BREAKING IWW NEWS - Gainesville IWW members file for Union Recognition at Ward's Supermarket

As of 8am Tuesday morning, workers in the Natural Foods Dept. at Ward's Supermarket (located in Gainesville, FL) have filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. This petition is a step forward in a months-long campaign of the Gainesville IWW. The coming days will be challenging and we are counting on the full support of the community to win. We will provide updates re: the campaign as they develop.

If you have any questions about the campaign, feel free to call us at 352-246-2240 or email gainesvilleiww [at] riseup.net.

http://www.iww.org/en/node/4493

SDS Milwaukee Shows Support for Working Class Heroes

MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) demonstrated outside a Bank of America office in downtown Milwaukee on Dec. 9 in an afternoon show of support for the United Electrical Local 1110 Chicago workers.

The Chicago workers, largely Latino, were illegally laid off four days ago by their company Republic Window and Door after Bank of America refused to continue credit to the company, despite having just received a $25 billion taxpayer bailout. The workers have since occupied their work site, earned international attention, and called for a national week of action.

Armando Robles, President of UE Local 1110, spoke in front of the Fight Back! annual fundraising People's Thanksgiving on Saturday night, and stated, "We're not going to leave [Republic Window and Door] until we get every penny we deserve."

SDS members who attended the event visited the occupying workers at the company later that night. A 20-year company employee stated the place was his "home away from home" and that the fellow workers were "his family." Family members also accompanied the occupying workers. The occupying workers, arriving in 30-person shifts, seemed very pleased and encouraged by the local and national support of their occupation.

The National Working Committee of SDS has endorsed the worker's bold and militant occupation. Numerous student protests have since taken place all over the country to support these working class heroes.

Despite the blizzard, about 20 people attended the Milwaukee rally. SDS students who just got back from an over-night visit to the occupying workers spoke over a loud speaker. The crowd also chanted "Bank of America: you got bailed out, we got sold out!"

Natasha Morgan, an SDS organizer who visited the occupying workers and attended the rally, said, "This is the end of the Bush era!"

Learn how you can directly help the workers by donating and signing their petition here: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bankofamerica

Puerto Rico’s Teachers Beat SEIU Raid

When last seen on the picket line, Puerto Rican teachers were fighting their way through police barricades to appeal to fellow workers from the Service Employees (SEIU) at its lavishly funded convention in San Juan in June.

The message of the Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR) was simple: please stop SEIU President Andy Stern from colluding with the indicted governor of the island to replace FMPR with a “company union.”

In the view of SEIU, teachers needed a new SEIU-affiliated union because FMPR no longer had legal recognition after its walk-out over wages, classroom size, and the threat of privatization.

This month, however, the teachers themselves disagreed that it was time for a change. By a margin of 18,123 to 14, 675, they voted against joining the SEIU-backed SPM (Sindicato Puertorriqueno de Maestros), which is closely aligned with another SEIU affiliate, the Association de Maestros de Puerto Rico, an organization of school principals and administrators.
OFF PROGRAM

At SEIU’s convention, only a handful of delegates dared to challenge Stern on this issue. When eight rank-and-file members from California tried to distribute a leaflet asking why the “top leadership has sided against the teachers of Puerto Rico in a gross case of ‘colonial’ unionism,” SEIU staffers threatened several of them with reprisals. “They told us that this is a betrayal and that we could be suspended from the union if we continued handing out the fliers,” delegate Brian Cruz, from Local 1021 in San Francisco, explained to The San Juan Star.

Most of the 3,000 delegates and guests simply cheered when Stern and SEIU Healthcare Chair Dennis Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico, introduced their good friend, Anibal Acevedo Vila, the island’s governor. Acevedo Vila is still awaiting trial on federal corruption charges and it was his administration that precipitated a 10-day, island-wide public school strike led by the FMPR last winter. As The Star reported June 3, SEIU used its convention and the governor’s appearance to promote a rival organization, “which is hoping to become the new union representative for an estimated 42,000 public school teachers.”

It was not to be. The FMPR orchestrated a “vote no” campaign, after it was denied a spot on the ballot as further punishment for its “illegal” strike. FMPR was even barred from having observers at teacher polling places.

Prior to the start of the election, FMPR presented evidence to the labor relations commission showing that it still had voluntary financial support from 12,000 members, who have continued to pay union dues even though automatic deductions from all teachers’ paychecks were discontinued when FMPR was decertified.
Although SEIU favors “employee free choice” on the mainland and assured critics here there would be a multiple-choice ballot, Puerto Rican teachers had just one union option, which they then rejected.

The defeated SPM has almost no dues payers so SEIU had to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into this losing effort, much of it spent on advertising. As one FMPR supporter reported, SEIU had “paid staff at each school giving out free T-shirts and coolers and the media and the government were clearly in its favor but still they couldn’t impose their union on us.”

FMPR activist Edgardo Alvelo, who teaches at a vocational school in Rio Piedras, estimates that his union spent only “$50,000 on the whole campaign.” According to Alvelo, “that money was very hard to obtain, but it was enough to win. It was our people in the schools that did the job. Today, we are celebrating and tomorrow our struggle will continue in all our schools.”
94 PERCENT TURN-OUT

The vote turnout was extremely high. Of the 36,000 teachers eligible to participate due to their permanent status, 33,818 actually voted, with a thousand of those ballots being challenged or voided. FMPR now faces the task of continuing to function as what’s called a “bonafide organization” under Puerto Rican labor law. While still deprived of the full collective bargaining rights it had before the strike, FMPR retains a strong steward structure, the ability to represent members, and mobilize around educational policy issues and day-to-day job concerns.

FMPR supporters in New York, California, and elsewhere aided the successful “vote no” campaign by raising money to help keep this militant independent union afloat. (For more information, see the FMPR’s own website: http://fmprlucha.org) On October 14, some protested outside the Manhattan headquarters of United Healthcare Workers-East (the former SEIU/District 1199 long headed by Rivera), where they denounced Stern’s raid on FMPR as an insult to New York hospital workers “proud history of fighting for justice and dignity.”

During an August visit, one New York Solidarity Committee member, Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, brought money that was collected for FMPR members disciplined for their union activity. Reports Sheridan-Gonzalez, a registered nurse:

“The union, in collaboration with students and parents, had developed a progressive, inclusive curriculum that was extraordinarily successful. This collaborative structure was unilaterally dismantled by the government/school authority in 2007 and 17 teachers were suspended when they fought back. Their energy and commitment was inspiring and reminiscent of the spirit of U.S. unions in the 1930s and Puerto Rican labor in years past.”

That same feisty spirit was on display in this month’s island-wide union vote, which gave SEIU an expensive lesson in the meaning of “no.”

http://labornotes.org/node/1964

A Financial Meltdown 30 Years in the Making

They break it, and we’re stuck with the bill.

In less than two weeks Congress lined up $700 billion to bail out the nation’s bankers, leaving millions of homeowners on the sidelines, facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, or both.

Somehow the argument that “it may seem unfair, but it was necessary” just doesn’t cut it. It’s no wonder that the most popular sign at labor’s September 25 protest on Wall Street said “Bailout = Bullsh*t.”

For union members, it sounds all too familiar. Management’s perennial argument for concessions—take the cuts or say goodbye to your job—hasn’t exactly saved U.S. manufacturing, whether in the 1980s or today.

In past recessions, it’s been each union for itself, and the companies always came out ahead. Corporations are already using the deep hole they’ve dug for themselves to demand even more from workers. Teamsters at the Minneapolis Star Tribune bucked the trend, refusing mid-contract concessions on September 10 and prompting newspaper executives to suspend a $9 million payment to their creditors.

“The company is asking us to slash our own throats to save their profits,” said Kevin Bialon, a 27-year pressman who served on the bargaining committee. “Management made the mistakes and they want workers to pay for it.”
CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST

Although today’s headlines don’t advertise it, the financial crisis is not a sudden surprise but the latest gloomy milestone in a 30-year drive to boost corporate profits, mainly by squeezing workers. The recent flurry of fast-and-loose home loans is a symptom, not the cause, of the problem.

Faced with falling profits in the 1970s, corporations everywhere rallied to restore their bottom lines. They pressed to shift taxes away from businesses and onto individuals, sowing the seeds of today’s state and local budget shortfalls. Deregulation was also a top priority, as restrictions from an earlier era—put in place to protect the public good—were wiped away. Starting in industries like airlines, trucking, and telecommunications, then later in banking and financial services, government protections were lifted and oversight was relaxed.

In addition, corporations turned the tables on who pays for retirement, shifting the risk—and sometimes the burden—onto individual workers and taxpayers.

On the job, corporations launched a full-scale assault on unions, piling up concessions, breaking longstanding pattern agreements, and introducing two-tier wages and benefits.

In 1978 the average wage for production workers was $16 an hour in today’s dollars. The average was still $16 by 2007. Companies put the squeeze on working conditions, too, through lean production and quality schemes that were a smokescreen to make workers do more with less.

Corporate heads were rewarded handsomely for their efforts. CEO pay skyrocketed from 27 times what the average worker made in 1973 to 275 times in 2007.

Wall Street’s short-term mentality spread far beyond the financial sector. Every plant, even every work group became a “profit center,” and had to produce sufficient returns—or else.

Firms like General Motors and General Electric got into the money game directly, making more profits in recent years from financial activity than they did by producing goods or services.
LESS MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS

The working-class squeeze pushed inequality through the roof. Today the top 5 percent of American families—those with household incomes over $150,000—now claim 35 percent of national income. Thirty years ago the top 5 percent took home 21 percent.

With wages flat-lined for over three decades, families scrambled to prop up their living standards, first with more women entering the workforce and then by working more hours.

But there is a limit to how many earners each family can have, or how much overtime workers can schedule, so debt became the solution to anemic paychecks. Workers turned to credit cards or used their homes as ATM machines.

Once the housing bubble burst, the system finally caved in on itself. Bad home loans were the spark, but the fuel for this financial wildfire was a generation of stagnant incomes and overstretched consumers.
ADDICTED TO DEBT

It wasn’t just consumers who leaned heavily on credit. In recent years corporate debt skyrocketed, and as long as short-term loans were plentiful, companies were happy to operate with a thin cushion. Now that the credit markets are clenched up, businesses are feeling the pinch.

The Hawaii Medical Center was an early victim, for example, forced into bankruptcy in September when its creditors refused to roll over $5 million in short-term loans.

More than a third of its 900 workers have been laid off. Companies that survive today’s frozen financial markets will continue to struggle with the rising cost of debt, raising the possibility of concessions and bankruptcies to come.

On the watchlist is FairPoint Communications, the company that took over Verizon’s landline operations in northern New England earlier this year. The company borrowed heavily to close the $2.5 billion deal, and the Communications Workers (CWA) argued at the time that workers and consumers would bear the burden if FairPoint’s plans went awry.

That risk is growing, as the handover from Verizon is months behind schedule and millions of dollars over-budget. FairPoint’s customers are cutting back or switching to lower-cost competitors.

“What’s going to happen to our pension?” asks Darlene Stone, chief steward at CWA Local 1400 in Burlington, Vermont.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s next step is also uncertain. Pressure on the paper’s owner, private equity firm Avista Capital Partners, is mounting. Two other Teamster locals have followed the pressmen and cancelled givebacks. Bialon, the pressman, reports that on October 1 the company laid off 18 union members.

“They said they needed to save $20 million to fend off bankruptcy,” he said. “But they’ve already gotten rid of a third of the workforce and no one from management has been let go. They wanted the world from us and were offering nothing in return.”

http://labornotes.org/node/1951

Wal-Mart Canada shuts another location after workers unionize

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwire - Oct. 16, 2008) -

The closure of a unionized Wal-Mart Tire and Lube Express in Gatineau, Quebec "is another attack on its workers, on the community, and one more example of its blatant disregard for Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms," says Wayne Hanley, the National President of UFCW Canada.

"Wal-Mart thinks a cheap oil change is more important than the Canadian constitution."

Wal-Mart Canada announced Thursday that it was shutting the Gatineau outlet because a union contract, which came into force in August, didn't fit with its business model. It is the second time Wal-Mart has shut a Quebec outlet after its workers decided to form a union.

In April 2005 Wal-Mart shut its store in Jonquiere, Quebec and terminated more than 200 workers just as binding arbitration for a first-contract was set to begin. Later this year the Supreme Court will hear arguments that the shutting of the Jonquiere store was a violation of those workers' rights.

In June 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that under the Charter's Freedom of Association protections, workers in Canada are guaranteed the right to organize for the purposes of collective bargaining, "but once again Wal-Mart has proven the only rules it respects are its own, " said Hanley.

"For Wal-Mart to say its employees are free to unionize, but then declare that a contract produced through mediation just doesn't work for their business model, means as far as Wal-Mart is concerned, the rights of its American shareholders are more important than the human rights of its workers in Canada."

"Now it is up to the Supreme Court to tell Wal-Mart that it is not above the law and that it must respect the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively."

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Ufcw-Canada-910734.html

Strike brings Italy to a halt

(ANSA) - Rome, October 17 - Tourists and residents were forced to brave the rain on foot Friday as a general strike against government reforms called by grass-roots unions brought public transport in big cities to a halt.

Protest marches paralysed traffic in Rome, Milan and Turin, and unions described the strike as ''a success beyond our wildest dreams''.

In Rome unions claimed some 300,000 people took part in the main rally at Piazza San Giovanni to protest against low salaries and temporary contracts for workers across various sectors as well as school reforms and health cuts.

In Milan around 50,000 people turned up for a similar rally at Piazza Duomo, and local police described the traffic situation in the city as ''chaotic''.

'Vaporetti' water buses in Venice were also down to a reduced service, with around 48% of operators adhering to the strike. Children left alone in classrooms made desperate calls to their parents to come and pick them up as teachers deserted schools to join marches, and in Rome police in riot gear guarded the entrance to the education ministry to prevent access by protesting university and high-school students.

''The protest's enormous, extraordinary success demonstrates, despite the driving rain, that workers, students and teachers not only have no intention of keeping quiet but they want to continue to battle against a racist, classist government that helps bankers and speculators but does nothing for the general population,'' said Italian Communists' Party leader Paolo Ferrero.

Education Minister Maria Stella Gelmini said the strike was the result of ''a campaign of misinformation'' on the reforms from opposition parties trying to create public alarm.

Bus, tram and local train services are guaranteed during special time windows to allow Italians to get back and forth to work. These windows vary from city to city.

National rail company Trenitalia said long- and medium-haul trains were not affected by the strike.

A handful of international and domestic flights were cancelled.

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-10-17_117266546.html

Commotion in Colombia!!!!

“The Nacional Government has declared tonight State of Internal Commotion related to the problem of jusitice” [1]. Those were the words used by Álvaro Uribe, president of Colombia, to declare the State of Internal Commotion (Emergency), the night of Thursday 9th of October. The reason given was the “serious” problem supposedly facing the country because of the strike of Workers of the Legal Sector, organised in the union ASONAL. The very president who is infamous for his constant attacks against the Supreme Court of Justice, who has done as much as possible to hinder the free exercise of the Judiciary, who has done everything he could to guarantee the impunity for his associates charged of links to right-wing death squads (who had been accomplices and masterminds behind crimes against humanity), he was the same person to give a quasi-apocalyptic account of the effects of the legal sector workers “neglection”, according to which thousands of “misfits” would end up running wild in the streets. The very president who is pushing forward a reform to strengthen his grip over the Judiciary and who is a champion of the para-politics impunity, at the same time that he is sabotaging the draft law being discussed in the Senate to compensate the victims of the armed conflict (for he does not recognise that people displaced, maimed, raped, murdered, disappeared and massacred by State forces can possibly be “victims”!), he, all of a sudden, has turned into the champion of Justice!

Let us remember that the State of Internal Commotion is a legal instrument created with the 1991 Constitution as a way to limit the excessive use of the State of Emergency in the past (between 1970 and 1991 only, 17 full years were under State of Emergency)[2]. This is a sort of State of Emergency, which has to be ratified by the Constitutional Court, which is at Uribe’s feet, so it is obvious that it will follow orders from its master and the State of Emergency is likely to be approved for 90 days, with the possibility of two more periods of identical duration [3]. However, while the Constitutional Court decides, what could take over a month, the decree is in effect. In this particular case, the excuse of the government is the unavoidable need of the government to replace workers in the judiciary and to avoid people to be left free as the terms of their process expire without anyone looking after their cases because of the strike. This is done with an eye of avoiding the supposed apocalyptic scenario which Colombia faces, according to the government.

But in reality, the decree has been used as a way to break ASONAL’s strike, something which has been admitted even by the official press: “Of course, it is up to the Constitutional Court to determine if this faculty is in accordance to the requirements of the State of Internal Commotion. But that constitutional control will only be effective in a couple of months, while the decree had been applied for that time and the strike had been suffocated by this mechanism. This is nothing but a shortcut in order to avoid the existing regulations to face the supposed illegal nature of the strike in a public sector such as the judiciary (…) It will be a difficult task to justify to the international community, concerned as it is on the issue of the fundamental rights of Colombian trade unionists, this supposed consensus to crush a strike with exceptional mechanisms of public order” [4]

The State of Emergency is nothing but another way to use repression against the workers, just as it has been used in the past ESMAD (ed. riot police) to face every single conflict in Colombia, conflicts that burst in a non-stop chain reaction over the last couple of months. This shows the extremes to which the government is willing to go to suffocate a movement which is only aiming at a wage increase as stipulated by law. And repression has already started: the first disciplinary investigations started against workers on strike [5]. Needless to say, these investigations are aimed at breaking the workers unity, intimidate workers and look for scapegoats, so as to force workers into work again. The only guarantee for workers’ victory In any strike is unity: to spread panic and to play the card of the “survival instinct” in the face of reprisals, are ways of breaking it.

This measure represents, also, a new step in order to strengthen the control of the Executive over the Judiciary, for it has been a long year since they have not stopped having conflict after conflict. And it is also a way to reinforce Uribe’s road to an open dictatorship which has been silently being consolidated in Colombia; a dictatorship which is, by the way, unashamedly at the service of Big Business. In honour to the truth, this measure was not even Uribe’s idea, as he was following precise orders given by the banker Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, an important businessman from Aval holding. This chain of command let clear for everyone where does power lay in Colombia and which are those interests that the State subserviently defends [6]. It is clear, also, that the State of Emergency which will give extraordinary faculties to the Executive, in mo way is intended to be a transient measure: this will remain in place irrespective from the strike and it will be applied in two phases until 2010, as the minister of home affairs and justice, Fabio Valencia Cossio, admitted [7].

Authoritarianism and People’s Struggles


The State of Emergency is an authoritarian response to the difficult scenario ahead of Uribe and the Big Business he represents: numerous labour conflicts, with oil workers, ASONAL, sugar cane cutters on strike, the latter giving a tough fight for over a month, conflicts about housing, crisis within the State because of the struggle between the Executive and the Judiciary, corruption cases and links to right-wing paramilitaries of government politicians, and on top of all this, an economic crisis that will hit hard on Colombia. The scenario is quite difficult and an iron fist is needed to control this volatile situation. But the authoritarian resort and the disproportionate use of force to suppress the strikes, will likely cause further conflicts within the very dominant block. Indeed, the State Council expressed disagreement with such a measure claiming it inadequate and hasty [8].

Workers of ASONAL, after analyzing and pondering the situation, decided not to call off the strike, what constitutes an amazingly brave decision if we take into account the difficulties ahead [9]. So the strike will keep going on until the demand of wage increase is met now and not in March 2009 as proposed by Uribe [10]. Together with the sugar cane cutters and other people’s movements, this week there will be increased mobilisation. As the spokesperson of the judiciary workers stated, decisions like this reinforce the will of the workers. Hopefully this prompts a higher degree of unity of the popular layers of society, in order to avoid the open dictatorship.

It is difficult to foresee the impact of this measure, but it is clear that the mechanisms for the dictatorship of an hypertrophied Executive are in place and strengthened, a State which is highly militarised and were the Executive has no counter-balance. We know for sure that Uribe will try to use this moment to his best advantage, at a time when the Colombian oligarchy though is still on a full speed ahead offensive against the working class, it is also running out of steam and showing the first cleavages on its foundations. It is time for the people, which are still on a defensive situation, disorganised and battered for two decades of relentless repression and paramilitary genocide, to struggle with whatever forces they have, in a realistic but not pessimistic manner, and looking for chances to take an offensive step again. To hesitate now equals a self-imposed defeat. It is necessary to prompt the unity of the various expressions of the people’s movement, from the bottom up, with an eye on the necessary and joint struggle to get as much as possible in this moment, where the people can recover some of the lost ground.

From this platform we have kept track of the authoritarian evolution of Uribe’s regime. From this platform we have called for the unity of the Colombian people for the sake of a social programme of far-reaching change. From this platform we support today, without any sort of hesitation, the struggle of the Colombian people against the State of Emergency decreed by Álvaro Uribe’s “democratic façade” dictatorship. And from this platform, as well, we call for national and international solidarity with the unions on strike, who are giving an exemplary lesson in courage and dignity to all of the Latin American people.

Down with the State of emergency! Solidarity with the Judiciary workers and sugar cane cutters! In support of the people’s resistance against this authoritarian system!


José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
13 de Octubre del 2008

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/10289

The long arm of RNC security reaches IWW at the MOA

By David Seitz , TC Daily Planet - September 04, 2008

Members of the Twin Cities Industrial Workers of the World reported being detained by police on a Hiawatha Light Rail Train at the Mall of America after peacefully gathering Sunday to support re-instated co-worker who works at the mall.

The workers met at 1 p.m. at the 27th Ave. and Lake St. stop to celebrate with Erik Forman, a barista at a Mall of America Starbucks who successfully contested his termination, which he said was an illegal move to suppress his union activity. While there were many Minneapolis and Metro Transit Police present at the gathering, Forman and fellow IWW member Jake Bell said the group’s police liaison was able to make clear to police the peaceful nature of the gathering.

Following the rally, many boarded the train with Forman as he returned to work.

“I invited anybody who wanted to come to come with me to the Mall of America, to see the first union Starbucks in Minnesota and the first union shop in the mall, to buy a cup of coffee and to take a look around,” Forman said.

When the train reached the Bloomington Central Station, Bell said, Bloomington police gathered at the station pulled the liaison off the train.

“The police told him that we could go into the mall as long as we didn’t have signs,” Bell said. “And he made clear that no, we weren’t going to picket. The cop said that was cool, and we kept going.”

When the train reached the Mall of America stop, however, Bell and Forman say there was a line of Plymouth police in riot gear waiting for them. Bell said the police were accompanied by mall management.

“They said anyone who stepped out would be arrested,” Bell said. “They detained all of the people who were on the train, even who weren’t involved in the rally.”

After twenty minutes, the train continued its journey with all the mall-bound passengers still on board. When Forman and others who needed to report to work, and people who weren’t involved tried to negotiate, Forman said they were told they could walk to the Mall from the 28th Avenue station.

When contacted, a representative of the Plymouth Police said officers were working in conjunction with Bloomington Police. A representative of the Bloomington Police Department deferred to the Joint Information Center, which is managing law enforcement information across and between jurisdictions in the metropolitan area during the Republican National Convention

Sergeant Palmer of the Joint Information Center offered a different account. After participants in the IWW gathering got on the train, he said, law enforcement contacted mall management.

“The mall said, ‘we do not want these people here at the mall,’” said Palmer. “The train stopped before the Mall of America [at 28th Ave.] and these people were told, ‘this train is not going to the Mall of America, you can continue on foot.”

When asked about reports that the train did indeed continue to the mall, where passengers were then detained, Palmer replied, “I don’t know about that, because I wasn’t there, but that wasn’t what I was told.”

Mall of America spokesperson Dan Jasper said the group was asked to leave because it was in fact demonstrating.

“The Mall of America is private property,” Jasper said. “The group was treated fairly, equally and with dignity, and asked to leave the premises. We just don’t allow demonstrations.”

Asked about collaboration with law enforcement, Jasper said the mall “works in partnership with all local organizations.”

Forman said the group made clear that it planned no demonstration, and that this response from mall management and law enforcement was deeply troubling.

“We were very surprised,” Forman said. “We weren’t doing anything illegal. We weren’t there to protest. We were there to go to the mall, and in fact to do shopping like any other tourist. So it had to be political, and I’m fairly sure it’s illegal to ban someone from your property because of their political beliefs.”

Orthodox Union to Agriprocessors: Hire new management or lose certification

By Lynda Waddington 9/9/08 4:04 PM

Child labor violation charges filed today by the Iowa Attorney General against Agriprocessors and five individuals in plant management have prompted the Orthodox Union (OU), arguably the best-known kosher certification enterprise in the U.S., to issue an ultimatum to the company.

“Within the coming days, or let’s say a week or two, we will suspend our supervision unless there’s new management in place,” Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of kosher supervision for the Orthodox Union, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this afternoon.

Shortly after the May 12 immigration raid at the plant, the company announced that Sholom M. Rubashkin, son of owner Aaron Rubashkin, was being ousted from his position as chief executive officer and president. The ouster was prompted, at least in part, by threats from the Orthodox Union. Although the search for a replacement had been narrowed, no one has yet been hired to replace him.

Ganack, in an interview with Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah.com, said this afternoon that the Rubashkin family would need to hire a “new indepedent CEO,” but conceded that members of the Rubashkin family could remain on the company’s board.

“[The family] can’t be involved in running the plant — actually hands-on running of the plant,” Ganack said.

It is unclear if the decision by the Orthodox Union would be limited to only the Postville facility or would also encompass operations at Local Pride, an Agriprocessors plant located in Gordon, Neb.

Sholom and Aaron Rubashkin, along with three human resources workers, were named today in the attorney general’s charges.

On April 16, kosher certifier K’Hal Adath Jeshurun (KAJ) terminated its supervision of all Agriprocessors’ operations. The decision was made, according to a letter from the KAJ, “after consideration of the appeals made” by the Rubashkin family.

~UPDATE~

Vos Iz Neias? is reporting that Rabbi Menachem Weissmandl will continue to provide the Rubashkin family and Agriprocessors his certification, regardless of the OU’s decision.

“My job and expertise is strictly kosher supervision. As long as the strict guidelines of Kosher Shichitah is followed in this plant, my Hecsher will stay on.”

Rabbi Weissmandl previously told Iowa Independent that he is “the supervising rabbi for all glatt kosher meat and strictly kosher poultry at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville.”

HERE

Salt Of the Earth

Salt of the Earth (1954) is an American drama film written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico. All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their involvement in socialist politics.[1]

The movie became a historical phenomenon and has a cult following due to how the United States establishment (politicians, journalists, studio executives, and other trade unions) dealt with the film. Salt of the Earth is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point-of-view.

In 1950–1951, in the fictional village of Zinc Town, New Mexico, the drama tells the story of a long and difficult strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo miners against the Empire Zinc Company. The film shows how the miners (the union men and their wives), the company, and the police, react during the strike. In neorealist style the producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the film.