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.
Electric cars, intelligent washing machines, mini power plants in your basement: Germany is on the verge of an energy revolution. SPIEGEL ONLINE looks at the latest developments in the smart grid and how it will change the relationship between consumers and energy suppliers.
The power grid of the future is one of humanity’s boldest visions. Gigantic wind farms in the sea and enormous solar fields in the desert are to generate the bulk of our power in the years to come. But consumers and companies are also producing energy with mini-power plants in their own basements and solar panels on the roof. And intelligent appliances are saving energy in our homes: washers, dryers and refrigerators that communicate with each other wash, dry or cool when electricity is cheapest. The information age is arriving at a new level: It’s becoming the electricity age.
The electricity age is imminent in six German regions: The technology of the future for smart energy management is going to be developed and tested, under the label E-Energy, in several cities. A number of projects will kick into high gear this month. Tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of companies are expected to participate in the field tests. Research will be conducted into the possibility, for example, of homes that can largely produce all the electricity required by a household, as well as energy exchanges that enable consumers to sell any excess, self-produced and environmentally friendly electricity at a profit back to the energy grid.
Together with firms like Siemens, SAP, IBM and energy giants like EnBW, RWE and Vattenfall, Germany’s economics and environment ministries have already mobilized €140 million for the development of the associated technologies and the tests. The government has provided €60 million and the industrial partners are raising the rest together with public utilities and smaller, innovative technology partners. According to Ludwig Karg, one of the researchers working together with scientists and communication experts in the model regions, E-Energy is intended to jump-start a greater energy revolution in Germany. “We are providing German companies with future access to markets worth billions,” he said.
Poster Comment: We could have led this revolution, but no, we gotta give wellfare to that good ol’ 19th century tech. God’s followers (and the money changers who support them) don’t like smart, independent Americans. Truly Independent and smart Americans scare them and make them feel inadequate. They’d much rather have the blood, guts and Travail‡.
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)
General Motors, the nation’s largest automaker, today stood on the brink of bankruptcy and an effective government takeover. President Obama will address the nation at 11:30 a.m. ET Monday to discuss the bankruptcy, two officials close to the situation told CNN. It is expected that GM will detail some 20,000 job cuts and the closure of about a dozen plants by the end of 2010.
The impact of GM’s bankruptcy, which follows a Chapter 11 filing by Chrysler on April 30, will ripple across the nation to dealers, suppliers and other businesses large and small that work in the sector.
The company, once the country’s largest private sector employer, has only a fraction of its former staff. Its 80,000 hourly and salaried U.S. employees are half the number it had as recently as 2001.
Nearly 500,000 U.S. retirees, as well as more than 150,000 of their family members, depend on GM health insurance and pension plans. Retirees will see cuts in their health care coverage, although the company’s underfunded pension plans are not expected to be affected by a bankruptcy filing.
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.
Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey’s attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.
And his partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerous.
Scheduled Feb. 4-6th, the conference is an expected gathering of ” more than 2,00 labor, environmental, and business advocates” coming together for “the leading forum in 2009 for shaping the national debate about investment in clean energy and green technologies.”
Tis the early hours of the 4th and kick off of the conference will be here in no time. I’m off to hunt down some shut eye. Until tomorrow…
They will be catching up with Mark too. Register (top of the page) and get in on the conversation. Get on Bob’s Wire and give him links, info, or just say G’day!
Here’s a talking point in the green jobs debate: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.
Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.
The big spike in wind jobs was a result of a record-setting 50% increase in installed wind capacity, with 8,358 megawatts coming online in 2008 (enough to power some 2 million homes). That’s a third of the nation’s total 25,170 megawatts of wind power generation. Wind farms generating more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity were completed in the last three months of 2008 alone.
Another sign that wind power is no longer a niche green energy play: Wind accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation installed last year in the U.S. Power, literally, is shifting from the east to west, to the wind belt of the Midwest, west Texas and the West Coast. Texas continues to lead the country, with 7,116 megawatts of wind capacity but Iowa in 2008 overtook California for the No. 2 spot, with 2,790 megawatts of wind generation. Other new wind powers include Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado and Washington state.
But last year’s record is unlikely to be repeated in 2009 as the global credit crisis delays or scuttles new projects because developers are unable to secure financing for wind farms. Layoffs have already hit turbine makers like Clipper Windpower and Gamesa as well as companies that produce turbine towers, blades and other components.
The firings continue at a Tennessee hotel after its assistant general manager spoke out against its owner for dismissing a man for being gay.
David Hill, former director of human resources for ARTE’ Hotel in Brentwood, said that he was “dared” to sue after being told the decision by owner Tarun Surti to terminate his employment on January 8 was specifically on the basis of his sexual orientation; assistant general manager Leonard Stoddard confirmed it to the press.
“The owner, Mr. Surti, comes from a culture that is not very tolerant to the gay lifestyle,” Stoddard, who was ordered to dismiss Hill, told WSMV-TV, “and therefore he felt it necessary to have him removed from the workforce at the property.”
Stoddard, also openly gay, has since been given his walking papers, Out & Aboutreported. “I am here in the office and shocked to hear what you had said to the media,” Surti e-mailed Stoddard. “If it is true that you told media that David was fired because he is gay, you obviously told them a lie. Such behavior is subject to immediate termination and I would like you to restrain (sic) from coming to the hotel.”
