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Study reports that New Yorkers struggle to put food on the table

February 3, 2012

Millions of people in the largest and wealthiest city in the US struggled to afford food last year, according to a report released last month by the Food Bank for New York City.

The Food Bank is New York’s major hunger-relief organization, which coordinates a network of more than 1,000 community organizations that collectively distribute up to 400,000 free meals daily. Its report reveals that working people across the city made painful sacrifices last year to put food on the table, and that food insecurity also rose among city residents with relatively higher incomes. These findings show that while the recession was officially declared over two-and-a-half years ago, working people are plagued by a deepening social crisis with no end in sight.

Entitled “NYC Hunger Experience 2011: Sacrifice and Support,” the report is based on analysis of data from an annual opinion poll conducted in collaboration with the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Who is Jack Martin?

February 2, 2012

Jack Martin is one of the ten people selected by Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, to review the finances of the city of Detroit to decide if an Emergency Manager (EM) should be named. Under the newly enacted and controversial EM law, known as Public Act 4, EMs have dictatorial rights with regard to contracts, city assets, layoffs and the removal of elected officials.

Last week Martin was himself selected by Snyder to be the Emergency Manager of the Highland Park Schools. His tenure began on Monday.

What qualifies a previously unknown and never-elected individual for such positions of power? Why should he oversee the education of a thousand Highland Park students, control the fate of schools, city workers and residents of Southeast Michigan?

Martin, an African-American, has brandished his roots in Detroit in a phony attempt to

conceal his political and financial interests. A member of Detroit’s elite, he is a Certified Public Accountant, working first in banking, then for the US Department of Health and Human Services as a member of the Provider Reimbursement Review Board.

Detroit city unions agree to massive concessions

February 1, 2012

Detroit city union leaders said Tuesday that they had reached concession agreements in 25 of the 48 bargaining units for city employees, including huge cuts in the health benefits for thousands of workers.

According to a report Wednesday in the Detroit Free Press, the deals include a $20 million cut in prescription drug benefits and what the newspaper called “substantial” reductions in pension benefits.

The newspaper said that under the tentative agreements, workers would lose their defined-benefit pension plan and be relegated to a defined-contribution plan like a 401(k), which workers, not the city, would be responsible for paying into.

The unions are negotiating with the administration of Mayor Dave Bing over measures to close a budget deficit of an estimated $105 million. The Bing administration claims the city could run out of money as early as April, and set a January 31 deadline for the unions agreeing to its demands, which include a pay cut of ten percent, the second such across-the-board pay cut in three years.

Ontario premier feigns support for locked out Electro-Motive workers

February 1, 2012

Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) President Ken Lewenza has praised Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty for a speech he gave Tuesday in which he criticized Caterpillar-owned Electro-Motive for spurning “the balanced, made-in-Ontario approach” to labor relations that “requires that unions and management sit down and talk to try to work out their differences.”

Five weeks ago, Caterpillar locked out 470 workers at Electro-Motive’s London, Ontario diesel locomotive plant, after the workers rejected the company’s demands for a more than 50 percent wage cut, the destruction of their pension plan, and other sweeping concessions.

Speaking before the London Chamber of Commerce, McGuinty said he does “not look to insinuate myself into” contract disputes. “But this one strikes me as a little bit different.” His staff later told reporters that the Ministry of Labour was “reaching out” to Caterpillar to encourage it to resume negotiations with the CAW. The premier hinted that the province would be ready to work with other levels of government to provide tax or other benefits to Caterpillar if it scaled back its concession demands and desisted from shutting the London facility.

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Lewenza, whose CAW is the bargaining agent for the Electro-Motive workers, “thanked” McGuinty for “his support.”

Emergency manager announces school closure in Highland Park, Michigan

January 31, 2012

Parents and staff at Barber Focus School for children in grades K-8 learned Monday that their school, one of only three public schools remaining in Highland Park, Michigan, will close in one week and merge with Henry Ford Academy. The announcement came only hours after the installation of Jack Martin as emergency financial manager of the Highland Park Schools by Governor Rick Snyder.

Students from Barber will be transported to Henry Ford via shuttle bus. The fate of after-school programs remains uncertain.

Highland Park is the second Michigan school district after Detroit to be run by an emergency manager. There have been suggestions that it may eventually be shut down altogether or merged with another district.

Martin, former Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Education under the Bush administration, showed his contempt for parents and staff by arriving one hour late for the meeting. The meeting was called at the last minute and was only attended by several dozen parents and staff members.

Kids Count report: Extreme poverty doubles in Michigan

January 31, 2012

One in four children in Michigan lives in a family with an income below the official US poverty threshold, according to the annual Kids Count In Michigan Data Book 2011, released last week by the Michigan League for Human Services (MILHS).

The non-profit child advocacy group reported that the percentage of children in poverty in Michigan more than doubled, rising 64 percent from the beginning of the last decade through 2009. Children living in families with incomes below the poverty level rose from 14 to 23 percent.

During the same period, the percentage of children in families in extreme poverty surged. One in 10 children in Michigan lived in extreme poverty at the end of the last decade, with the percentage more than doubling, from 5 to 11 percent, since 2000.

These families have incomes less than one half the poverty level. Extreme poverty is really destitution, denoting income under $8,000 a year for a family of three. The agency’s report cites one example of the consequence of extreme poverty: a family in such dire straits cannot afford the average cost of shelter in most Michigan counties.

Obama outlines plan to put higher education on rations

January 27, 2012

In a speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor Friday, President Obama outlined his proposed changes to federal college financial aid programs. Presented as a program for college affordability, Obama’s plan in fact sets the stage for further attacks on the right to quality higher education at a time when millions of students are drowning in debt.

Obama’s speech capped a three-day speaking tour following his State of the Union address in states that are considered key for his re-election campaign. The event had something of the character of a campaign rally, and Obama sought to put on his “populist” persona for the largely student audience. The substance of Obama’s remarks, however, revealed the enormous chasm between his administration’s policies and the needs and concerns of ordinary working people.

The speech followed the outline of the State of the Union address, and Obama argued that mass unemployment among young people, including college graduates, would be addressed by his efforts to revive manufacturing. This strategy is based on the attempt to massively reduce the wages and benefits of workers in order to boost corporate profits. (See, “The State of the Union address”)

Arkansas Cooper Tire local ratifies contract

January 27, 2012

The sellout contract orchestrated between Cooper Tire Company and the United Steelworkers (USW) union in Texarkana, Arkansas was ratified yesterday, leaving 1,050 locked-out workers in Findlay, Ohio isolated.

From what was a powerful position to unite Cooper Tire workers from both plants in a struggle against the company’s determination to impose concessions, the future of the struggle of the Findlay workers has been made more problematic.

USW Local 752L refused to release details of the proposed contract until the after the vote, but meanwhile participated in a media whitewashing of Cooper’s duplicitous attitude towards their employees. President David Boone issued a public statement before the vote, saying, “Of all the negotiations I have been involved with, this one was conducted in the most professional manner. The local community should be proud of the negotiation teams that worked to keep good jobs in Texarkana.”

These words deserve to come back to haunt Boone.

US CEO pay reaches new heights

January 27, 2012

And they continue to rake it in!

America’s corporate executives, already richer than Croesus, are not satisfied with having looted the economy of trillions of dollars in recent decades. Three and a half years after maneuvering the country to the verge of bankruptcy, the financial elite continues to enrich itself, legally and illegally, at the expense of the population and the general social interest.

The argument that CEOs deserve fabulous salaries because they “grow” the economy was always specious, but now, in the face of the financial meltdown and mass unemployment, such a claim simply generates popular outrage.

Despite nervousness in the media and the political establishment about the vast social inequality, nothing short of social upheaval will stop America’s executives from gorging themselves.

USA Today reported January 23, for example, that 2011 “is shaping up as the year of the $50 million-plus CEO.” The newspaper cited Walt Disney’s Robert Iger as “the latest” member of that exclusive club. Iger received $31.4 million in pay and perks and took in $21.4 million more from exercising previously awarded stock options and shares.

The Cooper Tire lockout and the lowering of US wages

January 26, 2012

Locked-out Cooper Tire workers in Findlay, Ohio

On the picket lines in Findlay, Ohio, important political questions are emerging as Cooper Tire workers grapple with the issues posed by their nearly two-month struggle.

A question frequently put to reporters from the World Socialist Web Site by the workers, who are resisting the company’s wage-cutting demands, is: “How can the economy function if wages are driven so low that workers can no longer afford the commodities they produce?”

Workers approach this question very practically. The lowering of wages leads to falling demand and lower sales. Why would the corporations cut off their noses to spite their faces? It seems to defy common sense.

The first thing to be said is that the experience of the parents and grandparents of the Findlay workers, whereby a manufacturing worker, especially at a unionized company, could expect to earn a decent wage and have decent benefits, is by no means the historical norm in America. The ability of American industrial workers to have a reasonably secure and even comfortable existence was entirely the result of bitter, bloody and protracted struggles involving millions and spanning decades.