Remembering the Triangle Fire, 100 Years Later
By JOSEPH BERGER
The New York Times
In the arts and academia, on television and on a Greenwich Village street, the 146 victims of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire will be remembered over the next few weeks in an outpouring of events marking the centennial of the workplace tragedy.
The events, which started last month — roughly 100 in New York City and another 100 elsewhere in the nation — seem on a scale unmatched in New York since the nation’s bicentennial in 1976 or the Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday party in 1986. And those were celebrations. This commemoration will have a more mournful, reflective tone.
“It’s amazing, the passion that has come out for this,” said Sherry Kane, a spokesman for Workers United, the union that today represents garment workers. “I think it speaks to people because it’s about immigrant issues, women’s issues, workers’ issues, so it’s all these communities and it feels very important to them.”
The lineup of events planned around the anniversary on March 25 include documentary films, art exhibits, plays, dance recitals, a requiem, a soliloquy, a slide show, an oratorio and lectures and panel discussions.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Art * Memory * Place: Commemorating the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/">Grey Art Gallery (New York University)
One hundred years ago, on March 25, 1911, 146 people, mostly young women from Jewish and Italian immigrant families, perished in a tragic and avoidable fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which was located on the top three floors of the Asch Building (now NYU’s Brown Building), on the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. The fire broke out on the 8th floor and quickly spread to the 9th and 10th floors. With many of the stairways blocked, only some of the workers managed to escape; others climbed out the windows, leaping to their deaths, or perished on the factory floor. Although it was extinguished in less than half an hour, the Triangle Fire was New York City’s largest workplace disaster before 9/11.
The exhibition results from an innovative collaboration between the Grey Art Gallery and graduate students in NYU’s Programs in Museum Studies and Public History. Divided into four sections, it begins with the ladies’ garment workers’ strike of 1909, then chronicles the fire itself, the display of bodies at the morgue, press coverage, and funeral processions and other memorials, including legislative action. Section two records the fire’s legacy during the New Deal era, noting the rise of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and examining its representations in journalism and mural painting. The third section explores activities surrounding the fire’s fiftieth anniversary in 1961, including commemorative ceremonies, scholarly publications, interviews with survivors, and landmarking.Demonstrating renewed interest in the fire’s legacy today, the final section investigates contemporary memorial activities, both on site and in the form of visual representations in community projects and performance art—along with works of scholarship, film, music, and literature, including children’s books.
Art ● Memory ● Place concludes with a call for continuing vigilance and political action to protect the rights of garment workers, both in the U.S. and worldwide. The exhibition is dedicated to the fire’s victims and survivors, and their descendants. Documenting a century of commemorations, it traces the many social and political advances inspired by the tragedy, and the myriad ways in which its memory has been claimed, contested and re-invigorated.
To Access the Online Archives/Histories
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)
The New York Times
It was Saturday, March 25, 1911. The work week was ending at the Triangle Waist Company factory in Lower Manhattan, and the men and women who operated the sewing machines and cut the cloth were pushing away from their tables, with some anticipating a night on the town and all looking toward their one day of rest.
On the 8th floor, flames suddenly leaped from a wastebasket under a table in the cutters’ area.
While workers frantically struggled with pails of water to douse it, the fire hopscotched to other waste bins and snared the paper patterns hanging from strings overhead.
The fire spread quickly — so quickly that in a half hour it was over, having consumed all it could in the large, airy lofts on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building, a half block east of Washington Square Park.
In its wake, the smoldering floors and wet streets were strewn with 146 bodies, all but 23 of them young women.
The Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, as it is commonly recorded in history books, was one of the nation’s landmark disasters, a tragedy that enveloped the city in grief and remorse but eventually inspired important shifts in the nation’s laws, particularly those protecting the rights of workers and the safety of buildings.
The tragedy galvanized Americans, who were shaken by the stories of Jewish and Italian strivers who had been toiling long hours inside an overcrowded factory only to find themselves trapped in a firestorm inside a building’s top floors where exit doors may have been locked. At least 50 workers concluded that the better option was simply to jump.
To Access Original News Reports, Retrospective Historical Pieces, and Photo Archives
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Showing posts with label Labor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labor. Show all posts
Michelle Chen: State Budget Battles Converge on Prison Labor Force
State Budget Battles Converge on Prison Labor Force
by Michelle Chen
In These Times
Prison isn't just about doing hard time. For many, it's about working full-time, too. These days, state governments seem ready to squeeze their captive workforces to plug budget gaps on the cheap.
From the chain gang to the gulag, labor in the prison population predates our modern labor regulations and to this day, remains relatively untouched by the legal protections afforded to regular workers. So in most states, prison work has come to be seen as a hybrid between conscript labor and rehabilitation, putting otherwise “idle” inmates to work on farms, manufacturing plants, and janitorial jobs.
The New York Times reports that in many areas, laborers in prison jump suits are a growing presence at many public work sites, suggesting that they're being used to alleviate fiscal pressures now eroding common public sector services:
As we reported in December, prison labor conditions have sparked some noteworthy revolts. A wave of strikes rocked several prisons in Georgia late last year, touching off a national campaign for the dignified treatment of prison workers.
The uprisings shed light on how vulnerable inmates are when the prison-industrial complex operates not just as a warden and dictator but a boss as well, marshalling the labor of thousands with little oversight. The Georgia inmates drafted a list of grievances ranging from abusive treatment and work without wages.
The inmates' direct actions resonated with civil rights groups who have pointed out disturbing continuities between the era of slavery and the racialization of imprisonment, and by extension, the industries tied to it. The mass incarceration of black men, and their punitive deployment—explicitly sanctioned under the Constitution—in the dregs of industrial capitalism, speaks loud and clear to the theory of prison as America's “new Jim Crow.”
Allegations that prison guards severely beat an inmate protester in retaliation underscore the inequality endemic to this labor system, even though the programs are typically endorsed as a form of rehabilitation and self-help.
Of course, today's prison labor is more regulated and considerably less brutal than the post-Civil War convict-lease system—a regression to slavery disguised as a criminal penalty. (Some reforms were enacted during the Great Depression to prevent downward-spiraling competition between “free labor” and incarcerated workers.)
Yet the institutional parallels are striking. From the late-19th through the early 20th century, southern states, including Georgia, turned to prison labor as a release valve for dealing with fiscal crisis, and the white supremacist power structure, through “leases” with the private sector, enabled forced labor, torture and abuse on a massive scale.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Michelle Chen
In These Times
Prison isn't just about doing hard time. For many, it's about working full-time, too. These days, state governments seem ready to squeeze their captive workforces to plug budget gaps on the cheap.
From the chain gang to the gulag, labor in the prison population predates our modern labor regulations and to this day, remains relatively untouched by the legal protections afforded to regular workers. So in most states, prison work has come to be seen as a hybrid between conscript labor and rehabilitation, putting otherwise “idle” inmates to work on farms, manufacturing plants, and janitorial jobs.
The New York Times reports that in many areas, laborers in prison jump suits are a growing presence at many public work sites, suggesting that they're being used to alleviate fiscal pressures now eroding common public sector services:
[O]fficials are expanding the practice to combat cuts in federal financing and dwindling tax revenue, using prisoners to paint vehicles, clean courthouses, sweep campsites and perform many other services done before the recession by private contractors or government employees.
In New Jersey, inmates on roadkill patrol clean deer carcasses from highways. Georgia inmates tend municipal graveyards. In Ohio, they paint their own cells. In California, prison officials hope to expand existing programs, including one in which wet-suit-clad inmates repair leaky public water tanks. There are no figures on how many prisoners have been enrolled in new or expanded programs nationwide, but experts in criminal justice have taken note of the increase.
As we reported in December, prison labor conditions have sparked some noteworthy revolts. A wave of strikes rocked several prisons in Georgia late last year, touching off a national campaign for the dignified treatment of prison workers.
The uprisings shed light on how vulnerable inmates are when the prison-industrial complex operates not just as a warden and dictator but a boss as well, marshalling the labor of thousands with little oversight. The Georgia inmates drafted a list of grievances ranging from abusive treatment and work without wages.
The inmates' direct actions resonated with civil rights groups who have pointed out disturbing continuities between the era of slavery and the racialization of imprisonment, and by extension, the industries tied to it. The mass incarceration of black men, and their punitive deployment—explicitly sanctioned under the Constitution—in the dregs of industrial capitalism, speaks loud and clear to the theory of prison as America's “new Jim Crow.”
Allegations that prison guards severely beat an inmate protester in retaliation underscore the inequality endemic to this labor system, even though the programs are typically endorsed as a form of rehabilitation and self-help.
Of course, today's prison labor is more regulated and considerably less brutal than the post-Civil War convict-lease system—a regression to slavery disguised as a criminal penalty. (Some reforms were enacted during the Great Depression to prevent downward-spiraling competition between “free labor” and incarcerated workers.)
Yet the institutional parallels are striking. From the late-19th through the early 20th century, southern states, including Georgia, turned to prison labor as a release valve for dealing with fiscal crisis, and the white supremacist power structure, through “leases” with the private sector, enabled forced labor, torture and abuse on a massive scale.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
NPR: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History
Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History
NPR
A Coal-Fired Country
West Virginia's been called the Saudi Arabia of coal. It produces more than a third of all the coal mined in the U.S. More than half the energy Americans use is powered by burning those black rocks. The lights in your house, your TV, maybe the computer you're reading this story on — they all work thanks to coal.
The other thing about West Virginia is its poverty rate, one of the highest in America, even though coal prices just hit a 15-year high.
Almost a quarter of the people in Logan County live below the poverty level. They're people left behind by the changes in technology and technique that have allowed coal companies to earn more money and hire fewer miners.
This story, though, is only partially about jobs. It's really about history — the battle over what to remember and whether to remember it at all.
A Firefight To Organize
No one has the exact details of what happened here in late August/early September 1921, but the basic story says around 10,000 coal miners took up arms against the private militias employed by West Virginia's Stone Mountain Mining Co. For five days they fought for the right to organize — to join unions.
The Baldwin-Felts detectives hired by the coal companies in West Virginia were referred to as the "Death Special" by miners.
"From all the artifacts found here, there had to be hundreds of men up here," King says. "I mean, there's probably thousands of shell cases scattered around here."
As many as 100 men died in the fighting. It got so bad that President Harding sent a detachment of federal troops to crush the rebellion.
None of this happened in a vacuum. Tension had been building for years. Just a year before, union-busting mercenaries, who worked for a private agency called Baldwin-Felts, shot and killed the pro-union mayor of the nearby town of Matewan.
At the time, most states had laws against organizing. It didn't help that Harding's administration was decidedly anti-labor.
The worry was the unions would bog down industry and put the brakes on America's rapid economic growth.
The problem for the wage earners, at least in Logan County, was that they didn't have a whole lot of options.
A Company Town
"They had the yellow-dog contract which said that, basically, if you took a job at this mine, you could not associate with anyone in the union, you couldn't join," says Doug Estepp, a local historian who runs tours of the area. "You were basically fired, blacklisted and evicted — and probably beaten on the way out by the guards just for good measure."
The coal companies owned your house, they paid you in credits that could only be spent on highly inflated food at the company-owned store, and if you complained about safety, you were fired.
The private security men from Baldwin-Felts would threaten, beat and sometimes murder agitators — all with impunity.
And so it all came to a head in late August 1921. The miners of Logan and Mingo counties had had enough.
To Listent to the Episode
NPR
A Coal-Fired Country
West Virginia's been called the Saudi Arabia of coal. It produces more than a third of all the coal mined in the U.S. More than half the energy Americans use is powered by burning those black rocks. The lights in your house, your TV, maybe the computer you're reading this story on — they all work thanks to coal.
The other thing about West Virginia is its poverty rate, one of the highest in America, even though coal prices just hit a 15-year high.
Almost a quarter of the people in Logan County live below the poverty level. They're people left behind by the changes in technology and technique that have allowed coal companies to earn more money and hire fewer miners.
This story, though, is only partially about jobs. It's really about history — the battle over what to remember and whether to remember it at all.
A Firefight To Organize
No one has the exact details of what happened here in late August/early September 1921, but the basic story says around 10,000 coal miners took up arms against the private militias employed by West Virginia's Stone Mountain Mining Co. For five days they fought for the right to organize — to join unions.
The Baldwin-Felts detectives hired by the coal companies in West Virginia were referred to as the "Death Special" by miners.
"From all the artifacts found here, there had to be hundreds of men up here," King says. "I mean, there's probably thousands of shell cases scattered around here."
As many as 100 men died in the fighting. It got so bad that President Harding sent a detachment of federal troops to crush the rebellion.
None of this happened in a vacuum. Tension had been building for years. Just a year before, union-busting mercenaries, who worked for a private agency called Baldwin-Felts, shot and killed the pro-union mayor of the nearby town of Matewan.
At the time, most states had laws against organizing. It didn't help that Harding's administration was decidedly anti-labor.
The worry was the unions would bog down industry and put the brakes on America's rapid economic growth.
The problem for the wage earners, at least in Logan County, was that they didn't have a whole lot of options.
A Company Town
"They had the yellow-dog contract which said that, basically, if you took a job at this mine, you could not associate with anyone in the union, you couldn't join," says Doug Estepp, a local historian who runs tours of the area. "You were basically fired, blacklisted and evicted — and probably beaten on the way out by the guards just for good measure."
The coal companies owned your house, they paid you in credits that could only be spent on highly inflated food at the company-owned store, and if you complained about safety, you were fired.
The private security men from Baldwin-Felts would threaten, beat and sometimes murder agitators — all with impunity.
And so it all came to a head in late August 1921. The miners of Logan and Mingo counties had had enough.
To Listent to the Episode
Monthly Review Press: Michael D. Yates -- "Notes from the Editors (March 2011)"
Notes From the Editors (March 2011)
by Michael D. Yates
Monthly Review Press
...
The January employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent for December 2010, which represents about 14.5 million people. This was down from 9.8 percent in November. However, if there had been no dropouts from the labor force (by virtue of people having become discouraged enough to stop searching for jobs) between November and December, the unemployment rate would have remained at 9.8 percent. If we were to count those dropouts, along with other “marginally attached” workers, as unemployed, and add the part-time workers who desire full-time work, we would get an expanded measure of labor market distress—the underemployment rate (“U6” in BLS parlance), which in December was 16.7 percent, or 26.1 million persons. In June 2009, it was 16.6 percent. So nearly two years after the recovery began, we have the same amount of actual labor market misery.
These overall rates hide great variability—by duration, race and ethnicity, and age. Six million four hundred thousand workers have been officially unemployed for longer than six months, an incredible 44.3 percent of all the officially unemployed, down only slightly from the post-Second World War high of 45.6 percent hit in May 2010. And there are millions of workers who have been unemployed for at least a year; a recent New York Times article cites evidence that the re-employment rate—the chance that these people will find a job in the next month—is a meager 8.7 percent. It is 30.7 percent for those unemployed fewer than five weeks (Catherine Rampell, “Unemployed and Likely to Stay That Way,” December 2, 2010, http://nytimes.com).
So-called minorities have been hit hardest by the crisis. In December, black and Latino workers had official unemployment rates of 15.8 and 13.0 percent, respectively. The rate for workers of all races between ages sixteen and twenty-four was 18.1 percent—particularly troubling because young people are being denied the initial entry into the workforce so essential to their future economic well-being. Young nonwhite men and women are experiencing unemployment rates that defy belief. For example, black teenagers had an unemployment rate of 44.2 percent. A recent study conducted by the Community Service Society of New York (Unemployment in New York City During the Recession and Early Recovery, http://cssny.org) found that the average unemployment rate for black, non-Hispanic men sixteen to twenty-four in New York City, during the eighteen months between January 2009 and July 2010, was 33.5 percent. Their labor force participation rate—the share of the working age population in the labor force—was a minuscule 38 percent, meaning that a high proportion of New York City’s black youth has dropped out of or never entered the labor force. Most startling was that only one in four were employed at all.
The BLS data cited above are from the monthly survey of about sixty thousand households. The BLS also conducts a survey of about four hundred thousand businesses to obtain information about employment gains and losses. The economy has been adding jobs for several months, but not nearly enough to reduce the unemployment rate significantly. The Economic Policy Institute tells us that
While the labor market is now adding jobs, it remains 7.2 million payroll jobs below where it was at the start of the recession three years ago. And even this number understates the size of the gap in the labor market by failing to take into account the fact that simply keeping up with the growth in the working-age population would require the addition of another 3.7 million jobs in those three years. This means the labor market is now nearly 11 million jobs below the level needed to restore the pre-recession unemployment rate (5.0% in December 2007). [Heidi Shierholz, “Labor Force Smaller than before Recession Started,” January 7, 2011, http://epinet.org]
The grim labor market news is matched by the statistics on poverty and inequality. A record number of people, 43.6 million, now live in poverty, and nineteen million of these have annual incomes less than one-half of the poverty level, an amount equal to $10,977 for a family of four. Income inequality keeps getting worse, as most of the gains in national income now go to the richest 1 percent of households.
The federal government’s response to the continuing depressed conditions of the nation’s working men and women has mimicked the propaganda emanating from the wealthy and their media puppets. Capital wants to go in for the kill, eliminating the last bastions of working-class security and power: social security and public sector labor unions. President Obama appointed two vicious opponents of social security to his deficit reduction commission, and the media are full of attacks on public employees. There is no evidence that social security will soon be insolvent, or that public employees are overpaid and unproductive. But as editor John Bellamy Foster recently argued on the Public Broadcasting Service, “It doesn’t seem to matter to those making such charges that all of this is false—as long as they have the power to spread such misinformation and people are sufficiently gullible”
To Read the Entire Commentary
by Michael D. Yates
Monthly Review Press
...
The January employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent for December 2010, which represents about 14.5 million people. This was down from 9.8 percent in November. However, if there had been no dropouts from the labor force (by virtue of people having become discouraged enough to stop searching for jobs) between November and December, the unemployment rate would have remained at 9.8 percent. If we were to count those dropouts, along with other “marginally attached” workers, as unemployed, and add the part-time workers who desire full-time work, we would get an expanded measure of labor market distress—the underemployment rate (“U6” in BLS parlance), which in December was 16.7 percent, or 26.1 million persons. In June 2009, it was 16.6 percent. So nearly two years after the recovery began, we have the same amount of actual labor market misery.
These overall rates hide great variability—by duration, race and ethnicity, and age. Six million four hundred thousand workers have been officially unemployed for longer than six months, an incredible 44.3 percent of all the officially unemployed, down only slightly from the post-Second World War high of 45.6 percent hit in May 2010. And there are millions of workers who have been unemployed for at least a year; a recent New York Times article cites evidence that the re-employment rate—the chance that these people will find a job in the next month—is a meager 8.7 percent. It is 30.7 percent for those unemployed fewer than five weeks (Catherine Rampell, “Unemployed and Likely to Stay That Way,” December 2, 2010, http://nytimes.com).
So-called minorities have been hit hardest by the crisis. In December, black and Latino workers had official unemployment rates of 15.8 and 13.0 percent, respectively. The rate for workers of all races between ages sixteen and twenty-four was 18.1 percent—particularly troubling because young people are being denied the initial entry into the workforce so essential to their future economic well-being. Young nonwhite men and women are experiencing unemployment rates that defy belief. For example, black teenagers had an unemployment rate of 44.2 percent. A recent study conducted by the Community Service Society of New York (Unemployment in New York City During the Recession and Early Recovery, http://cssny.org) found that the average unemployment rate for black, non-Hispanic men sixteen to twenty-four in New York City, during the eighteen months between January 2009 and July 2010, was 33.5 percent. Their labor force participation rate—the share of the working age population in the labor force—was a minuscule 38 percent, meaning that a high proportion of New York City’s black youth has dropped out of or never entered the labor force. Most startling was that only one in four were employed at all.
The BLS data cited above are from the monthly survey of about sixty thousand households. The BLS also conducts a survey of about four hundred thousand businesses to obtain information about employment gains and losses. The economy has been adding jobs for several months, but not nearly enough to reduce the unemployment rate significantly. The Economic Policy Institute tells us that
While the labor market is now adding jobs, it remains 7.2 million payroll jobs below where it was at the start of the recession three years ago. And even this number understates the size of the gap in the labor market by failing to take into account the fact that simply keeping up with the growth in the working-age population would require the addition of another 3.7 million jobs in those three years. This means the labor market is now nearly 11 million jobs below the level needed to restore the pre-recession unemployment rate (5.0% in December 2007). [Heidi Shierholz, “Labor Force Smaller than before Recession Started,” January 7, 2011, http://epinet.org]
The grim labor market news is matched by the statistics on poverty and inequality. A record number of people, 43.6 million, now live in poverty, and nineteen million of these have annual incomes less than one-half of the poverty level, an amount equal to $10,977 for a family of four. Income inequality keeps getting worse, as most of the gains in national income now go to the richest 1 percent of households.
The federal government’s response to the continuing depressed conditions of the nation’s working men and women has mimicked the propaganda emanating from the wealthy and their media puppets. Capital wants to go in for the kill, eliminating the last bastions of working-class security and power: social security and public sector labor unions. President Obama appointed two vicious opponents of social security to his deficit reduction commission, and the media are full of attacks on public employees. There is no evidence that social security will soon be insolvent, or that public employees are overpaid and unproductive. But as editor John Bellamy Foster recently argued on the Public Broadcasting Service, “It doesn’t seem to matter to those making such charges that all of this is false—as long as they have the power to spread such misinformation and people are sufficiently gullible”
To Read the Entire Commentary
Harriet Blair Rowan: Wisconsin’s Uprising -- A Guided Tour of the 11-Day Protest Encampment Inside the State Capitol in Madison
Wisconsin’s Uprising: A Guided Tour of the 11-Day Protest Encampment Inside the State Capitol in Madison
Democracy Now
Public employees, labor activists and students have been filling the hallways of the Wisconsin State Capitol for the past 11 days. Hundreds of people have slept inside the Capitol building each night. So many people are staying here that protesters have begun building impromptu dining areas, a lending library and a medic center. Democracy Now! senior producer Mike Burke and John Hamilton receive a tour of the building from an activist who’s stayed at the Capitol building for nine straight nights.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
Public employees, labor activists and students have been filling the hallways of the Wisconsin State Capitol for the past 11 days. Hundreds of people have slept inside the Capitol building each night. So many people are staying here that protesters have begun building impromptu dining areas, a lending library and a medic center. Democracy Now! senior producer Mike Burke and John Hamilton receive a tour of the building from an activist who’s stayed at the Capitol building for nine straight nights.
To Watch/Listen/Read
History for the Future: Heather Steffen on the Labor of Universities
Heather Steffen on the Labor of Universities
History for the Future
This week on History for the Future, I interviewed Heather Steffen on the structure of the labor force at American universities. We discussed the increasing use of the casual labor of adjunct teachers, the crisis in the tenure system, and highly exploitative world of student internships. Steffen pointed to the ways that recent changes in the university may serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for broader developments in U.S. capitalism.
Heather Steffen is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in Literary and Cultural Studies where she is writing a dissertation entitled, “The Struggle for the University in the Progressive Era.” She also serves on the delegate assembly and the committee on the status graduate students in the profession for the Modern Language Association, and was recently featured in an forum in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the future of graduate education in the humanities
To Listen to the Interview and to Access More Resources
History for the Future
This week on History for the Future, I interviewed Heather Steffen on the structure of the labor force at American universities. We discussed the increasing use of the casual labor of adjunct teachers, the crisis in the tenure system, and highly exploitative world of student internships. Steffen pointed to the ways that recent changes in the university may serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for broader developments in U.S. capitalism.
Heather Steffen is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in Literary and Cultural Studies where she is writing a dissertation entitled, “The Struggle for the University in the Progressive Era.” She also serves on the delegate assembly and the committee on the status graduate students in the profession for the Modern Language Association, and was recently featured in an forum in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the future of graduate education in the humanities
To Listen to the Interview and to Access More Resources
“We Have a Fire in the House of Labor. We Are Here to Put it Out”: Wisconsin Firefighters and Police Officers Join Massive Protests Against Anti-Union
“We Have a Fire in the House of Labor. We Are Here to Put it Out”: Wisconsin Firefighters and Police Officers Join Massive Protests Against Anti-Union Bill
Democracy Now
In the largest rally yet, an estimated 80,000 people protested in Madison on Saturday against a "budget repair" bill that would strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. The state’s Democratic Senators—who have fled the state to stall a vote on the bill—sent a letter to Gov. Scott Walker on Friday telling him labor would accept cuts to pensions and increased contributions to health and retirement plans if he would negotiate on collective bargaining. The cuts Walker has proposed in a sweeping budget bill would exclude public safety workers like police, state troopers and firefighters, but this does not mean they are in support of the legislation. To discuss this further, we are joined by Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association. “An assault on one is an assault on all,” Mitchell says. “As firefighters and police officers, we do not sit idly by. We make things happen.”
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
In the largest rally yet, an estimated 80,000 people protested in Madison on Saturday against a "budget repair" bill that would strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. The state’s Democratic Senators—who have fled the state to stall a vote on the bill—sent a letter to Gov. Scott Walker on Friday telling him labor would accept cuts to pensions and increased contributions to health and retirement plans if he would negotiate on collective bargaining. The cuts Walker has proposed in a sweeping budget bill would exclude public safety workers like police, state troopers and firefighters, but this does not mean they are in support of the legislation. To discuss this further, we are joined by Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association. “An assault on one is an assault on all,” Mitchell says. “As firefighters and police officers, we do not sit idly by. We make things happen.”
To Watch/Listen/Read
Dave Zirin: Wisconsin -- Solidarity Among Workers … And Football Players
Wisconsin: Solidarity Among Workers … And Football Players. As Wisconsin’s public workers fight to keep their wages and bargaining rights, they’re joined by others involved in a labor struggle: their Super Bowl champion neighbors.
by Dave Zirin
Yes!
Less than two weeks ago, the Green Bay Packers—the only fan-owned, non-profit franchise in major American sports—won the Super Bowl, bringing the Lombardi trophy back to Wisconsin. But now, past and present members of the “People’s Team” are girding up for one more fight and this time, it’s against their own governor, Scott Walker.
Walker, after the Super Bowl victory, bathed himself sensuously in the team’s triumph, declaring at a public ceremony that February was now Packers Month. He oozed praise for the franchise named in honor of the state's packing workers. But just days later, the governor offered cutbacks, contempt, and even the threat of violence for actual state workers.
Fighting austerity is not an Egyptian issue or a Middle Eastern issue—it’s a political reality of the 21st century world.Walker has unveiled plans to strip all public workers of collective bargaining rights and dramatically slash the wages and health benefits of every nurse, teacher, and state employee. Then, Walker proclaimed that resistance to these moves would be met with a response from the Wisconsin National Guard. Seriously.
Yes, in advance of any debate over his proposal, Governor Walker put the National Guard on alert by saying that the guard is "prepared" for "whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for.” Considering that the state of Wisconsin hasn’t called in the National Guard since 1886, these bizarre threats did more than raise eyebrows. They provoked rage.
Robin Eckstein, a former Wisconsin National Guard member, told the Huffington Post, "Maybe the new governor doesn't understand yet—but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force to be mobilized to quash political dissent. The Guard is to be used in case of true emergencies and disasters, to help the people of Wisconsin, not to bully political opponents."
Already this week, as many as 100,000 people have marched at various protests around the state with signs that reflect the current moment like "If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can't Wisconsin?” “We Want Governors Not Dictators," and the pithy “Hosni Walker."
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Dave Zirin
Yes!
Less than two weeks ago, the Green Bay Packers—the only fan-owned, non-profit franchise in major American sports—won the Super Bowl, bringing the Lombardi trophy back to Wisconsin. But now, past and present members of the “People’s Team” are girding up for one more fight and this time, it’s against their own governor, Scott Walker.
Walker, after the Super Bowl victory, bathed himself sensuously in the team’s triumph, declaring at a public ceremony that February was now Packers Month. He oozed praise for the franchise named in honor of the state's packing workers. But just days later, the governor offered cutbacks, contempt, and even the threat of violence for actual state workers.
Fighting austerity is not an Egyptian issue or a Middle Eastern issue—it’s a political reality of the 21st century world.Walker has unveiled plans to strip all public workers of collective bargaining rights and dramatically slash the wages and health benefits of every nurse, teacher, and state employee. Then, Walker proclaimed that resistance to these moves would be met with a response from the Wisconsin National Guard. Seriously.
Yes, in advance of any debate over his proposal, Governor Walker put the National Guard on alert by saying that the guard is "prepared" for "whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for.” Considering that the state of Wisconsin hasn’t called in the National Guard since 1886, these bizarre threats did more than raise eyebrows. They provoked rage.
Robin Eckstein, a former Wisconsin National Guard member, told the Huffington Post, "Maybe the new governor doesn't understand yet—but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force to be mobilized to quash political dissent. The Guard is to be used in case of true emergencies and disasters, to help the people of Wisconsin, not to bully political opponents."
Already this week, as many as 100,000 people have marched at various protests around the state with signs that reflect the current moment like "If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can't Wisconsin?” “We Want Governors Not Dictators," and the pithy “Hosni Walker."
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