Straws in the wind – Labor

While Bush takes a last swipe at labor in his proposal to bailout GM and Chrysler, there are signs of a change in the climate for workers.


For several decades
* Working people have been treated like enemies, a class to be preyed upon.
* Labor unions were ferociously attacked.
* Jobs were shipped overseas by the millions.
* People were hired as temps or consultants so benefits could be denied.

In the words of Leo Gerard, president of the steelworkers union: “Washington will bail out those who shower before work, but not those who shower afterwards.”


Promising developments

A labor secretary, Hilda Solis, who is pro-labor: she “is pro-worker to her core, a politician who knows what it’s like to walk a picket line”.

More than 200 laid-off workers staged a successful six-day sit-in at a factory in Chicago, demanding and eventually getting severance pay and benefits that they were owed by law.

In Tar Heel, N.C., last week workers, after a brutal 15-year struggle, succeeded in organizing the notorious Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse, the largest hog-killing and processing plant in the world.

From Bob Herbert