Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Saturday, December 1, 2012

American Crystal Sugar Company lockout--- a botched union strategy.

What a botched union strategy on the part of the leaders of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International union and the state and national AFL-CIO:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-12-01/locked-out-crystal-sugar-workers-hold-4th-vote

Here is one thing I find really interesting... the leaders of the AFL-CIO which include the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International union told the rest of us how great Obamacare will be for us but they aren't willing to accept the terms of Obamacare for their own members.

This is from the Associated Press today:

"Contract opponents say the sugar beet processor's five-year contract offer would cut health care benefits and weaken job security and seniority protections..."

No one should find it strange that the betrayal of the AFL-CIO's executive council on health care in undermining the movement for single-payer universal health care in order to protect Barack Obama's worthless political butt should be anything other than a betrayal of the 1,300 American Crystal Worker Company's workers, too.

This is where class collaboration leads--- first we get union leaders like Richard Trumka supporting AIPAC and the Israeli killing machine, then we get Trumka and his 50 or so cronies on the AFL-CIO Executive Council supporting Wall Street's Barack Obama, then we get these same union leaders ordering American Crystal Sugar workers to leave the plants as management orders instead of occupying the plants to prevent a lockout; then these union leaders tell workers they should re-elect Obama will solve their problems and now these same union leaders proclaim a "boycott" with no support for the boycott except press conferences.

Why aren't the leaders comprising the AFL-CIO Executive Council putting the same effort into organizing an American Crystal Sugar Company boycott that they put into re-electing Barack Obama who brought us Obamacare and now they won't accept this same Obamacare for their own members?

Kind of like these same 50-plus "leaders" sitting on the AFL-CIO Executive Council headed up by Richard Trumka are willing to accept such a miserly poverty minimum wage for tens of millions of non-union members without so much as consulting the workers who are then saddled with this poverty minimum wage.

Class collaboration paves the road straight to hell for the working class and this American Crystal Sugar Company lockout should teach every worker in this country this lesson.