Corporate Greed at its Worst

“Corporate Greed at its Worst”

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) fought tooth and nail with General Motors president Mary Barra over the closing of the Lordstown, Ohio auto plant that ceased production on March 6. He knew that 1,400 permanent well-paying manufacturing jobs would be lost and would have devastating effects on the city that has been building cars for General Motors since 1966.

But Senator Brown was also aware of the ripple effect that would be caused by the loss of these jobs in the Youngstown area.

The Lordstown plant is just the first of five North American plants GM has scheduled for closing in the coming months. More jobs will be lost and thousands of jobs in the supply chain will also disappear.

The steel industry could be hit hard with United Steelworker slowdowns in the Mahoning Valley. It brings back memories of “Black Monday” when 41 years ago Youngstown Sheet and Tube closed its Campbell Works Mill laying off 5,000 steelworkers. During the next five years, almost 50,000 people would lose jobs in steel and related industries in the Youngstown area.

The main issue here is automobiles but Senator Brown, a champion of the steel industry, knows how hard the Lordstown plant closing will be on Ohio steelworkers.

Senator Brown described the closing as “shameful.” GM reaped a massive tax break from last year’s GOP tax bill but did not invest that money in American jobs and moved production to Mexico. Brown called the decision “corporate greed at its worst.”

Jeff Bonior, Staff Writer for the Alliance for American Manufacturing

Freedom From Greed

Romney and Ryan - The Go Back Team

The Scoop on Romney

Something is Missing

by Connie Entrekin

I hope all of you have been watching the roller-coaster event commonly referred to as the Republican Presidential primary. Every week a new front runner, but slowly the field is starting to work its way to its eventual conclusion and a candidate will emerge. One thing I must say, it’s been entertaining as each candidate fights for the nomination of their party. 

One thing I noticed is the lack of meaningful conversation about what our presidential candidates have planned for Social Security and Medicare. Even in Florida, a state with a large retiree population, details about the candidates' Social Security and Medicare proposals were largely missing as the candidates travel across the state to garner support. Even in the primary debates the silence has been deafening. Why?

I believe plans to privatize or cut Social Security and Medicare under the guise of deficit reduction represent a larger political disconnect between politicians and the average American voter than any other single issue facing candidates in this presidential campaign. These candidates know it and that is why they are avoiding it.

In poll after poll it’s clear voters of all ages and political persuasions don't support cutting benefits to middle-class Americans who depend on Social Security and Medicare (now or in the future) to repair our ailing economy. Yet, cutting middle-class benefits remains at the heart of every deficit discussion.

Over the years, some politicians have promised Americans they'll “preserve” and “strengthen” these vital programs ― while actually proposing benefit cuts, Social Security private accounts or vouchers for seniors in Medicare. Recently, candidates like Mitt Romney promised Florida seniors he'd “never go after Medicare.”  However, Mr. Romney supports proposals like House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan, which turns Medicare into a voucher program, destroying traditional Medicare as we know it and sending the bill to seniors.

Americans deserve economic security in their retirement years. They know Social Security and Medicare are vital parts of that security. We expect more than the double-speak offered by political candidates who say “reform” when they mean “cut” and “preserve” when they mean “privatize.”

Connie Entrekin is the President of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees

Cooper Tire Turns Rogue

More information, contact: Tony Montana, USW – 412-562-2592

Pittsburgh – The United Steelworkers (USW) today condemned Cooper Tire and Rubber Company’s decision to lock-out workers at the company’s profitable Findlay, Ohio production facility, despite the union’s good faith offer to keep working while negotiations toward a new labor contract proceeded.
USW District 1 Director Dave McCall said that he expects the union to pursue unlawful bargaining charges against Cooper with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and added that the union is still committed to negotiating a fair contract in Findlay.

“These negotiations have been hindered considerably by Cooper’s behavior at the bargaining table and the company’s determination to instigate a labor dispute,” said USW District 1 sub-director Patrick Gallagher. “Cooper’s intent to test our solidarity became clear the moment the company refused our offer to continue working until we reached a new contract.”

“Our members are proud of their longstanding relationships with Cooper’s loyal customers,” said Rod Nelson, USW Local 207L president “We urge Cooper management to return to negotiations at once so that these relationships are not strained.”

USW Local 207L represents more than 1,000 hourly workers in Findlay, while USW Local 752L represents Cooper employees in Texarkana, Texas.

The USW represents about 850,000 working men and women in the United States and Canada in a wide variety of industries, ranging from glass making to mining, paper, steel, tire and rubber and other manufacturing environments to the public sector, service and health care industries.

Stand Up Fight Back

Four Reasons to Occupy Wall Street

A really good documentary - The One Percent

Our Growing Inequality

Since the 1970s, the CEO class and their political allies have used policy to reshape our economy to their benefit.  They’ve gotten excessive tax breaks for corporations and the very richest, trade policies that rob our communities of good jobs, deregulation that left average Americans unprotected from financial fallout and laws that encourage union-busting.  Last year they even got a court case – Citizens United – that allows unlimited corporate dollars to influence our elections.

These policies matter a great deal.  They are creating a massive wealth and income gap in our country.  Take a look at the numbers:

• The richest one percent of Americans owns over 35 percent – more than one-third – of our nation's wealth.

• The four hundred wealthiest Americans now have more cash, stock and property than the combined total of half of America’s households.

• Median CEO pay jumped 27 percent in 2010. Workers’ pay grew just 2.1 percent in 2010.

• The average hourly wage in 1972, adjusted for inflation was $20.06.  By 2008, the average hourly wage dropped to $18.52.  In other words, income for the middle class has stagnated over the last 30 years.

• In the early 1960s, the top fifth of wealth holders had 81 percent of all wealth, and the bottom four-fifths held 19 percent. But it has only gotten worse since then – as of 2009, the top fifth wealthiest Americans hold over 87 percent of the nation’s wealth. The bottom four-fifths hold just under 13 percent.

Let’s Fight Back – The next time someone tells you that our country is “broke” remind that person that there is plenty of wealth – it’s just not in the hands of the middle class.  This isn’t good for us.  It isn’t good for our democracy.  And, it will get worse if we lose the state-level fights over collective bargaining rights – our tool to fight for fair wages and benefits.  Please stay involved in state and national fights and watch for ways to get involved through Rapid Response.

GOP offers no death panels, just death from lack of care

By Leo W. Gerard

Republicans concocted death panels in an attempt to terrify Americans about health care reform, then propagated the lie because they wanted insurance corporations to profit from illness and injury unfettered.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed anyway, but now the GOP has announced that it plans to kill the reform, and Medicaid and Medicare too.

In one fell swoop, Republicans would foreclose on Americas’ long-held and cherished expectation that they’ll receive health coverage from their government in their old age, impoverishment or infirmity. For the elderly, poor, unemployed, disabled and juvenile who can’t afford insurance, the GOP offers no death panels, just death from lack of care.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, disclosed the GOP scheme to massacre Medicare and Medicaid. Instead of the government directly paying for medical services for the elderly and impoverished, Republicans would shift costs to states and the elderly.

Under their plan, instead of Medicare, the federal government would give seniors an unspecified amount of money toward the cost of premiums for private health insurance.

Also, instead of Medicaid, the GOP would give states some money to help pay for insurance for the poor, which includes nursing home care for the elderly. States and the elderly then would be stuck paying insurance costs above the amount provided by the federal government. Ryan and his GOP gang transfer medical costs to the elderly and impoverished to compensate for federal revenues lost when they slash income taxes levied on the rich and corporations by an additional 30 percent.

The GOP message to the rich and to corporations: keep your tax break and take another 30 percent. The GOP message to the middle class: pay more and lose your safety net.

The founders of the United States intended the government to serve the people not prostrate itself to the privileged. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and framers of the U.S. Constitution discarded the doctrine of the divine right of kings, the idea that monarchs derived their authority from God and thus were not subject to the will of the governed.

Instead, the founders and framers determined that rich and poor, men and monarchs are equal, that they possess inalienable rights and that the function of government is to secure those rights. Their vision of government is an organization operating with the consent of the people to protect the people. That is, to protect their inalienable rights, to protect them from inequities, to protect them from internal and external threats.

The GOP budget is a manifestation of a very different government philosophy. It subjugates the people to the divine right of corporations and the rich.

If the wealthy and corporations had paid their share of federal income taxes over the past 30 years since successive Republican presidents began cutting them, the federal deficit would be relative peanuts, if it existed at all. If the wealthy paid their share of social security taxes, the program would not face shortfalls after 2036. If corporations and the wealthy paid federal income taxes at the rates they did during the presidencies of Republicans Dwight D. Eisenhower or Richard Nixon, no one would be talking about killing off Medicaid and Medicare.

The nation’s largest corporation, General Electric, accumulated $26 billion in American profits over the past five years, while demanding $4.1 billion in “rebates” from the IRS and paying absolutely no federal income taxes last year. Two out of three U.S. corporations paid no income taxes from 1998 through 2005. The effective tax rate for the wealthy – the rate after loopholes and special deals - is nine points lower than that paid by the typical worker.

Still, Paul Ryan and his Republican crew insist that corporations and the rich are paying too much and demand that they pay an official rate of 25 percent instead of 35 percent. Because that will mean billions in lost revenue, the GOP slashes programs that protect the masses in the middle, education, health care reform, veterans benefits, public transportation, health and safety regulation, food and import inspection, Medicaid and Medicare. The GOP guts government for the people.

Because of those huge tax cuts for the rich and corporations, the Republican budget doesn’t even end the deficit until 2040. In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office determined the tax cuts would increase the deficit’s share of the economy for the first 10 years of implementation. Under the GOP plan, public debt would rise to 70 percent of GDP by 2022. If the government maintained its current tax and spending levels, the debt would grow to 67 percent of GDP by 2022. 


The GOP budget shows Republicans believe corporations and the rich are super citizens with divine rights, while the vast majority of the nation’s citizens, the middle class, are lesser beings who are to be taxed but not protected by their government.

Many of these citizens – the elderly, the poor, the disabled – won’t be able to afford health insurance under the GOP scheme. They’ve paid taxes all their lives to support programs like Medicare. Now, the GOP intends to rip that out from under them, to take away the protection that they believed their government - government for the people - would provide.

The GOP announced this week that it believes new tax cuts for the rich and corporations are more important than Medicare and Medicaid, more important than the lives of vulnerable Americans who will die for lack of health insurance to pay for care.

Leo W. Gerard
 is the international president of United Steelworkers (USW).

Marchers Rally to Save the Middle Class

On April, 4, workers all over America rallied to support a workers right to have a contract with their employer that allows them to bargain for wages, benefits and working conditions. This was done to protest the many ways that the state governments are trying to remove the last bulkhead between the Wall Street and CEO greed and Americans that have the least, which would eliminate the middle class that unions have provided us.

Here are a few photos of yesterdays actions.

Attack On Unions is an Attack on the Middle Class

The recent attack on unions in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and other states is a continuing attack waged against the working class, which has now become obvious to all.

We have observed the systematic dismantling of the middle class over the last 30 years and now it has reached transparency in a war waged against unions. The conservative Republicans, sponsored by big money interests, know that in order to gain complete control of our economic system and the transfer of wealth (that has been going on for some time), unions are the only institutions and firewall protecting workers and the middle-class.

If unions are destroyed or made ineffective, there is no other institution or organization that can help to protect all workers. And make no mistake about it, this is true whether one is in a union or not.

The facts are clear. As union membership has declined, the status of all workers-union and non-union has declined. Union workers make more money, have better benefits and most importantly provide workers with democracy on the job and due process that otherwise would not exist.

The attack on public workers is just an extension of the attack on private sector workers and their unions that has been going for years. And, if these attacks are successful, the result will affect all workers.

We should all be outraged by what is happening. Think about it. Wall Street and the banking industry and money brokers created the recession, loss of jobs and the resulting financial problems for the government on a Federal, State and Local level. 401(k) plans and pension plans are also adversely affected by these misdeeds. And, tax breaks given to the same people and those who have outsourced our jobs are making matters worse and being used as an excuse to attack workers.

Bill Gibbons, SOAR PACE Board Member

There is Power in Unity

There's nothing more satisfying than to be able to help workers against an employer that has no regard for those who have made the company profit. This company in Elkhart, Indiana by the name of American Electronics Components has been in negotiations with USW Local 1056 for two or three months. The local union consists of nine ladies.

This company refuses to bargain after offering their workers a raise of only 18 cents over three years. Oh, they also offered to increase their workers medical insurance premiums 40% for an employee and an increase in premium of 60% for a family member. Some workers pay more than $200 a week for their health care.

This company should be ashamed to have the name "American" in its name.

Power to the workers, and shame on this company and its management.

A Must Listen to Speech

Corporate Traitors vs. Working Class Heroes

At the Honeywell Corp. plant in Metropolis, IL, workers process "yellow
cake" uranium into a highly refined "green salt" for the atomic power
industry and nuclear weapons.

The United Steelworkers have been negotiating with Honeywell for months.
Despite an offer by the union to continue working without an agreement,
corporate "greed-heads" locked out the workers.

These workers have performed this dangerous work for over fifty years.
There is growing proof that workers, families and local residents have a
cancer rate much higher than normal. Any clues?

During war-time, unions give up raises and agree to "no-strike" clauses and
pay freezes. US Steel, Ford, GM, Alcoa, and others continue to make huge
profits from war production.

What would the public say about a union that went on strike against the
steel, aluminum, aircraft, or automotive industry during time of war? They
would be reviled. People would demand the greedy "union thugs" return to
work.

Currently, the United States is in TWO WARS that have killed over six
thousand Americans. If this plant does not produce, it could potentially
endanger National Security. Where are the "patriots" and Tea Baggers in
this - crying out against unpatriotic Honeywell?

Honeywell CEO David M. Cote got $9.74 million last year. That's almost $45
thousand per worker at the Metropolis plant.

It's time for Honeywell executives to give up some of their million dollar
incomes and do the right thing for the people that really earn profits and
make the sacrifices for the corporation - the workers.


Gary Gaines
132 South Thorngate Dr.
Granite City, IL 62040

618-931-6609
1union2win@charter.net

Support Honeywell Workers

To read more about these greedy corporate thugs, click here.

Stop the Corporate Thugs

Regulate these Oil Companies

Oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate estimated to be somewhere between 56,000 and 84,000 barrels a day. BP, the oil company responsible for this catastrophe has been lying from the very beginning.

Last night on 60 Minutes, an employee of BP stated that his supervisor disregarded a warning given to him that told of things going wrong.

Now, the oil is threatening to go around the Florida Keys and up the East coast.
Finally, when the oil leak is stopped, the cleanup effort will be monumental.
Surely, this is reason enough to make sure that in the future, governmental regulations are in order.

That's right, we need more governmental involvement.

Companies only think and care about the bottom line and their profits. They can't be trusted to tell the truth about just about anything that goes wrong.

This is also another reason to strengthen the OSHA regulations. Eleven workers died in the accident of the oil drilling rig explosion.

The phrase "Drill Baby Drill" should be replaced with "Regulate Baby Regulate".

Shame Shame on Indiana

Shameful Facts

Indiana has 52 poorly performing nursing homes, the most of any state in the nation!

- "Nursing Homes: CMS's Special Focus Facility Methodology Should Better Target the Most Poorly Performing Homes, Which Tended to Be Chain Affiliated and For-Profit,"
United States Government Accountability Office, August 2009.

• Indiana among 10 worst states
• About half of Indiana's roughly 500 nursing homes offered a 'below-average' standard of care.
• Nearly 60% have below-average staffing levels.

-Hoosier nursing homes score low: Study, citing too few on staff, rates Indiana among 10 worst states,"
Indianapolis Star, January 6, 2009

"...quality of care and level of staffing have gone down while administrative costs rose 10 percent and owners' equity and facilities' cash balances each rose 30 percent."
-Faith Laird, Indiana division of Aging Director, as quoted by the Associated Press, September 30, 2009

To Help End the Shame

Go HERE