The U.S. Supreme Court appears more hostile to workers' discrimination
complaints
Job discrimination cases hit new opposition
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - Two new job discrimination cases have Supreme Court justices
considering how broadly federal law protects workers from retaliation after
they complain about bias.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-24-court_N.htm
Big-business doesn't need the Republicans to step on the necks of working people in quashing their rights as Minnesota's DFL politicians make their way towards those grocery bags filled with cash in the offices of Floyd "Buck" Jourdain, the folksy Chair of the Red Lake Nation, which the Kansas City mob has entrusted to look out for their high-stakes interest in Red Lake Gaming Enterprises three Seven Clans Casino operations which have become the "model" of the United States Chamber of Commerce for Labor/Management Relations in the United States.
Former DFL leader Roger Moe who helped bring the notoriously corrupt--- anti-labor--- Indian Gaming Industry into Minnesota to help the Democrats rake in campaign contributions has personally taken his star United States Senate candidate, Mike Ciresi to the Red Lake Nation courting endorsement--- and, of course, campaign funds--- from the mobbed-up, corrupt "leaders" of the Red Lake Nation Tribal Council.
In hot pursuit, too, of this dirty money are Senate candidates Al Franken, comedian turned politician; and, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, the darling of the well-heeled, "latte liberal" crowd.
Ciresi is no stranger to corruption and politics.
For these politicians, from bootlegging to illegal gambling to the Indian Gaming Industry, its all just part of the American experience--- befitting a Howard Fast novel.
The employers and the Democratic and Republican politicians they buy have a set goal in mind for what they want to achieve in the way of what rights working people in this country should have. They have a United States Supreme Court whose primary role throughout history has always been to control the working class for the capitalist class. This has been the primary function and role of the United States Supreme Court since the Constitution created the Supreme Court; one need only spend a few days in any law library going through the case histories of the United States Supreme Court to find this little tid-bit of history out, which historians have tried to conceal.
Anyone who wants to see what goals and objectives the employers have in mind should closely analyze the 400 or so “right-to-work colonies” created by the “Compacts,” which created the Indian Gaming Industry--- an industry now spread out across this country because these “Compacts” clearly demonstrate and provide a working model of what employers hope to achieve and make universal instead of health care.
These are the more than four-hundred casino/resort/hotel/motel/restaurant/theme-park “enterprises” operated by some of the most powerful mobsters in the country who have donned the finest designer suits in operating these casinos through these complex “Compacts” created to establish the so-called Indian Gaming Industry.
Take a good close look at the lives of some two-million of your fellow workers who have been deprived of the most basic and fundamental human rights that you have closed your eyes to for twenty-years now who work in these loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws--- all created compliments of elected officials who have been handsomely paid off by the likes of the crooked and corrupt Jack Abramoff and Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck the lobbying firm of choice for the mobsters who inherited the “evil empire” of some of the most vicious, most violent, most debased, most anti-human elements “related” by “family ties” to Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky “families.”
It is very interesting that Mike Meurers the MN DFL party hack who works to try to keep the mobsters in the background while hired to create a clean image for some of the nastiest excuses passing themselves off as human beings would not take his "guests" to visit the casinos where Red Lake Enterprises employs hundreds of workers under some of the most Draconian conditions imaginable. In a lengthy meeting I had with Jourdain in his office concerning the plight of casino workers he kept asking me to define "Draconian." In fact, Jourdain, who will talk at length about the abuses of workers employed at Wal-marts or McDonalds doesn't want to address the plight of those workers employed by Red Lake Gaming Enterprises and it is Mike Meuer's job to make sure the DFL politicians he brings around looking for handouts never broach the subject of casino workers' rights and the deplorable conditions they labor under.
Quite literally, in these casinos, management has the “right” to rape employees in these casinos; feed patrons hamburgers made from meat of diseased cows and spare-ribs (all-you-can-eat) from old crippled sows, and boars that have become so fat and sick they can no longer get any action to fish which were “caught” belly-up floating in the polluted Dutch canals passed off as “fresh walleye.” Managers have done it all, and much more, including selling illegal booze to running loan shark businesses and drug deals along with illegal gambling, which includes taking in bets on everything from high school sporting events to professional sports with other management staff specializing in prostitution.
Mike Ciresi, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, and Al Franken should have asked Minnesota State Representative, Dave Olin--- the former Pennington County Prosecutor--- to give them the real briefing about the corruption taking place through Red Lakes' casino empire.
Not one single politician in this country has had the moral or political courage to address this issue; even the great “progressive,” Dennis Kucinich, has lauded the “accomplishments” of the Indian Gaming Industry, rather than giving these parasites the thrashing deserved.
The major “accomplishment” of the Indian Gaming Industry has been to create these “right-to-work-colonies” raking in billions of dollars for mobsters while leaving Native American communities and reservations even deeper in debt, wallowing in poverty and despair like just so many old, diseased and dying milk cows at the slaughterhouse waiting to be butchered and fed to small school children.
I am sure the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, most all of whom, have been put on the Court with help and arm-twisting of Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck (check it out--- this bunch who has its “humble” beginnings defending the Kansas City mob’s cronies) has created the present United States Supreme Court will be looking very favorably upon employers seeking to “level” their “playing fields” through depriving working people of their rights… especially those rights attained in the “New Deal” period which have hobbled employers so.
And now, the United Auto Workers union has conducted a successful “card signing campaign” among casino workers at the largest casino in the United States and they will never attain a union contract because these “Compacts” provide the legal and constitutional basis to keep the union out and a union leadership who would spit in the faces of its present members by subjecting auto workers to pre-1950 wages and benefits sure isn’t going to initiate the kind of fight required to win a contract for casino workers at Foxwoods, the largest casino/resort complex in the United States.
We were the first in the Nation to initiate union organizing activities in the Indian Gaming Industry at the Red Lake Nation’s three Seven Clans Casinos in Northern Minnesota, not one single union would support our efforts because the AFL-CIO is so wedded to the Democratic Party which gets major campaign contributions from these casino managements.
In spite of all of this, eighty-six percent of the workers signed union cards authorizing our union organizing committee--- Red Lake Casino, Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ Union Organizing Committee--- to represent them. The first time I met with Red Lake Nation tribal Chair Butch Brun I was attacked and beaten by Red Lake Nation Tribal Police. The next time I met with Red Lake Nation Chair Floyd “Buck” Jourdain for over three hours and as a result of this meeting several of our organizers were beaten to a pulp.
Today we have organizing campaigns in each of the casinos in Minnesota, casinos in Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa and we are now working to represent a number of workers in the entertainment/hospitality industry in Branson, Missouri hoping to link the struggles of workers with no rights to workers with limited rights. I would note: The Fertitta Family and their Colony Enterprises operating the Station Casino empire was thrown out of Missouri after trying to bribe a high public official for which they were fined a mere one million dollars. Corruption, bribery and the ruthless and Draconian exploitation of workers is the name of the real “game.”
However, until progressives, in and outside the labor movement, decide to consider the circumstances created by the “Compacts” employers are going to be demanding “equal treatment;” here in Minnesota this has already happened where bar owners are insisting they have a right to a “level playing field” with the Indian Gaming Industry when it comes to the rights of their employees to be free of second-hand smoke. Before long, we will probably see Minnesota’s “Freedom to Breath” (No Smoking in the workplace) challenged in the United States Supreme Court. And if these judges rule that bar owners in Minnesota have a “right” to a “level playing field” the door will be opened to challenge just about any labor law on the books along with a number of social programs like Social Security.
Just thought I would give all of you something to think about.
Oh, both Hillary Clinton and Obama receive big-time campaign contributions from this Indian Gaming Industry and the notorious Fertitta Family whose attorneys--- Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck cited my postings on the Working Class Studies list serve in their pending actions aimed at silencing me on this issue.
It is very interesting indeed that the UAW, United Steel Workers, Teamsters, UFCW and SEIU who all now want a “piece of the action” (dues and pension monies) in the Indian Gaming Industry as they try to prevent the rebirth of a “red” union, are unwilling to join me in speaking out against the injustices of these “Compacts” which have created over four-hundred “right-to-work colonies” here in the United States systematically through institutionalized methods deprived so many working people of their basic human rights and dignity, not to mention their rights to have a voice in the workplace.
There is a real sad irony to all of this… on the eve of a strike by security guards affiliated with the SEIU, the officers of this union have contacted me to help them convince the “casino cops” not to work as scabs when they go on strike in the Twin Cities! For twenty years this union has sat in silence and watched without uttering a single word of protest as casino workers are brutally exploited, abused and misused in every conceivable manner by these mobsters, and now SEIU leaders come crying to me that they want our help.
It is very sad to see the chickens coming home to roost.
Mr. Dubovich, the head of the United Steel Workers organizing department in Minnesota, asked to meet with me to inform me that his union was going to be horning in on our organizing campaigns here in Minnesota as the USW has sat without struggling while more than 50,000 iron ore miners have lost their jobs on the Iron Range and the USW has castrated its present membership with its attacks on rank and file committees and rank and file activists. And Mr. Dubovich, whose boss--- Mr. Bob Bratulich--- sits in his office with his feet up on his desk playing computer games all day long complains that he has a two foot high stack of unresolved grievances from the taconite plants.
The entire scenario would be laughable, if not so pathetically sad, with so many working people suffering--- over thirty-thousand in Minnesota alone not to mention their entire families--- as their standards of living is constantly being driven down, down, down.
As any school child knows, poverty will never be eliminated as long as working people are paid poverty wages. Apparently this little nugget and kernel of truth hasn't made it into the campaigns of Mike Ciresi, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and Al Franken.
How low can the standards of American workers go? Right down to where two-million casino workers are at.
What is that song Utah Phillips enjoys singing, “They kicked the reds out of the unions?” And the working class is paying the price for the dumbing down of the U.S. labor movement.
Yes, Professor Martin Zweig would also prefer that this issue involving the rights of casino workers not be talked about because he forgot to include this issue in the expensive books he sells to his students, which are supposed to be educating working people who enroll in his working class studies programs. These programs come up short in teaching about rank and file initiated action, as he tries to keep the working class tethered to the current crop of labor fakers like John Sweeney and that anti-communist phony Leo Girard, who would rather no one knows about how he and his dad orchestrated an anti-communist campaign of terror on behalf of the employers and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police working together with the FBI to divide the working class community of hard rock miners in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Anyways, just thought I would add a few comments on the U.S. Supreme Court and workers’ rights.
Here are photos of three Democratic United States Senate Candidates happily meeting with Floyd “Buck” Jourdain, one of the most depraved elements the human race has ever created, as they beg for his endorsement and pander like prostitutes for campaign contributions for the upcoming election.
Neither Al Franken, Mike Ciresi, nor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, all pictured below, had the moral or political courage to address the violation of the human rights of hundreds of casino workers employed by Red Lake Gaming Enterprises, even though the liberal professor--- Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer turned Democratic politician--- boasts that he has the support of “the real Norma Rae,” and his written widely about “Christian ethics and morality” in politics and the economy. For some reason making the link from words on the pages of his books to the real life situation of casino workers evades comprehension for this enlightened humanist professor.
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer meets with corrupt Red Lake Band Members who have sacrificed the Red Lake Nation’s historic sovereignty in a number of casino ventures; destroying a once proud, vibrant community built in the best socialist and cooperative traditions.
In this photograph United States Senate Candidate Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and his staff person Kathleen Blake--- both of whom are fully aware of the repressive conditions enforcing the poverty of employees of Red Lakes’ three Seven Clans Casinos are forced to endure--- remain silent as they beg for support from Band Secretary Beaulieu and another corrupt Band Council member, Billy King.
Below, Floyd “Buck” Jourdain, one of the most violent and corrupt Tribal Chairs in the Nation, who the New York Times has tied in with drug dealers using the three Seven Clans Casinos as distribution centers for everything from meth to cocaine, yacks it up with comedian turned politician, Al Franken who came looking for support to buoy his floundering campaign as onlookers suck it all up--- DFL Party hack Michael Meuers, and Mr. Barrett (red an black coat) responsible for helping to manipulate the “internet news service” and works in Red Lakes Health Services but can't figure out the dangers of second-hand smoke each work on behalf of Floyd “Buck” Jourdain who runs the Red Lake Nation like an old Finnish Feudal Lord; depriving people who dare to speak up of their right to their jobs, and even takes away their homes. Jourdain “explains” to Franken the dire poverty conditions of the Indian people living on the Red Lake Reservation. Al Franken doesn’t think to ask Jourdain how people being paid poverty wages working in these casinos might escape poverty. As Jourdain is explaining the dire “poverty of my people,” the Red Lake Nation has announced that it will spend over sixty-million dollars in casino expansion projects so the mobsters who own the slot machines can live in luxury. Floyd “Buck” Jourdain is responsible for one of the most corrupt politicians in Minnesota history being elected to public office, DFL State Representative Brita Sailer who represents the most “mobbed-up” union pension fund in America teamed up with the Fertitta Family.
It must be noted that when Floyd “Buck” Jourdain came to power supported by the mobsters who really own Red Lake’s Casino empire, he took on as economic adviser the man responsible for destroying all of Red Lakes publicly owned industries that paid Red Lakers wages higher than the best union contracts in Minnesota… in return Red Lakers are now getting the poverty wages of the casino industry while getting treated less than human.
It was Roger Moe who helped bring organized crime into Minnesota so he felt right at home working the "crowd" for Mike Ciresi.
In this photo Roger Moe chums it up with the man who keeps his cash in brown paper shopping bags...
Jourdain and George Bush carried on a conversation for the world to hear shortly after the mass killings at Red Lake High School; Jourdain got along famously with Bush as the two of them discussed the need for “parental responsibilities;” a few days later Jourdain’s own son was implicated for having a role in the murderous killing spree, found to have known about the killing spree in advance but didn’t tell his dad or anyone in authority… today, the young Jourdain is incarcerated in a place where his father should be.
Democrat or Republican, Jourdain gets along with them all... this is what the Kansas City Mob has put him in charge to do.
On the evening before the Red Lake killing spree, Jourdain sat in his office talking with officials of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI, the Minnesota Attorney Generals Office and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety trying to figure out how to keep me out of their casinos and out of the reservation. Had Jourdain cared about his son’s well-being and mental health as much as he cared about the profits of these mobsters who have taken control of the Red Lake Nation, this killing spree could have been prevented.
In fact, someplace, Jourdain's son learned to admire Adolf Hitler.
In fact, the violence that these mobsters has introduced to the once peaceful Red Lake Nation is responsible for the violence the Red Lake Nation is experiencing; the drug dealing, the illegal gambling and the prostitution which have become the major “industries” having replace the home building and lumber mill industries and water bottling plant.
Jack Abramoff and his gang “laundered” millions of dollars destined for bribes and payoffs of politicians, which they transported in brown paper shopping bags, through Red Lake Nation businesses and agencies.
The employers’ next argument for the United States Supreme Court? Give us a “level playing field” with the Indian Gaming Industry… I predict these employers will cry, “It’s our constitutional right.” Far fetched? Bar owners and the Chamber of Commerce in Minnesota are already making the plans with the help of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.
Mike Ciresi, Al Franken and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer have asked for my endorsement. I will leave it to your imagination what my response was to each of them.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council