'We're Not Gonna Wait Around Forever': UAW Expands Strike to Ford's Most Profitable Plant

By Jake Johnson

"If Ford can't get that after four weeks on strike, these 8,700 workers shutting down their biggest plant will help them understand it," said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.

The United Auto Workers launched a surprise strike at Ford's most profitable plant on Wednesday evening, calling on nearly 9,000 members in Kentucky to walk off the job after the company did not come to the bargaining table with a new contract proposal.

Speaking outside of Ford's Dearborn, Michigan headquarters, UAW president Shawn Fain said that "we came here today to get another offer from Ford."

"Unfortunately, this offer was the exact same offer they gave us two weeks ago," said Fain. "They're not taking us serious. We've been very patient working with the company on this. At the end of the day, they have not met expectations, they're not even coming to the table on it. So at this point, we had to take action."

The walkout at Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville brings the total number of UAW members on strike at the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers to roughly 33,000. The companies have laid off thousands of non-striking workers since the UAW's walkouts began last month.

Citing an unnamed source inside Ford's Kentucky facility, the Detroit Free Pressreported that "with little warning, thousands of workers left their jobs at 6:30 pm, just minutes after union officials walked through the plant, shut off the line, and told workers to walk out peacefully."

"We're not gonna wait around forever," Fain wrote in a social media post late Wednesday. "If Ford can't get that after four weeks on strike, these 8,700 workers shutting down their biggest plant will help them understand it."

Ford, which has seen its profits surge this year, expressed outrage over the strike expansion, noting in a statement that the Kentucky Truck Plant is one of the biggest auto factories in the world.

"The vehicles produced at the Louisville-based factory—the F-Series Super Duty, the Ford Expedition, and the Lincoln Navigator—generate $25 billion a year in revenue," the company said.

Chris Brooks, a UAW organizer, responded that "Ford just admitted they're losing $48,000 a minute in revenue while the Kentucky Truck Plant is on strike."

"That is how much value autoworkers at this one plant produce—and now they're showing Ford how expensive it is to not come to the table and pony up," Brooks wrote on social media.

Ford has offered UAW members a 23% wage increase over the course of a four-year contract as well as cost-of-living adjustments. The UAW has demanded a 36% wage hike and significant improvements to retirement, healthcare, and other benefits.

Reutersreported Wednesday that Ford and UAW negotiators "had been working to resolve differences on retirement security and union representation at the company's future battery plants earlier in the day."

Last week, the UAW announced that General Motors has agreed to include electric battery plant workers in its labor agreement, which Fain described as a "transformative win."

On Wednesday, according to Reuters, Fain and other UAW officials "called a meeting with Ford... and demanded a new offer, which Ford did not have."

"You just lost Kentucky Truck," Fain reportedly said in response. "This is all you have for us? Our members' lives and my handshake are worth more than this."

In his remarks outside Ford's headquarters on Wednesday, Fain said the company has only itself to blame for the strike escalation.

"They made it happen. This is on them, they have to own it," said Fain. "If the companies aren't going to come to the table and take care of the membership's needs, then we will react."

Originally published on October 12th, 2023, in Common Dreams

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Bland gubernatorial election threatens to suppress voter turnout

by Robert Collins

In Saturday’s (Oct. 14) statewide election primary, many voters seem uninterested. To project turnout on election day, political analysts examine turnout during the early voting period. According to the Secretary of State’s Office, at the close of early voting, counting both in-person and mail-in voters, 344,878 had voted. For comparison, in 2019 during the last gubernatorial primary, 386,468 early voted. While mail-in ballots will continue to trickle in until Friday, so far, this is a drop off of 41,590, or about 11 percent. 

In the 2019 primary, Black voters made up 97,990 of the early vote total. This year, Black voters make up 90,118, or about 26 percent of the early vote total so far. Black voters make up about 31 percent of the total electorate. Many are surprised that we have not seen stronger Black turnout yet, since one of the major candidates, Shawn Wilson, is Black.

In the 2019 primary, turnout was about 46 percent. Before the start of early voting, the Secretary of State’s Office projected a primary turnout of between 42 and 46 percent. However, based on the lower-than-expected actual early vote numbers coming in now, many analysts are projecting around 40 percent or lower. 

Low turnout elections may disadvantage Black candidates and grassroots candidates, because they lack the resources to broadcast their messages widely, so they depend on riding the tickets of like-minded candidates at the top of the ballot. In an election that lacks enthusiasm, there are no coattails to ride, so the richest candidates can win by virtue of money. 

High turnout elections tend to correlate with Black voters and young voters representing an increased proportion of the total votes cast, while low turnout elections tend to be whiter and older in terms of the demographics of votes cast. Low turnout elections generally mean large parts of the electorate might not have opportunities to have their interests represented. 

How did we get here? Louisiana was the home of such characters as Huey Long and Edwin Edwards, and the state has a history of colorful politicians. Voters here expect their politicians to entertain them as well as inform them. They expect politics to be fun. Simply put, the current gubernatorial campaign is not fun, and, as a result, many voters are not excited. Many are not engaged at all. 

This race has been stagnant for months. Most pundits believe that Republican Jeff Landry and Democrat Shawn Wilson would run first and second and make it to the runoff. All of the polls have reinforced this expectation. None of the other Republican candidates have been able to displace Landry, because of his huge fundraising advantage. A stagnant race is a boring race. 

And yet, in spite of no excitement at the top of the ticket, it is still important that Orleans Parish voters show up on election day. There are many important races on the ballot, including a hotly contested race for House District 91 between incumbent Mandy Landry and challenger Madison O’Malley, that could help determine how the much-maligned Louisiana Democratic Party looks in the future. There is also a House District 23 race, an open Criminal Court Judgeship, as well as two proposed City Charter amendments and a school board tax renewal.  

There also are elections for all statewide offices, and a list of four proposed constitutional amendments that deal with issues as varied as whether or not nonprofits can be denied a tax exemption if they allow their properties to fall into disrepair; to whether or not external nonprofits, such as the Gates Foundation, can be banned from spending money on get out the vote efforts. 

The message from the candidates to the voters should be: Go vote, because these elections directly affect your quality of life. And the message from the voters to the gubernatorial candidates at the top of the ticket should be: If you could figure out how to add some fun and spice and excitement to your campaign, that would help voter turnout a great deal. This is Louisiana after all. To stay engaged, we need our politics to be like our food and music, hot and spicy.      

This article originally appeared in Verite News on October 10th, 2023.  

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Laphonza Butler: Identity Politics on Overdrive

California Governor Gavin Newsom snubs Barbara Lee and appoints Laphonza Butler to fill Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat.

ANN GARRISON

OCT 7, 2023

No one better exemplifies the Democratic Party’s overarching identity politics than California Governor Gavin Newsom. He engineered the appointment of San Francisco’s first Chinese mayor, appointed California’s first Black Secretary of State, California’s first Latino Senator, and now its second Black woman Senator, Laphonza Butler. Butler is also the first Black and LGBTQIA Senator. She is married to a Black woman, with whom she shares a daughter. Nearly all the reporting on her appointment foregrounded her race and sexuality with an abundance of hollow platitudes.

Butler’s liberal Democratic and identitarian credentials, like Gavin Newsom’s, all but glow in the dark. Throughout her career she won the honor of being the first Black, first Black woman, and/or first Black LGBTQIA woman in the positions she ascended to. They include President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) United Long Term Care Workers, a union of 400,000, then President of the California SEIU State Council.

She was the first Black woman and the first mother to become president of Emily’s List, the American political action committee (PAC) that raises funds to elect Democratic female candidates in favor of abortion rights. That is the office she is leaving to become a US Senator.  Butler also rose from humble origins to the powerful positions she has occupied. Born in Magnolia, Mississippi, she lost her father to heart disease at age 16, and her mother worked as a classroom aide, home care provider, security guard, and bookkeeper.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Jackson State in Jackson, Mississippi, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).

Identity triumphs aside, what can we expect from Laphonza Butler?

The Sacramento Bee describes Butler as a Democratic Party insider, who has “worked at high levels in almost every place where Democrats are strong: a former top California labor official, president of an influential women’s political organization and adviser to Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and other party luminaries.”

In 2010, as President of the SEIU United Long-Term Care Workers, she helped secure a shared endorsement for Kamala Harris in her successful run to become California Attorney General, and she is understood to have a long-running alliance with Harris. In 2020 she worked as an advisor to Harris vice-presidential campaign.

In 2016, as president of SEIU Local 2015, she endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. Later she was one of the California electors who voted for Clinton in the 2016 election.  Some union leaders celebrated Butler’s appointment, but others expressed alarm, including many who remember her time working with tech giants Uber and Airbnb. 

In 2019, while at SCRB Strategies, a Bay Area consulting firm with strong ties to Newsom and other top Democrats, Butler helped Uber pass California Ballot Proposition 22 to override California Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), which had expanded labor protections for gig workers by defining the difference between an independent contractor and an employee and thereby compelling the companies to reclassify many drivers as employees and provide them higher pay and benefits. Uber and other gig economy tech companies like Lyft and Instacart poured $200 million into passing Prop 22, making it the most expensive ballot proposition in California history at the time.

Newsom just vetoed a bill that would have required human drivers in autonomous vehicles of over 10,000 pounds—from UPS delivery trucks to big rigs—on public roads. The California Labor Federation argued that the driverless trucks are unsafe and that removing drivers will cost a quarter of a million jobs. Butler’s critics said it’s in keeping that the governor would thus appoint someone like Butler, who used her rise to the top of a major union to catapult herself into the jobs with some of the corporations most guilty of degrading labor in the gig economy.

At Airbnb, a multibillion-dollar corporation responsible for pushing up rents and fueling the housing shortage, Butler served as director of public policy and campaigns.

In foreign policy, she has no track record, but the Sacramento Bee wrote that she “is expected to bring stability and reliability to votes confirming judges, approving more aid to Ukraine, and funding government programs.” In other words, she’ll be a “good Democrat.”

Will she run?

The most asked question about Butler’s appointment is, “Will she run in the 2024 election?” She has only nine weeks to decide because the filing deadline is December 8, but it’s hard to imagine that Democratic operatives aren’t huddling with her about this now that Kamala Harris has sworn her in. She will have the advantage of incumbency for only four months before the March 5 primary, but should she win that, she’ll have more than a year by the time of the November 5 election.

California Democratic Congresspersons Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee are all campaigning for Feinstein’s seat, but there are no Republicans in the race yet. Schiff is ahead in both the polls and the fundraising, with Porter in second, and Lee a distant third.

California holds non-partisan, “top two” primaries, meaning that the top two vote getters will face off in the November 5 election. So it’s all but certain that two Democrats will face off after the March 5 primary. The state hasn’t elected a Republican Senator in 30 years.

At first Newsom said that if he had to face the decision to appoint someone to replace Feinstein, he would choose a Black woman but that he would expect her to serve as a caretaker, holding the seat for whomever wins the 2024 election because he didn’t want to “interfere” in that race by giving anyone the advantage of incumbency. However, the optics were bad and he got a lot of pushback. Why stress appointing a Black woman just to keep Feinstein’s seat warm for a year? In the end Newsom did not extract a promise from Butler not to run.

The Congressional Black Caucus urged Gavin Newsom to appoint East Bay Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who represents California’s 12th District, which is much of the California’s urban East Bay, and one of the bluest districts in the country.

Despite claiming not to want to hand the advantage of incumbency to Lee or any of the three candidates already in the race, he ultimately handed it to the little known Laphonza Butler, who may or may not take advantage of it.

Barbara Lee is best known for casting the lone vote against the Patriot Act after 9/11, then opposing the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and she has some distant history with Oakland’s Black Panther Party. She is now, for the most part, a “good Democrat,” but not as good as Laphonza Butler might be. Nancy Pelosi, a close ally of Newsom, has been supporting Russiagate-crazed Adam Schiff.

Newsom is all but certain to be a Democratic presidential candidate, whether in 2024 or 2028, and he has now burnished his identitarian credentials by appointing Laphonza Butler, while avoiding giving the advantage of incumbency to Barbara Lee.  

The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who publishes regularly on the Black Agenda Report. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region.

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Why are thousands of Kaiser health care workers on strike? 5 questions answered

 

Kaiser Permanente health care workers in five states and Washington, D.C., are rallying against low wages and understaffing that they say is undermining patient care. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Michael McQuarrie, Arizona State University

More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers began a three-day strike in Virginia, California, Colorado, Washington state, Oregon and Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4, 2023, after company executives and eight unions representing aides, techs, support staff and other employees failed to agree on the terms of new contracts. This is the largest U.S. health care strike on record. In a statement it released when the walkout started, Kaiser asserted that it wanted to reach a deal soon with the striking workers.

Although hospitals and emergency rooms are still open during the strike, and Kaiser is making use of temporary workers, many of its noncritical services are temporarily closed or operating under reduced hours. The strike does not include any nurses unions or doctors.

The Conversation asked Michael McQuarrie, an Arizona State University sociologist who directs its Center for Work and Democracy, to explain why this strike is happening now and how labor actions like this can affect patient care.

Kaiser health care workers on the picket line outside of a Kaiser Permanente facility in Sacramento, Calif. It is the largest medical care worker strike in U.S. history.

1. Why is this historic strike happening now?

The two main reasons are concerns over staffing levels and practices and dissatisfaction with pay that hasn’t kept up with inflation and was too low to begin with.

Kaiser says its options are limited due to a national shortfall in all sorts of health care workers, including home health aides and nurse practitioners. Workers counter that higher pay and better working conditions would attract more applicants.

Health care workers have long worried that inadequate staffing is undercutting the quality of care for patients – this has been a central issue in contract negotiations and strikes for years. But the COVID-19 pandemic greatly exacerbated the problem.

At the same time, inflation has outstripped negotiated wage increases for Kaiser workers. Kaiser is currently offering some workers in Northern California and Washington state 4% annual raises for the four years covered by the new contract and lower raises for everyone else. The unions have rejected this offer, which they say would not make up for past inflation and would unnecessarily create different wage scales based on the region where workers are located.

“Why are we here? Patient care! How do we get it? Higher staffing. Why are we here? Patient care! How do we get it? Living wages.” Video by Amanda Mascarelli.

2. Has Kaiser’s financial management played a role too?

Kaiser, which provides health care for 12.7 million Americans, took in US$95.4 billion in revenue in 2022 but ran a $1.2 billion operating loss that it attributed to “strong economic headwinds in the financial markets” – suggesting that its investments were to blame rather than its health care operations.

For 2021, Kaiser reported that it had about $56 billion in unrestricted cash and investments, excluding assets tied to employee and retiree pensions.

Kaiser’s profits in the first half of 2023 totaled about $3.4 billion, however. And with the exception of its losses in 2022, Kaiser has been consistently profitable for years.

Concerns over low worker pay are growing while Kaiser’s executive compensation is increasing. As of 2021, its CEO Gregory Adams was making more than $15.5 million a year in pay and “other” compensation.

3. But isn’t Kaiser a nonprofit – and does that mean it has any special obligations?

Like many health care systems, Kaiser is a nonprofit. This means it pays very little in taxes. In exchange for their special tax status, nonprofits are supposed to provide public benefits.

Nonprofits may make more money than they spend, but they can’t distribute profits to its shareholders. Nonprofit executive compensation must be “reasonable,” according to the Internal Revenue Service – although it can be hard to determine how much is too much.

4. Are there any precedents for this strike?

Health care strikes are not unusual, with more than 40 occurring in the past two years. However, the industry and the workforce are heavily fragmented, which means that these strikes tend to be relatively small.

In September 2022, the Minnesota Nurses Association took 15,000 members on strike over many of the same issues, such as staffing and inflation. That strike, which lasted three days, was the largest health care strike in U.S. history by that point in terms the number of workers involved.

Prior to that, the largest was probably another Minnesota strike in 2010, in which about 12,000 nurses walked off the job for 24 hours.

Kaiser has experienced much smaller strikes in the past, such as a walkout in 2015 of about 75 mental health clinicians.

5. How much are patients harmed during health care strikes?

It depends on the strike, but usually not much.

Critical care Kaiser facilities will remain open, though the strike will likely cause some delays in care due to short staffing and long lines.

Some appointments and elective procedures at the affected hospitals are being postponed, and nonessential functions like labs and radiology departments are temporarily closed or their hours are being reduced.

Nurses, who are very important bedside caregivers, are part of a different coalition of Kaiser unions. While they won’t be on strike, they may have to help cover work not being done by aides and other support staff who are on the picket lines.

Michael McQuarrie, Director of the Center for Work and Democracy, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Palestinian resistance in Gaza launches historic surprise attack against Israel

The surprise attack, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” is the biggest attack launched by a Palestinian resistance force in years, and broke through a nearly two-decades blockade of Gaza

October 07, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

In a major turn of events, Hamas fighters in the early morning of October 7 launched a surprise offensive called “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel from Gaza.  The operation involves land, sea and air attacks across Israel, breaking through a nearly 17-year long blockade.

As per reports, Hamas claims to have launched over 5,000 rockets across Israeli territory from Gaza. The rockets were reported to have hit as far north as Tel Aviv. The attack also included Hamas fighters pushing through the land and sea routes and penetrating into Israeli territory.

The offensive is viewed as the biggest escalation since 2021 in the ongoing violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, which has been under a total Israeli land, air, and sea blockade since 2005. It is also reported to be the first time ever that Gazan fighters were able to conduct an armed operation into Israel on such a massive scale.

Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades has also declared that it has taken several Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage from southern Israel, with local reports estimating around 50 hostages.

According to Israeli authorities, at least 40 people are reported to have been killed in the attack and over 500 injured during the attack.

The multi-fronted attack prompted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare that Israel is “at war”. Israel has responded with airstrikes against Gaza and close to 200 Palestinians have already been killed.

Hamas leaders have stated that the attacks were in response to an escalation of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in both the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We want the international community to stop atrocities in Gaza, against Palestinian people, our holy sites like Al-Aqsa. All these things are the reason behind starting this battle,” said Hamas spokesperson Khaled Qadomi.

“This is the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on earth,” said Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military commander. Deif has also called on the resistance movement in the West Bank, as well as “Arab and Islamic nations” to join the struggle against Israel.

Deif’s statement is widely seen as a message to the leaders of the Arab and Islamic world against forming normalization deals at the expense of Palestinians.

The Hamas offensive is possibly the first of its kind in decades wherein resistance fighters were able to launch on Israeli territory, sending shockwaves across the world.

As outlined by Hamas commanders, the operation is directly in response to the intensification of violence against Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces, especially under the new right-wing coalition government led by Netanyahu.

Israeli violence and oppression against Palestinians has increased substantially with deadly raids becoming increasingly regular. Prior to the attacks, Israeli forces had already killed over 224 Palestinians, including 38 children, already this year. Of the total, 187 were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and 37 in Gaza. This figure had already surpassed the record high of 178 killings in the whole of 2022.

The widespread occupation violence can also be seen in the 1,264 Palestinians currently being held in administrative detention without charge or trial, a two-decade high, as well as the 170 children that are currently being held in Israeli prisons.

This year has also witnessed an increase in Palestinian armed resistance, with both the formation of new groups and the strengthening of historic formations.

This article originally appeared at PeoplesDispatch.org on October 7th, 2023.  

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2023 sets new high for midyear lobbying

• By Maia Cook

Midyear lobbying reports at the federal level have consistently set spending records since 2019, and 2023 was no exception. Spending across industries for the first two federal lobbying quarters came in around $2.1 billion, surpassing 2022’s record by a whopping $86.6 million.

A total of 12,112 lobbyists registered with the federal government lobbied during the first half of 2023. The most lobbied piece of legislation in the first half of the year was the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024 with an estimated total of 449 clients paying lobbyists to weigh in on the bill. 

The NDAA usually passes with bipartisan support. But this year, it faced scrutiny over provisions dealing with a range of subjects including Pentagon policies on abortion access, combatting Russian aggression in Ukraine, countering Chinese influence and supplying medical care to transgender troops.

The top lobbying industry for the first half of 2023 was pharmaceuticals/health products, which spent $192.7 million. The pharmaceutical industry was followed by electronic manufacturing and equipment, insurance, securities and investment, and air transportation. 

The top federal lobbying spender for the first half of 2023 was the US Chamber of Commerce, which spent around $35.9 million. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) also continued to be a big player, spending $14.5 million.

The oil and gas industry has been among the top federal lobbying spenders in the first half of each year since the US shale revolution in 2008. The oil and gas industry spent over $65 million on federal lobbying in the first six months of 2023, about $103,000 less than what was reported during the same period in 2022.    

The air transportation industry – which includes aircraft manufacturers, public and private airlines, and air freight services – had an unusually large uptick in 2023 midyear spending, setting an industry record at roughly $69 million. This record is a massive departure from previous midyear spending for the air transportation industry, which spent approximately $59 million in 2022. 

The top-spending air transportation lobbying clients at the federal level were Boeing Co, FedEx Corp, United Parcel Service and United Airlines Holdings. The increase in federal lobbying spending from these companies might be explained by the introduction of the Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, also known as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act of 2023.

As of midyear reports, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2023 is the sixth most lobbied federal bill in 2023, with 211 clients spending on lobbying for or against it. The FAA Reauthorization Act included provisions to increase air traffic controller hiring targets, establish a program to support the retention of aviation professionals, prohibit the FAA from requiring mask-wearing or COVID-19 vaccines and raise the commercial airline pilot retirement age to sixty-seven.

Commercial banks also set an industry record for midyear spending in 2023 with over $34.7 million – about $4.2 million more than what was reported for the 2022 midyear. The previous midyear record was held in 2013, when commercial banks spent roughly $34.6 million in lobbying. The top three commercial bank groups that lobbied in the first half of 2023 were the American Bankers Association, Independent Community Bankers of America and CitiGroup Inc. 

The influx of lobbying from commercial banks is likely a product of the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023, a contentious bill introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). This bill targeted competition in the credit card processing industry, seeking to lower processing fees for small businesses. 

Durbin’s office released a statement saying, “American consumers are worried about inflation and rising prices, and credit card swipe fees are part of the problem. The Visa-Mastercard duopoly controls over 80 percent of the U.S. credit card network market…Market competition helps keep fees in check, but Visa and Mastercard have structured their networks to avoid competitive market pressures on their fees.” However, others believe the Credit Card Competition Act will hurt businesses and consumers.

Midyear lobbying totals also surged for anti-abortion rights groups, which set a new midyear spending record of $750,000. Susan B Anthony List and Right to Life were the top spenders, dominating spending among groups lobbying against abortion rights at the federal level. Around the time the U.S. Supreme Court’s  Dobbs v. Jackson overturning abortion rights was released in 2022, anti-abortion rights groups had spent $690,000 during the first two federal lobbying quarters. 

Pro-abortion rights groups, including Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, spent $1.2 million by the 2023 midyear deadlines, down from around $1.5 million during the first six months of 2022.

Senior Researcher Dan Auble and Editorial and Investigations Manager Anna Massoglia contributed to this report. 

Originally published on October 5th, 2023, in Open Secrets.org

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