WIN Week In Review July 19-20, 2008

By Doug Cunningham

GM - America’s fourth largest company in annual sales - said Tuesday that it’s making more deep cuts to survive a harsh economy. GM jobs have gone from 107,000 hourly jobs in 2004 to 74,000 today. Buyouts and early retirement incentives will slash even more of those as some new workers are added at half the pay. The new cuts include selling off $4-7 billion in assets, slashing salaried jobs and benefits and suspending the GM stock dividend. GM CEO Rick Waggoner called this an “unprecedentedly difficult time”. He said these cuts are necessary for GM’s survival.

Workers at the University of California’s 10 campuses went on strike Monday. Jesse Russell reports:
Members of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Union walked off the job at 10 University of California campuses on Monday, protesting a pay scale they say is 25 percent less than what workers with similar jobs are paid at community colleges and private hospitals. The workers are paid on average $10 per hour, and they perform food service, medical, bus driving, and janitorial duties at the campuses and university hospitals. The union was under a restraining order issued by a San Francisco judge on Friday, but the strikes are a signal that the union plans to ignore that order. Nearly 20,000 workers are represented by the union. Contract negotiations have been at a standstill since the contract expired. They have been working without a contract since January.

Senator John McCain calls Social Security a “disgrace”, but the AFL-CIO says it’s an American success story, it’s not broken and it’s NOT a disgrace. The labor federation says Social Security is the cornerstone of American retirement security and McCain wants to gamble it away with risky privatization and diversion schemes that will only weaken it. McCain, the AFL-CIO note, has used every opportunity to vote to replace Social Security with private accounts that will undermine the system. What millions of Americans who depend on Social Security need, the AFL-CIO says, is a president who will strengthen the system, protect it and bring it into long-term balance.

AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department President, Mark Ayers says that Senator John McCain has failed veterans in the U.S. Senate.
[Ayers]: “Not only has he voted the wrong way on veterans issues, such as opposing increased funding for veteran’s health care the last four years in a row, but he also doesn’t support middle class workers’ issues. As veterans, we respect Senator McCain’s military service to our country, but we don’t respect his record in the United States Senate.”

On Thursday, the SEIU rallied for what it called a Global Day of Action to take back the economy against private equity firms. One of the goals, according to the SEIU, is to get Congress to close tax loopholes that give private equity firms big tax breaks that then reward the destruction of jobs when equity firms buy, slash and sell companies. SEIU says if these tax loopholes were closed to the “buyout billionaires” $31 billion in government revenue would be generated. That money could be used for healthcare or for middle-class tax cuts rather than stuffing the already overstuffed pockets of private equity firm owners.

The Tenement museum on the lower east side honors the history of New York City garment workers who organized unions to better their lives. But UAW Local 2110 organizer Edan Shulz says the museum isn’t honoring its own workers’ wishes to have their union recognized.

[Shulz]: “It is pretty ironic that their own employer is trying to push them away from a union that they want."