was among the states touched the hardest by Sandy, 24 states overall suffered from that storm, some of them rather severely.

Meanwhile, for those left to sift through the wreckage, perhaps the problems are only just beginning. The people of Moore cannot be expected to merely pick up where they left off; rebuilding and recovering will cost money that few of them are likely to have. And preparing for the next tornado is a daunting prospect for this largely working-class community. Not all of the homeowners can afford to have storm shelters built beneath their houses, and the lack of such shelters may have played a factor in the damage and death toll this time around.

It seems that old-fashioned storm bunkers are fading away as developers build more and more homes without them. In an area like Oklahoma, which lies right in Tornado Alley, that could be a death sentence to a homeowner, who would be left with nowhere to go but a hallway or bathroom in the event of a twister. Why, one might ask, do so many new houses lack these shelters, or even full basements? The profiteering of Big Real Estate could have something to do with it. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "experts" in the business feel that buyers are less likely to purchase a house if they feel that a storm shelter or basement adds to the overall price of it.

"If anything, we're moving away from having a place to go to during a storm," said Steve Melman, director of economic services for the National Association of Home Builders.

Those who have shelter-less homes could have such bunkers installed, but at what would be considered an exorbitant price for a working- or middle-class resident. According to Home Advisor, FEMA suggests roughly 6 square feet of space per person for a tornado shelter. The average cost of that is reportedly $9,667, with the lowest someone is likely to find being $5,500. The maximum is $17,500. Then there are the prices of installation and delivery. For an average estimate on the cost of that, one can look at Louisiana-based company F-5 Storm Shelters & Safe Rooms, which charges a $2,195 installation fee for its smallest "safe room" and a $2.65-per-mile delivery charge. All in all, the process is neither easy nor cheap.

Recovering from this storm alone will be costly enough for residents. They're expected to have a very hard time putting their lives back together in the aftermath of what state highway patrol trooper Betsy Randolph called "mass devastation."

Randolph added, "The debris field is so high, and so far and so wide. There are wounded people walking the streets. I saw people that had stuff sticking out of their bodies from things that were flying around in the air. There are cars crumpled up like little toys and thrown on top of buildings. Everywhere you look, things are bloody."

Photo: The Moore Medical Center, severely damaged by the tornado. Alonzo Adams/AP

Chicago protests to stop 54 school closings heat up

John Bachtell — Tue, 21 May 2013 22:59:00 -0400

CHICAGO- "We are not going without a fight!" declared nine-year-old Asean Johnson, a third grader at Marcus Garvey Elementary School. "We shall not be moved today!"

Johnson was one of thousands of students, teachers, parents and community residents who ended a three-day march May 20 by ringing City Hall and demanding a moratorium on school closures. In an act of civil disobedience, 26 community activists were arrested earlier in City Hall when they blocked elevators.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Board of Education will vote on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to shutter 54 schools on May 22. (Story continues after video.)

While Emanuel insists the closures are necessary because the "status quo is not acceptable" opposition continues to mount. As public skepticism grows, CPS officials have imposed a news blackout at the affected schools.

Meanwhile, CPS continues to shift reasons for the closures. At first they maintained there was an underutilization crisis. But this was based on cramming 30-36 children to a classroom.

CPS declared the closures were necessary because of a budget crisis. But they were forced to admit the closures would result in no savings and in fact larger expenditures in the short run.

Now CPS says the reason is a combination of underutilization and low performance, but many of the schools slated for closure are improving or provide some outstanding programming.

One such school is Lafayette Elementary School that has a widely recognized student orchestra. It is not clear if there will be space for the orchestra in the school it will be merged with.

Lafayette parents say news of the closure hit them like a death in the family.

"CPS is ripping families apart," said Valerie Nelson who has two daughters at Lafayette. "This school is our family."

Nelson said Lafayette has 150 children with special needs including both her children. Like the orchestra, these children face an uncertain future.

"CPS knows how harmful this is," said Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) president Karen Lewis. "This is a movement from the neighborhoods and across the nation. No matter what happens on (May 22), it is not over."

The three day protest included two feeder marches past most of the schools slated for closure on Chicago's south and west sides. Ninety percent of the children affected are African American. This fact prompted a lawsuit by CTU, which asserts the closures constitute violations of the Civil Rights Act, in addition to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Hundreds of high school students boycotted classes on Monday to join the march, despite threatening robo-calls from CPS officials to parents the night before.

"My old elementary school is being closed," said Pilar Castro, a senior at Thomas Kelly High School and member of Chicago Students Organized to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS). "Even though high schools are not being closed we are being affected. Our communities are being affected. Rahm Emanuel may not care for our communities, but we do."

Castro was one of five people arrested at a "die-in" on May 15 at the intersection of Cottage Grove and 61^st Streets to protest the closures.

Students are increasingly taking to open rebellion against the changes in CPS. CSOSOS has mushroomed in high schools across the city.

"I'm here to fight for these schools," said Victoria Crider, a junior at King College Prep High School. "Three elementary schools I went to are being closed. These children being merged into other schools will have to cross gang lines. It will be more dangerous."

Crider helped lead a sit-in at King on Dec. 13, after the administration fired a number of teachers and refused to hear the concerns of students. The entire student body occupied the school foyer.

One of the schools where marchers rallied at was Williams Elementary School in Bronzeville. Students at the school had staged a sit-in on May 3. When the protest approached, administrators put the school on lockdown and refused to allow parents to check their children out.

One of those who had marched all three days was Cathaline Carter, a retired schoolteacher who had taught in CPS for 37 years.

"I'm protesting these closures by this unelected school board of millionaires and billionaires who have no interest in our children. Their interest is in privatizing education as they are privatizing everything else," said Carter, who was inspired by the community support all along the march route.

"There were so many churches that opened their doors to us with water, rest rooms and respite. I don't think we've seen that kind of thing since the civil rights movement. Churches of all denominations coming together."

"They may take a few schools off the list and think we will go away. We are not going to be satisfied until all the schools are kept open," said Carter.

Photo: Students, teachers, parents and community residents end a three-day march May 20 with protests at City Hall, demanding investment in schools not closings (PW/Earchiel Johnson).

South India voters reject BJP

R.K. Sharma — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:12:00 -0400

Indian voters rejected the reactionary Hindu-nationalist party, known as the BJP, in a recent state election. The huge loss spells trouble for the ultra-right party in the 2014 national elections.

Out of the four southern Indian states, Karnataka was the only state where the BJP had found a foothold. In the 2007 elections, voters there had delivered a disgusting surprise by putting the BJP into power. The southern Indian states have, in general, a progressive voter base and a strong secular tradition both of which run contrary to the BJP agenda.

The BJP government in Karnataka has been mired in corruption and personal power feuds, which led to its downfall. Voters refused to give a second term. Its strength reduced from 110 seats to only 40 in a state assembly of 224.

The big winners are the ruling Congress Party, which increased its tally to 121 seats, and another secular party, JDS, which has worked in alliance with the left parties in past. The JDS bagged 40 seats.

This election has a great impact on Indian politics and sets the stage for the next general election to be held in 2014. The BJP holds about 19 of 20 parliamentary seats from Karnataka and may loose most of them to secular parties, including Congress.

Political analysts attributed the Karnataka victory to the Congress Party leadership trio: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, who is being groomed for the PM position. This election has given a great facelift to otherwise sinking prospects of the Congress Party, which is also corruption-laden.

In other news, Indian Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid travelled to Beijing to negotiate Chinese withdrawal from Indian territory along a disputed boundary line. The incursion point was 12 miles within the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh area of Jammu and Kashmir State of Northern India. As India and China have fought in the past over boundaries, it was indeed a victory of peace forces on both sides to end the issue diplomatically. A section of Indian media has been hawkishly raising voices against China's incursions. The Chinese agreed to withdraw its troops to the Line of Actual Control, without accepting that it had trespassed.

India and China are partners in ever increasing trade and agreed to cooperate in future projects. The Chinese foreign minister will visit India soon and complete some of the remaining agenda.

Photo: The Indian state of Karnataka is highlighted (CC).

After avoiding billions in taxes, Apple CEO seeks more breaks

John Wojcik — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:00:00 -0400

As his company hordes $102 billion in overseas profits on which it has paid no taxes, Apple's CEO, Tom Cook, is asking the Senate today for lower corporate tax rates.

Cook is testifying in favor of the lower rates before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, even whose ranking GOP member, Sen. John McCain, has described Apple as "one of the largest tax evaders."

According to reports released by groups like the AFL-CIO and Citizens for Tax Justice, Apple has been notorious for avoiding taxes by setting up foreign "subsidiaries" in tax-haven countries, and moving jobs and profit centers out of the country.

"Apple has paid almost no income taxes to any country on its $102 billion in offshore cash holdings," said a Citizens for Tax Justice report released only yesterday at a joint press conference called by the AFL-CIO and CTJ. "Applying the U.S. tax rate to Apple's overseas profits would generate $35.3 billion in U.S. income taxes," the report said. The groups say that in view of this, Cook's request for even more tax breaks is particularly outrageous.

Today's Senate hearing, titled "Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code - Part 2," is devoted entirely to Apple's tax avoidance schemes. Senators are looking into Apple's holding of more than $100 billion in tax haven countries, including Ireland where the company is registered. Even Ireland, the company's critics note, has collected no taxes from Apple.

CEO Cook, who earned $378 million at Apple last year, is calling upon the senators to approve a "tax repatriation holiday" and a "territorial tax system."

The AFL-CIO, the nations largest labor federation, said in a statement today that Cook's proposals would mean companies like Apple would pay even less in taxes, CEOs like Cook would earn even more money and "we will have higher taxes, fewer good schools and good roads and police and teachers and disaster relief and the other things government does to make our lives better."

Small businessmen note that the tax avoidance by Apple, particularly the policy of rewarding the company with such breaks for offshoring jobs, makes Apple more competitive against smaller American companies that do keep jobs and profits at home.

Bob Clemente, the campaign manager for Americans for Tax Fairness, another tax justice group, told the same press conference yesterday "Apple is acting like a back-alley thief trying to pick the pockets of American taxpayers."

According to CTJ's executive director Bob McIntyre, the situation is even worse than it looks. He said "often the overseas profits are actually profits made in the U.S. that the company is pretending to have made overseas so that it can avoid taxes."

Damon Silvers, Policy Director and Special Counsel for the AFL-CIO, said the request by Apple for even more tax breaks was "particularly disgusting in light of what is going on with the sequester cuts.

"Today, as Apple testifies," said Silvers, "we are dismantling vital government services, laying people off because we are in theory in fiscal crisis.... Head Start, cancer research, national defense - there is a long list of functions not being carried forward because in the view of Congress we don't have the revenues to support it."

Image: Americans for Tax Fairness

Atmosphere's carbon dioxide breaches 400

Marc Brodine — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:37:00 -0400

For the first time since accurate measurements of carbon dioxide have been taken, the amount in the atmosphere has topped 400 parts per million (ppm) for a sustained period. Many climate scientists, such as James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute, believe that any sustained period of time with higher than 350 ppm threatens catastrophic global warming.

Since 1992, when many countries pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the Rio Summit, emissions have been steadily increasing. As more dire warnings from scientists have accumulated, as more extreme weather events have forced awareness of climate change, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to increase. In many years emissions have accelerated instead of being reduced, as virtually all scientific authorities have called for and as most major industrial countries have pledged to do.

Carbon dioxide emissions accumulate in the atmosphere, meaning that current emissions will continue to affect our weather and climate systems for many decades, even centuries. The earth's climate system is massive, and like massive ocean liners, it takes a long time to make it change course. The climate changes we are currently experiencing result from the last 150 years of accumulation and increases, resulting from industrial development, transportation, other burning of fossil fuels, and deforestation.

Recent public opinion polls continue to show a large majority understanding that climate change is real (though the exact percentage continues to fluctuate up and down with media coverage and extreme weather events), and a plurality of people who know that it is caused by human activity. Many people have been affected by the climate change deniers and their campaign to confuse understanding and delay action. Well over 90% of climate change scientists and climate change peer-reviewed publications confirm the scientific understanding that climate change is real, it is primarily caused by human activity, and it is getting worse.

Many major corporations desire to keep making money from business as usual, in spite of how destructive to our common future that will be. And they desire, if action is taken, to place the burdens and costs of change on workers and communities, rather than on those who have been making excess profits from polluting our atmosphere. They want to keep atmospheric pollution as an "externality" that they don't have to include on their balance sheets.

Many of the same corporations and business interests who promote climate change denialism also oppose union rights, increases in the minimum wage, and health care for all. The Koch brothers, who fund much right-wing political activism, are prime examples. They understand that just as stronger unions threaten their profits, so too does serious action to address climate change.

Even as some countries take real action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Germany, for example), the situation is getting worse. Fueled by new coal-fired electric plants in China and India, by deforestation in the Amazon, Indonesia, and Siberia, by growing numbers of gas-fueled cars, by continuing subsidies to fossil fuel industries, and by petroleum-based agriculture, we are pushing ever closer to dangerous tipping points which threaten to spiral the world's climate systems out of control.

The potential exists for millions of new jobs in the U.S., converting to solar-based energy, retrofitting existing buildings, and building sustainable agriculture. This could lay the basis for a new unity between the labor movement, the environmental movement, and all progressives.

A dramatic turn is necessary - as the new high of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere highlights. Without such a shift, the earth is in danger of even more harmful extreme weather events, including prolonged multi-year drought in many places. The threat is not to the existence of the earth, it is to the possibility of a flourishing humanity. Already there are millions of climate refugees, millions of people harmed by extreme weather such as Hurricane Sandy and the drought in much the U.S. Mid-West and Southeast, millions facing increased water stress. These are no longer theoretical or in the future, they have already arrived.

400 ppm is a clarion call for action, for transforming our building, industrial, transportation, distribution, agriculture, and water systems. A healthy humanity depends on a health earth, and 400 ppm is the planet's rising temperature. The earth has a fever, and humanity will pay the price.

Photo: This December 1972 file photo released by NASA shows a view of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew while traveling toward the Moon. The photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea and Africa, top, to the Antarctic polar ice cap, made visible for the first time by the Apollo trajectory. (AP Photo/NASA)

MOOCs heralded as free online education, but how free is free?

Michelle Kern — Tue, 21 May 2013 01:36:00 -0400

MOOCs have been a heated subject of media attention lately, even attracting controversy in California's educational system. In theory, these large-scale free online courses (often featuring star professors from blue-ribbon universities) sound like an excellent opportunity for any person wishing to study subjects for no cost on their own. With the barriers of tuition and distance to conventional education, alternative, democratic and accessible ways of continuing studies through MOOCs, delivered online via YouTube or other websites, can seem like a dream come true. Meanwhile, the increasing difficulty for degree-seeking students of getting into required classes in many colleges, due to education cutbacks and shortages, likewise makes the choice to take a for-credit class that accepts unlimited students an appealing alternative.

So what is a MOOC? MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course and is a form of online learning. Online learning is nothing new - free non-credit courses in several subjects have been offered by different instructors and companies on the web for some time now. Also, colleges have offered their own online for-credit courses taught by instructors employed by the college for their own enrolled student body.

What makes the MOOC different is that it is a program created by an outside vendor who licenses its courses to the university, who then offers them as part of their curriculum in a public-private partnership. The courses are taught by a videotaped instructor who is often part of another college, with the coursework and discussion guided by a teaching assistant contracted by the university, at a much cheaper rate than regular faculty. Corporations such as Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy and others have already contracted with universities (Duke, MIT, University of Michigan, and San Jose State University among them) to offer courses.

Increasingly the conversation is revolving around whether these courses are rigorous enough to be taken for college credit, how this would displace traditional faculty, and whether this "democratic" method of accessing education would mostly fall on working-class students, with wealthy students still getting personal attention in small classrooms with an instructor.

Five courses from Coursera have been granted for-credit status recently and college faculty have begun sounding the alarm about the effect this will have on students. MOOCs are notorious for a low completion rate (85 percent - 95 percent of students drop out or fail MOOCs), low instructional contact, and requiring fees (up to $90-$99) to enroll in these courses.

The New York Times reports: "Coursera recently announced another route to help students earn credit for its courses - and produce revenue. The company has arranged for the American Council on Education, the umbrella group of higher education, to have subject experts assess whether several courses are worthy of transfer credits. If the experts say they are, students who successfully complete those courses could take an identity-verified proctored exam, pay a fee and get an ACE Credit transcript, a certification that 2,000 universities already accept for credit.

"Under Coursera's contracts, the company gets most of the revenue; the universities keep 6 percent to 15 percent of the revenue, and 20 percent of gross profits. The contracts describe several monetizing possibilities, including charging for extras like manual grading or tutoring."

Faculty at California's San Jose State University recently issued a letter from their union, the California Faculty Association, stating their refusal to use MOOC course material. Included was a ringing criticism that goes to the heart of the discussion of student access to education:

"In an environment where faculty are constantly reminded that fewer resources for public universities are available, CFA is disturbed that President Qayoumi is not actively lobbying Sacramento and Silicon Valley venture capitalists for more public funding of education. The people with whom he associates, members of the Silicon Valley elite, are the very people who have succeeded in privatizing the wealth generated by our society and making the rules that reduce their tax obligations to California. The partnerships with Udacity and edX will put more tax dollars into the pockets of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and at the expense of the State's taxpayers."

Public college education in California used to be free to students. Universities in California offering accessible education were one of the main reasons Silicon Valley gained prominence as a locus of technological advancement and high profits. Companies that took advantage of this resource are now using loopholes in tax codes to avoid paying taxes to support public university education.

The growing wealth disparity in Silicon Valley points to a divide between the educated class of tech workers and working families seeing their own resources shrink. Dangling a "solution" like MOOCs for low-income students relying on public universities to attain degrees and well-paying jobs is predatory. Educational parity should begin with extracting, via taxes, the wealth of the region to fund accessible public education. MOOCs are corporations offering a bait-and-switch educational rental program in hopes of absorbing even more public money.

Photo: o-SCIENCE-HUMOR-facebook

Ohio unions remain vigilant against anti-worker blitz

Bruce Bostick — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:48:00 -0400

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Labor and the huge We Are Ohio coalition have been holding a series of mass meetings across the state, organizing against introduction of three right to work (for less) bills by right-wing GOP Ohio legislators this session. Last week at the Carpenters Union Hall in Columbus, the 14^th such gathering was an overflow crowd to mobilize against the bills that would strip unions of negotiating power.

"The threat is real," stated AFL-CIO rep Joan Fluharty opening the meeting. "For years we've told people that there is a threat that corporate politicians would try to jam right to-work (for less) legislation thru the legislature here. Well, it's no longer a threat! They've introduced the bills. It's up to us to get organized and fight. If we don't they'll take everything we have!"

Meanwhile, the crowd was still piling in, with people having to park in nearby lots, streets and the alley near the hall.

"We had to get here, this is our fight," said Bob Gossman, president of the United Auto Workers Retiree Council. "We've seen what they did right next door in Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Those are all strong union states. The right-wingers are out to destroy unions because we are the only line of defense workers have. Without unions, nobody is there to stop the corporate power-grab!"

Gossman was leading a large delegation of UAW workers and retirees into the meeting.

"They've all been like this, the halls just won't hold them," said Matt Smith, political director for the Ohio AFL-CIO. "The Republicans are really waking up our sleeping giant. Every meeting just keeps getting bigger and more enthusiastic."

"This is a fight they clearly don't want to have right now," said Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga, "with the operative term being 'right now.' Last year they tried the same thing, attacking unions and the middle class with Senate Bill 5, and then were given a solid whipping by Ohio voters. They're still smarting from that, but we need to get ready, mobilized. They will try to bring them back, just like Republican Governors did in Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin.

"They all said they were against right-to-work, but jammed them thru anyway. They're waiting on the lame-duck session next year and we have no intention of just sitting and waiting. With all our allies, we're getting organized, educated and mobilized and united, we'll win again!"

Republican Governor Kasich and GOP House Speaker Batchelder, after the big mobilization by unions and allies, with hundreds of workers lobbying reps at the statehouse and two large union-led rallies, have sidelined the bills.

"We're stronger together," shouted Mike Weiman, Political Affairs Director of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), addressing the overflow crowd. "They tried to divide us, one against another, last year and we told them---no way! We're union and we are sticking with organized labor and the middle class."

Discussing immediate action plans, all present signed pledge cards, and groups were set up to begin visiting Ohio House reps, with the goal of forcing all to take a position of RTW. Others worked on letters to editors and outreach. Phone banks are now up and running. Nobody left empty-handed or looking for things to do.

"It never stops," said Don Coulter, president of the Columbus chapter of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees. "They just keep trying to take every gain workers fought for and won. But if they want the fight, there are more of us than them. We'll whip them worst this time!"

Photo: DailyKos