For Kossacks, it's not news that a John McCain presidency would be a disaster for working people. The McCain agenda -- more tax cuts for the rich, privatization of Social Security, and war without end -- would mean  the next four years would be just as disastrous for the American Dream as the last eight have been.

But McCain -- and the corporate interests that support him -- don't want Americans to know about the real McCain record. They're ready to do whatever it takes to sell Americans on a false image of McCain and bury the real McCain record deep underground.

Well, working people know a line of bull when they see it. And today nine workers set out on a campaign to call out John McCain for who he really is.

(Learn more and hear some hard questions for John McCain -- and learn how to submit your own! -- after the jump...)

That's a saying among the United Farm Workers, and this summer it is more fitting then ever.  Yesterday we mourned, Today we act, Tomorrow we will gain justice.

Since May, six farm workers in California have died from what appears to be heat-related causes.  This brings to 15 the number of farm workers whose death have been investigated as heat-related since Governor Schwarzenegger took office.

A motto of the United Farm Workers is Si, Se Puede!, which the Barack Obama campaign has borrowed in its anglo version as "Yes, we can!"

Senator Barack Obama adopted the English version "Yes, we can!" first during the 2004 Illinois Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate, and it has become a mantra of his 2008 presidential campaign.

Wikipedia: Sí se puede

Come around after the fold and I'll show you how we can work together to save lives in California. Si, Se Puede!  Yes, we can!

The story of the Labor Movement is filled with millions of stories, many of which are never reported.

This week, one of those stories was.

Yesterday, two members of Sheet Metal Workers Local 17 in Boston were honored for rescuing a commuter who had fallen onto the train tracks at Boston's North Station.

Six California farm workers have died since May from what appears to be heat related causes.  The latest one was Maria de Jesus Alvarez, 63, mother of nine, who died early this month.  The first one to die was 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who died in May.  Marie was about a month pregnant when she died, and likely did not ever know she was pregnant. The state fined the labor contractor $262,700 for failing to follow heat illness prevention regulations at the time Jimenez was stricken, but that won't bring her back. And the deaths have continued at an accelarated pace since then.

You can help to end this tragedy. This Monday, August 18, more than 800 farm workers from throughout California want to go to Sacramento to lobby the Legislature on a key bill that will help them help themeselves. They want the chance to tell the Governor and their elected officials to support AB 2386, "Secret Ballot Elections for Farmworkers," which has moved out of the assembly and which will be voted on that afternoon in the state senate.  

How you can help, after the fold.

I have been writing about this story since May.  (after the fold are links for diaries for background).  Yet another farmworker has died from the heat. This is the sixth this summer.

Maria de Jesus Alvarez, 63, mother of nine, died from heat exposure in the fields on August 2.  Her death makes six farm workers who died of heat exposure since May and the 15th farm worker heat death since California Governor Schwarzenegger took office.  Even one is too many.  Six this year is a tragedy.  These deaths show that the state of California is unable to protect farm workers.  

We must act.  We must force action by the state to allow farm workers to protect themselves.  For there are no others to do so.

If you care, join me after the fold.

If it's late summer 2008, then Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels must be running for re-election.

crossposted from unbossed

I am a practicing attorney in Knoxville, Tennessee.  And as an attorney, I receive a lot of email regarding CLE's or "continuing legal education" seminars.  Today I recieved an email from M. Lee Smith Publishers, and the Title of the email was "Labor Union Avoidance Master Class: Countering Labor's Aggressive New Organizing Agenda," so of course I had to read more.

Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc on Tuesday said it approved an enhanced employee buyout program that it expects will reduce its salaried work force 10 percent to 15 percent.

When the news broke earlier this month that Wal-Mart started organizing its store supervisors against Barack Obama and other pro-worker candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act, there was widespread outrage - and rightly so. 

According to the Wall Street Journal:

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

Yikes! This obviously raises a lot of questions, but let's start with two I want to specifically address: Is this legal? And what is Wal-Mart afraid of?

But before we begin - more than 25,000 people have already signed a citizen petition to the Federal Election Commission asking for an investigation into Wal-Mart's electioneering.  Can you add your name to our letter?

In the case of privatization at the USPS, the latest GAO report reads more like a big April Fool's joke than reality and contains such ludicrous excuses for privatization that any competent person  would be embarrassed to make them.

crossposted from unbossed

You will see in the diary that I wrote as fast I could, decided to not eat melon with my beautiful Gwen, have to leave in a hurry and ... could not move forward in the day without asking people to get pissed off about the ill-treatment of working people ... so pissed off that they start acting like King Lear before the sadness kicks and, instead, uses the rage to wake people up to something they might not ever considered -- fairness.

I hope you enjoy.

Imagine that you work in pain everyday.  Your body aches; your muscles throb; you just plain hurt. Something’s not right, and you pray everyday that it doesn’t get worse because you can’t afford to go to the doctor.  

Unfortunately, this is a reality for too many workers in this country and a story we heard on the Painful Truth Tour’s Orlando stop. I’ve been blogging about UNITE HERE’s tour of injured workers from the Cintas Corporation’s industrial laundries and how it points to the need for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass next year.

Clearly, the new EFCA legislation will be a step forward for workers in America but any delusions that workers will be close to a level playing field are misplaced. There are simply too many flaws in our free market system to overcome with a bandage solution while ignoring the real structural problems.

A good diary entry can be wonderfully cathartic. One can get all the nooks and crannies out of one's full mind after a long and exhausting day, and perhaps ... PERHAPS get some rest. Wouldn't it be rewarding if he woke up to tons of people on Daily Kos who can totally identify ... enough to even consider being union activists themselves?

The sparks that had been flying for a few days between Governor Don Carcieri and AFSCME Local 94 have died down for the moment.

A recap for those not here in RI: At the end of June, the union's contract with the state expired.  Negotiations had been ongoing for a new contract, but just over a week ago Council 94 (along with a few other smaller unions) overwhelmingly rejected the latest potential agreement because of a change in how much they would pay for health insurance - a change that Carcieri pushed to help close the state's budget deficit).

In response, Carcieri passed an executive order that would have forced the union to use the changes in place of no agreement.  Council 94 and the other unions filed suit in state superior court claiming there were no negotiations.  Last night the judge said a ruling would be issued in two weeks; the governor stated his executive order was on hold pending the ruling.

Link to story in Projo: http://www.projo.com/...

While Cintas laundry workers’ Painful Truth Tour was pulling into the Bay Area, political appointees in the Department of Labor were hard at work on a "secret rule" to delay federal safety agency's process for assessing the risks chemicals and toxins pose to workers.

This episode reminds me of an earlier Bush administration regulation-— one the Cintas Corporation lobbied for— that allows industrial laundries to process shop towels used to sop-up industrial solvents. Cintas workers say they need stronger not weaker protection from chemical exposure on the job.

Cross-posted at MotherTalkers.

Traveling across the country this summer, I have come across people who say they will not vote for Sen. Barack Obama for all kinds of bizarre reasons, including the false premise that he is a Muslim.

But I paused when a dear family member, who is a manager at Walmart, said he has warned his employees that if they vote for Obama, who will "force" them to join a union, they will be out of a job. Apparently, Walmart has urged all its managers to issue this dire warning to their employees.

They're just criminals  - so why should we care about how they are treated in The Big House?

In fact, if we can get "Onshore outsourcing at offshore prices" by using prison labor, what's the problem?

crossposted from unbossed