As the Prophet Isaiah queried: “What will you do on the Day of Reckoning, when evil comes from afar?”
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Having just completed my first reading of Jeff Biggers’ masterfully crafted, meticulously researched “Reckoning At Eagle Creek,” I am left feeling nigh-breathless at the scope of the evil that came from afar and visited a nigh-Biblical plague upon people in the form of the heartache, sickness and grim Death that always serves as the handmaiden of coal. Such a sensation is fitting, I suppose, for a book that recounts the history of the thousands of human beings rendered breathlessly mute by the ravages of Black Lung, slate falls, mine explosions, poisoned waters, blasted hills, choked valleys, murdered workers and whole communities literally blown off the map in the merciless, ceaseless quest for the Holy Profit of Coal.
Jeff Biggers has crafted out of family history and regional history an honest, unblinking reckoning of the costs paid by a nation and, indeed, a world for what we have been assured by the industry for more than a century is “cheap” coal. Mr. Biggers proves in the pages of “Reckoning At Eagle Creek” that the only way to see coal as “cheap” is to view the lives, history and heritage consumed in its acquisition as being even cheaper still.
“Reckoning At Eagle Creek” is the manifestation of one man’s quest for understanding of where our dependence on the nastiest fuel form on the planet has taken us and where that path ultimately leads. That quest is neither fanciful nor mythical. It is rock-hard and bone-real. With its publication, “Reckoning At Eagle Creek” becomes an immediately necessary resource for anyone who seeks to understand the ever-increasing toll we all pay for “cheap” coal, for “cheap” electricity, for “cheap” heat. In his “reckoning” of accounts within the scope of his family’s southern Illinois homeland, Jeff Biggers honestly reveals coal mineshafts and stripmine pits for what they are: the abbatoirs of the American Dream.
It’s been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grass-roots organizing campaign. In case you haven’t heard about it, the union’s name is “UR Union of the Unemployed” or its nickname, “UCubed,” because of its unique method of organizing.
UCubed is the brain-child of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), whose leaders feel that the millions of unemployed workers need a union of their own to join in the struggle for massive jobs programs.
The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.
(11-20) 21:44 PST BERKELEY, CALIF. — Forty protesters who barricaded themselves inside Wheeler Hall for 11 hours Friday didn’t win back the 38 custodial jobs they demanded, nor did they persuade the UC regents to rescind their decision to increase tuition by 32 percent next fall.
But their daylong protest spoke directly to the mood of students, faculty and university workers, who demonstrated their frustration with ever-increasing fees and ever-decreasing jobs.
The occupation of the two-story building on the Berkeley campus ended Friday night as Alameda County sheriffs deputies escorted the protesters, all but two of whom where students, out of the building and past more than 2,000 chanting supporters. The protesters will face misdemeanor trespassing charges.
The third and most tumultuous day of protests reflected the anger being displayed on many UC campuses Friday, a day after the regents voted to increase undergraduate tuition and graduate-level fees to help make up a $535 million budget gap brought on by reduced state funding and inflation.
At Berkeley, the daylong occupation of Wheeler Hall began at 6 a.m. when the group entered the second floor of the building. Three students were arrested immediately for burglary as they moved heavy furniture to block doorways, according campus police.
“We decided it was necessary to take action,” said Andi Walden, a Middle Eastern studies and political science major. “A lot of people have been saying, ‘Whose university? Our university.’ So we decided to put that into action.”
Speaking to The Chronicle by phone, she said the protesters had enough food and water to last four days. She also estimated the group as 60-people strong, but later in the day, police said there were 40 protesters inside.
Yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on Fox Business with former Ambassador Alan Wolff and author Philip Dine to discuss the punitive duties that the United States recently levied on tire imports from China, which China has brought up with the World Trade Organization. During the conversation, Dine, who wrote a book on unions, implied that the effort may have been the administration trying to “throw something labor’s way” because “they don’t have very much to show” for their support of Obama in 2008.
Later in the segment, Bachmann took “a contrary view,” claiming that “the administration has done a lot for the unions,” citing the stimulus bill. “And I am not anti-union, but I think its clear the unions has a very large say in Washington, DC,” said Bachmann. Watch it: Source
In 2005, Jamie Lee Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. In an apparent attempt to cover up the incident, the company then put her in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” Even more insultingly, the DOJ resisted bringing any criminal charges in the matter. KBR argued that Jones’ employment contract warranted her claims being heard in private arbitration — without jury, judge, public record, or transcript of the proceedings. After 15 months in arbitration, Jones and her lawyers went to court to fight the KBR claims. Yesterday, a court ruled in favor of Jones.” Mother Jones reports: Source
Boeing Co. workers in North Charleston voted overwhelmingly to disband their union in a move that could give the region an edge in landing an aircraft plant the company is looking to build.
Of the 267 ballots cast, 199 were in favor of decertifying the election that made them members of the International Association of Machinists. The company was pleased; the union was disappointed.
-Article continues @ source, courtesy The Post Courier (SC)
Insurers’ delays are ‘almost … like murder,’ Sutton said
The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.
Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.
She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance. Source
We try to find a green angle in every holiday; Labour Day is a stretch, but there is a bit of one. All those parents keeping their kids home from school tomorrow because they might hear socialist indoctrination from the President should be sending them to school today, the ultimate socialist holiday. It is an imported holiday; the first Labour Day parade was in Toronto in 1872, after the Toronto Typographical Union staged an illegal strike in support of a 58 hour work week and better working conditions. Printers had a life expectancy of about 35 years because of the lead, the toxic inks and the high rate of accidents.
In July of 1882 Peter J. McGuire, the co-founder of the American Federation of Labor was invited to speak in Toronto at a labour festival and was impressed. He organized the first American Labor Day Parade in New York in September 1882.
-Article continues with links to more articles @ Source.
In a speech before the business organization Commerce Lexington, McConnell explained that the reason for such uncompromising opposition is that workers don’t actually want to join unions due to the “very enlightened management in this country now”:
McConnell said the AFL-CIO wants the measure approved because “private sector union membership has declined from a high of 35 percent in the 1950s to 7.5 percent now.” That has happened “because we have very enlightened management in this country now, treating employees better and employees have decided they don’t want to pay the dues.”
