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STAFF LAYOFFS
Recession Hits Unions
By Victor Riesel
Post Standard, ca. 1958
Depression, both of mood and finances, has hit
labor's high command. It may well be that the house of labor will have
to mortgage itself and borrow money. Reports are that the national
AFL-CIO income has fallen below $150,00 a week--and is still dropping.
If this continues, it could mean an insolvent national labor
headquarters.
Hit by the depression like any other business, the
AFL-CIO has slashed its staff by 40% and is cutting corners to stay out
of the red. Like any other layoffs, the impact on the AFL-CIO employees
has been brutal--especially on those who have been forced to retire on
pensions of $10 to $20 a week and must depend on U.S. Social Security
payments for more than their daily crumbs.
The slashings of labor's staff of organizers from its
original total of 390--which cost $4 million a year to maintain--to less
then 250 is not in George Meany's tradition.
There is little doubt that Meany moved under great
pressure when he came to the AFL-CIO Executive Committee not too long
ago with suggestions for slashing the national labor headquarters and 22
regional staffs even more drastically than was finally done.
He eased off and left the pruning to his
second-in-command. William Schnitzler, secretary-treasurer of the
AFL-CIO. Brother Schnitzler was as subtle as an old burlesque pratfall.
Of the 55 national labor organizers he fired about 40 were out of the
old CIO, the last president of which was Walter Reuther.
Soon there will be 6 million jobless. Most of these
are and will be union members in the heavy industries. Of the 1.11
million unlucky people who lost their jobs between mid-December and
mid-January, almost .5 million were in the 'hard goods' industries,
mostly metals, machinery and automobiles.
These cuts, just as much as the price of virtue, namely the ousting
of the Teamsters and other unions, have hit the AFL-CIO budget. The Auto
Union reportedly is paying for .25 million fewer members than it did a
year ago. The Steelworkers Union is estimated to have almost .4 million
fewer duespayers. Similarly hit are the Machinists and other craft
outfits. For every unemployed worker, the national AFL-CIO headquarters
loses a nickel a month.
The President’s Agenda and the African American
Community—November 2011
Note: One should take a
careful look at the phrasing in the above presidential appeal to
the "African America Community." It is not an "African American
Agenda" by the President but a "President's Agenda." It is
always when it comes to black Americans about Mr. Obama than
about black American communities.—RL
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 8
December 2011
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