Re: [Marxism] [microsound] SF hotel workers strike the Hilton

[Tom Cod]

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What was the outcome of the Marriott strike in SF a couple years ago?  What
percentage of the big hotels are unionized?

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 6:20 PM, nada  wrote:

> ==
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>
>
> Not to defend HERE, but they are run locally by who ever is in charge. I
> think in SF if there is a serious organizing sentiment among rank and
> file workers, Local 2 here would attempt to organize them.
>
> David
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
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>

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[Marxism] China: Four suicide attempts in a month at Foxconn, the makers of the iPad

[Greg McDonald]

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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100033036/four-suicide-attempts-in-a-month-at-foxconn-the-makers-of-the-ipad/

Four suicide attempts in a month at Foxconn, the makers of the iPad


By Malcolm Moore World Last updated: April 7th, 2010


Even as the iPad breaks all sales records, something deeply disturbing
is happening at Foxconn, the China-based company that manufactures the
gadget for Apple.

Yesterday, an 18-year-old female worker at Foxconn became the fourth
person in as many weeks to attempt suicide by jumping from one of the
factory buildings.

The girl, only known by her surname, Rao, had only been working at
Foxconn’s Longhua plant for a month. Fortunately a tree broke her
fall, but she was severely injured. Foxconn confirmed the incident to
the Chinese media, and a spokesman was quoted saying Miss Rao had been
fighting with her boyfriend before she jumped.

On March 29, a 23-year-old man, named Liu, jumped out of a dormitory
window at the Longhua plant at 3am, dressed only in his factory shirt
and underwear. The unnamed man was a university graduate and had
worked in Foxconn’s wireless technology department since he joined
last August.

On March 11, at 9.30pm, a worker in his twenties, named Li, jumped to
his death, again at the Longhua plant. According to Chinese media
reports, the man’s bonus was stolen at Chinese New Year.

Finally, on the morning of March 7, a female employee named Tian
jumped from her dormitory building and injured herself, saying that
she was under a great deal of pressure.

The police in Shenzhen are investigating all the incidents, and have
not given any clarification about the motives in each case. However, a
spate of four suicide attempts within a month is a sign that something
is rotten in the Foxconn plant. Several attempts to contact Foxconn
today to comment on the conditions at Longhua were unsuccessful.

Last July, Sun Danyong, a university graduate, was the first person
reported to have jumped to his death, after committing suicide in the
wake of an iPhone prototype going missing.

The Longhua plant is the single largest assembly base in the world for
computers, mobile phones and consumer electronics. Around 300,000
workers reportedly live and work there. To give you an idea of the
scale of the place, one Foxconn consultant once told me that he had
turned up at the wrong entrance to the factory and was told to travel
to the next entrance along. The journey took half an hour by car.

Foxconn is incredibly secretive, and it is not clear if it is making
the iPad at the Longhua plant, but we do know the factory does make
iPods. Foxconn’s other clients include Sony, HP, Amazon, Nokia,
Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, Dell and Cisco.

I’ve asked for a tour of Foxconn’s facilities, but the company has
failed to respond. Similar requests to another huge technology
manufacturer, Quanta, were turned down on the grounds that their
clients’ products might be revealed.

Journalists from Reuters, walking too close to Foxconn’s Shenzhen
headquarters, were assaulted by security. When the police arrived,
they explained that Foxconn was a “special case” in the city. Which is
why it is unlikely that we’ll ever find out why those Foxconn staff
jumped.


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[Marxism] Wikileaks

[magda]

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Wikileaks is currently broke. The web site has been like that since before 
christmas.   They are still receiving documents and can be uploaded using a 
link on the web site page. They have released time sensitive and important 
documents which you can see on the front page there but all of the older 
documents are for the moment unaccessible till their finances improve. Facebook 
have just recently closed their page (Sunshine Press) but they do update by 
Twitter for some things. This is the way it will be until they get their 
finances sorted. They need $600,000 if people are paid and a minimum of 
$200,000 if they aren't and just for a skeleton staff and server time. 
Donations gratefully accepted. 
Magda 

Jeffrey Thomas Piercy said:
Has anyone tried to browse the Wikileaks website? I can't seem to find
where you can browse/search the documents on their site, only a list of
"Recently released documents" on the homepage.



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[Marxism] Melbourne fascists seen off today

[Nick Fredman]

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Melbourne rally rejects racism
By Chris Peterson, Melbourne
April 9

When word started spreading that the far right wanted to relive the 2005 racist 
Cronulla riot by organizing a “mass rally against migrants and Islam” in 
Melbourne, left and progressive groups started organizing a counter rally.

Full http://www.socialist-alliance.org/melbourne/

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Re: [Marxism] T.A.M.I

[Jeffrey Thomas Piercy]

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On 04/09/2010 08:39 AM, S. Artesian wrote:
> For those whose lives were saved by rock 'n roll, the Shout Factory has 
> released a DVD of the entire TAMI show-- the one were James Brown made the 
> Stones afraid to follow him on stage.

I have no idea what makes that at all relevant to this list, but thank
you for reminding me of it. :) I wanted to get it but forgot the name.
Also, I'm pleased by any Velvet Underground reference.


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[Marxism] my review of Robert Fitch's Solidarity for Sale

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

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http://platypus1917.org/2010/04/08/book-review-robert-fitch-solidarity-for-sale-how-corruption-destroyed-the-labor-movement-and-undermined-america’s-promise/

*ONE HAS TO ADMIRE THEIR PERSISTENCE.* *Labor Notes, *the flagship journal
of the domestic labor Left, professes itself to be “the voice of union
activists who want to put the movement back into the labor
movement.”Though
stylistically about as riveting as the phonebook, for more than three
difficult decades *Labor Notes* has critically observed and recorded
organized labor’s endemic corruption, democratic shortcomings, and gross
ineptitude in organizing workers in the private sector, where today only 7.2
percent of Americans are unionized. In a typically journalistic manner, most
of these problems are blamed on the perfidy of individuals: union staffers
and leaders insufficiently committed to class solidarity and grassroots
participation. Similarly, the striking decline in union strength is
attributed to deindustrialization and the hypermobility of global capital in
the neoliberal age. What is needed, according to this standard *Labor
Notes* narrative,
is new currents within the labor movement to bring to power more dynamic
actors capable of meeting the challenges of the new century. In his new
book *Solidarity for
Sale*
longtime
labor activist Robert Fitch  begs to
differ.

“Corruption,” Fitch argues, “flows from the retarded development of American
unions, which still haven’t broken out of nineteenth-century models of labor
organization” (ix). Modern labor’s rot began at its genesis, Fitch claims.
It derives from the exclusionary craft unionism initiated by the American
Federation of Labor (AFL). A century ago unskilled workers, minorities, and
women were willfully neglected, while mainstream unions opposed even the
most rudimentary social democratic legislation to benefit the wider working
class. The famous AFL president Samuel Gompers even opposed eight-hour
workday legislation on ideological grounds, differentiating the AFL from
European unions that he saw as “espousing an effeminate social welfare
philosophy as well as a primitive egalitarianism” (40). The AFL was
concerned with wages. The mixture of this self-interested “business
unionism” and the conditions in certain sectors of the economy like the
textile industry, where craft unions predominated and employers were
numerically small enough to be cajoled, facilitated the rise of job-control
unionism. This rendered workers subservient to union officials doling out
jobs, which in turn reinforced an insular culture of loyalty predicated upon
fear rather than solidarity. Though defended by many progressives, Fitch
sees this uniquely American development as noxious, making domestic unions
highly susceptible to penetration by organized crime.

Stretches of Fitch’s account read like a crime-noir novel. Questioning the
founding narrative of big labor, a tale that conveniently begins with the
struggle for the eight-hour day and ends with the New Deal, Fitch airs dirty
laundry with the cheek of a muckraking journalist. While such tales of the
corruption and mob-dealings of figures like Sam Parks, Cornelius “Con”
Shea
, Jimmy Hoffa , and Ron
Carey are
not entirely ignored by other members of the labor left, they are typically
consigned to the realm of anecdotal gossip. In Fitch’s narrative, these are
not just the failings of unsavory individuals, but of structurally
compromised institutions.

[]

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[Marxism] Pressure drop

[Louis Proyect]

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How a loose screw kept me from going blind:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/pressure-drop-2/


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Re: [Marxism] [microsound] SF hotel workers strike the Hilton

[New Tet]

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nada-6 wrote:
> 
> 
> Not to defend HERE, but they are run locally by who ever is in charge. I 
> think in SF if there is a serious organizing sentiment among rank and 
> file workers, Local 2 here would attempt to organize them.
> 
> David
> 

It wasn't local. It was to their national office in Washington; to a
national organizer. The least she could have done was acknowledge my letter
and say that she was too busy with the "Elect Obama" campaign to pay any
serious attention to suffering workers in the South.


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[Marxism] Bolivia: Bittersweet election win highlights obstacles in process for change

[Stuart Munckton]

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BOLIVIA: Bittersweet victory highlights obstacles for process of
change
*Federico Fuentes, Caracas*
*
*
*
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2010/04/bolivia-bittersweet-victory-highlights.html
*
*
*Although final figures will not be known until April 24, the results of
Bolivia's April 4 regional elections have ratified the continued advance of
the "democratic and cultural revolution" led by the country's first
indigenous President Evo Morales.

However, it also highlights some of the shortcomings and obstacles the
process of change faces.

Initial results from the election for governors, mayors and representatives
to municipal councils and departmental assemblies have confirmed the
Morales-led Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) as the sole political force
with strong support across the nation.

It follows the historic 64% vote to reelect Morales and the two-thirds
majority MAS obtained in the Plurinational Assembly last December.

MAS was formed in the mid-1990s by key Bolivian indigenous and peasant
organisations in order to create their own political instrument. Many of
these organisations are at the heart of the indigenous-led revolutionary
movement that overthrew two presidents between 2000-05, before electing one
of their own in December 2005.

The Morales government has implemented key demands of the indigenous and
peasant organisations by nationalising gas reserves, allowing the people to
participate in the rewrite of a new constitution that dramatic expands
indigenous rights, and stimulating an increased sense of pride and dignity
among the long-oppressed indigenous majority.

All this in the face of stiff right-wing opposition that, with its
stronghold in the east, used its control over a majority of governorships to
attack the Morales government -- climaxing with a failed coup attempt in
September 2008.

*Electoral advances *

Of the nine governorships, current results show MAS winning in six, with a
seventh too close to call. This is an increase from the three it won in
2005.

This means MAS has not only strengthened its hold on the west and centre
(consolidating its hold on La Paz and Cochabamba after revoking previous
opposition governors), but also further weakened the decomposing right-wing
opposition in the east.

MAS looks set to capture the eastern department of Pando, and possibly Beni.
The opposition has held onto the eastern departments of Santa Cruz and
Tarija, but MAS's all-out campaigning in the east (home to much of Bolivia's
natural resources and a sizeable white middle class) meant it penetrated
deep into opposition heartland -- increasing its vote in the region.

MAS also won a strong presence in the departmental assemblies. These are the
first elected regional bodies to have the power to legislate within the
bounds of the regional autonomy outlined in the new constitution approved in
January 2009.

MAS also increased the number of mayoralties it controls nationally to
around 200-220 out of the 337 -- up from the 101 won in the 2004 poll.

Another feature of the elections was the introduction -- although limited --
of traditional indigenous customs for selecting representatives from
Bolivia's 36 indigenous nations to departmental assemblies.

Using rights enshrined in the new constitution, indigenous nations selected
between two to five representatives for each departmental assembly.

Five of the 11 municipalities that voted in favour of indigenous autonomy in
local referendums last December elected their own mayors and councillors
according to traditional customs in the lead up to regional elections.

The decisions were then ratified at the ballot box on April 4. The other six
decided to elect candidates directly.

*Bittersweet victory*

Highlighting MAS's impressive numerical victory, Morales said that elections
"are like soccer, the goals are what matter". Yet the result was a
bittersweet one that throws into sharp relief some of the internal
challenges the process of change faces.

MAS's national vote was 51% -- less than the 64% it obtained in December and
well short of the 70% Morales spoke of in his speech to close MAS's campaign
in La Paz.

The impressive showing in the east, the result of both a concerted campaign
and some dubious alliances, was dampened by the loss in Tarija, which sits
on 80% of Bolivia's gas.

Having won the vote in Tajira in December, MAS was certain it could defeat
the incumbent governor, a fierce foe of Morales.

Alliances formed by MAS with local elites, such as the MAS candidate for
Santa Cruz city, a business owner and ex-member of the right-wing Podemas
party, and the recent recruitment of ex-militants of the fascist Santa Cruz
Youth Union failed to