Ucubed election fail

Too bad. Unemployed badly need a stronger national network...

Fwd: One Truly Is The Loneliest Number

Dear UCubed Leaders and Activists:

One truly is the loneliest number. Only one UCubed member stepped up to run for UCubed State Director in exactly one state. Consequently, the scheduled 2011 elections must be cancelled.

Perhaps, by this time next year, UCubed will have sufficient mass -- and sufficient intensity and drive -- to elect its own leadership. Until then, we will build our organizational infrastructure by appointing activists who will aggressively represent the Union of Unemployed and its members at the state and regional levels.

Here at the Union of Unemployed, just like in your personal lives, each obstacle is simply another challenge to be met… as we continue our fight for the jobless.

In Unity – Strength,

Rick Sloan
Executive Director
Ur Union of Unemployed

Cutting the Wrong Deficit

Why doesn't the "soak the rich" line work? Even when Reich giving it his all, it lacks the ring of conviction.

Because there *is* an economic problem.

But it is the trade deficit, not the budget deficit.

In a sense, the "common sense" right-wingers are not entirely wrong: we cannot indefinitely continue to be a nation which produces less than it consumes. Of course, they've got their facts mixed up about the cause of the deficit (hint: it wasn't caused by lazy people), and, therefore, are way off on workable solutions.

But right-wing populists have caught wiff of a stinking fact of the system, they are right not to let it go.

So they've been set loose on the wrong deficit, and the "solutions" they're being offered funnel down the to level of personal allegory: the grotesque spectacle of flogging of public sector workers.

But politics is largely a matter of stagecraft, and if you want people to let go of one thing, you've got to give them something else to bite on.

But isn't that what "soak the rich" is? Red meat for the masses?

Only a nincompoop like Reich could think that it was. And there's nothing more insulting to a red-blooded plebian than trying to pass off this political tofu as red meat.

Ultimately, the "soak the rich" line derives comes from an underlying belief that there is no big problem, that this is all a manufactured crisis.

That may be easy for Reich to say, but I don't think I'll join him. It's an attitude comes from complacency, and only lead to complacency. Hardly the secret to Democratic "relevancy" (or is it)?

Bill Fletcher Jr - The Jobs Crisis in the African-American Community (VIDEO)

Talk given by Bill Fletcher Jr. to the Left Labor Project Forum on February 24, 2011.

Introductory remarks


PART 1 - Black History Month


PART 2 - Optimism in the Black and Latino Commuity


>>>>>>>PARTS 3-7 AFTER THE JUMP<<<<<<<

Resolution on Work Among the Unemployed(1931)-COMPLETE

[Reproduced in it's entirety, the following text is taken from The Communist, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party USA. It was published in September 1931, and represents the most coherent overview of the entire range of activities undertaken by the communists to organize among the unemployed in the years 1930-1933. -Ed.]

The following resolution was adopted by the 13th Plenum of the Communist Party, U.S.A. on the report of comrade Satchel.

1. Unemployment, already greater that at any time during the present economic crisis, continues to grow as a consequence of the still growing depth of the crisis and increasing rationalization, making work among the unemployed more than ever a "central and urgent task." The increase of part time employment and the growth of strikes against the sharpening wage cutting offensive of the capitalists, continually broadens the basis for, and makes more urgent the development of joint action of the employed and unemployed.

2010 Mass Strike in South Africa DIGEST

THE 2010 MASS STRIKE IN THE STATE SECTOR, SOUTH AFRICA (2010)
by Ian Bekker and Lucien van der Walt

DIGEST PRODUCED FOR TUSG.ORG

Recently, around 1.3 million state sector workers went on strike for four weeks against attempts to impose neoliberal austerity measures. The strike took place just weeks after South Africa’s government spent billions on hosting the FIFA World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world. It was the biggest state sector strike in recent history, dwarfing even the month-long mass strike of 2007, involving unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), as well as eleven non-COSATU unions linked together in the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC), a loose alliance.

The strike was all the more remarkable given that COSATU, the largest union centre, is part of a Tripartite Alliance with the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa. (The third leg of the Alliance is the South African Communist Party, SACP, many of whose leaders serve as key figures in the ANC government, but also as union leaders.) In striking against the state-as-employer, the federation inevitably had to confront the ANC-as-government, on the eve of the ANC’s September 2010 National General Council (NGC).

More on the Food Economy

To the editor:

I was excited to see Mark Bittman draw attention to the plight of workers in the food supply-chain, who "labor in difficult, even deplorable, conditions." Yet, in reading further, I discovered that he seems to think these bad conditions end when food leaves the farm or the packinghouse. The continuing growth of low-wage jobs handling food in restaurants, supermarkets, and "big box" stores refutes this.

Bittman's bias towards home food production - indeed, the fourth idea in his "manifesto" is to "encourage and subsidize home cooking" - both ignores the prevailing trend in production of meals and blinds him to badly-needed reforms. His bias is perhaps understandable (he is, after all, an author of recipes for the home cook), but to pose a return to home production of food is as a solution is both unrealistic - because increased time devoted to home cooking would almost certainly mean a reduction of job hours, family income, and national productivity - and utopian - because it simply "wishes away" the reality of low-wage jobs in foodservice and retail.

Krug Fug

comment on: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/the-kitchen-test/

This observation totally ignores *who* prepares food and *where* it is prepared. As recently as the '90s, the U.S. passed the tipping point where more meals were produced outside the home than within it. I'd call that a pretty big change, perhaps not quite on par with the movement from an agrarian to industrial society (when considered alone), but a significant index of our change to a "service" economy.

While technology (even in professional kitchens) has been quite stagnant - blame wage suppression on the retardation of labor-saving innovations - both quantitative changes (consider the huge amount of time went into producing food in the home, even with 1950s technologies) and qualitative changes (we have not yet "re-aligned" the nutritional content of commercially produced foodstuffs) continue to have a major impact on the way we live.

Considered in this context, everything from the obesity "epidemic" to the role of women in the labor force is implicated.