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NEWSLETTER |
Past Newsletters |
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Is there something you want but don’t see in the Local 247 newsletter? |
| Have you heard about NAFTA expansion?
By Peter Defazio The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in particular, has been a disaster for American workers, farmers, and the environment. A trade surplus with Mexico has turned to a deficit. More than 400,000 U.S. jobs have been lost, mostly high-paying manufacturing jobs. The environment along the U.S.-Mexico border has become even more polluted. Raw sewage and industrial waste are being dumped directly into the water supply. Agriculture prices are at depression-era levels. Mexican workers are still paid slave wages, forced to work in unsafe environments, and live in squalid conditions. Given this poor record, you might be surprised to learn that President Bush intends to push for more of the same. Rather than rushing to extend a failed trade policy, the president should do what the American people want: promote trade, but not at the expense of workers or the environment. Secret negotiations to expand NAFTA have been in high gear since April 1998. Neither elected officials nor the citizens they represent have had access to the details of the negotiations. How are we supposed to find out about the expansion of NAFTA to the entire Western Hemisphere when the negotiations and draft text are secret? |
I have been leading the effort in Congress to force open the negotiations on NAFTA expansion, which would create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). After all, if the negotiations can’t withstand public scrutiny, then the U.S. has no business signing the agreement. Information that has leaked out about the negotiations is not promising. Discussions on labor and the environment have been rejected out-of-hand. Nine working groups have been established to negotiate on agriculture, services, investment, dispute settlement, intellectual property rights, subsidies and anti-dumping, competition policy, government procurement and market access. In other words, like past trade agreements, the rights of computer software makers will be protected, but the rights of workers will be ignored. Investors will have the right to run roughshod over the sovereignty of citizens and their elected officials, but will have no corresponding obligations to anyone but their shareholders. Perhaps my colleagues missed the coalition of more than 50,000 people who met in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization, or similar protests occurring in other countries. The message has been sent: Citizens around the world will no longer tolerate one-sided, corporate-managed “free” trade agreements dictated to them through secret negotiations. For more information on the FTAA check out the following Web sites: ª Alliance for Responsible Trade:
Editor’s note: We would like to thank Rep. DeFazio for submitting this article. We’ve added him to our mailing list and we intend to continue supporting him in his efforts to represent the working class. |
| By BRUCE DENNIS, President Zenith Administrators attended the March meeting to update members on trust issues and to receive input from members. Our members brought forth several concerns and complaints. Bonnie Doxey, Zenith Branch Office Manager, and Peg Smith, Client Services, have committed to personally addressing every question or complaint. They can be reached at (503) 226-2741. The Executive Board recommended the Local send a jacket, five T-shirts and a gift certificate as door prizes for the Credit Union’s annual meeting. The board also recommended purchasing 10 tickets to the Northwest Oregon Labor Council’s Labor Appreciation and Recognition Banquet. Both recommendations were approved by the members. Dave Royer, retired Local 247 treasurer, reminded us that the retirees meet on the second Monday at 11 a.m. at J.J. North’s for their monthly meeting. Business Reps are encouraged to attend. The members approved motions to send three delegates to the upcoming Labor History Conference, to donate used office computers to Irvington School, and to support member Theo Rayborn’s fundraising walk for multiple sclerosis. A member sent in a request to help Riverside Little League with a donation in exchange for an advertising sign for Local 247 on the outfield wall. This was also approved. The meeting was attended by 90 members and lasted until 9:10 pm. |
General membership
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By Douglas Martin
New York Times
Rose Freedman, the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in which 146 of her co-workers perished in 1911, died Feb. 15. She was 107.
Mrs. Freedman, who at the time of the Manhattan fire was two days shy of 18, escaped death in 1911 by following company executives to the roof to be rescued. She became a lifelong crusade for worker safety, telling and retelling the story that the Triangle workers died because the owners were not concerned with their welfare.
The disastrous factory fire, in which girls and young women leapt from eighth- and ninth-story windows, their flaming skirts billowing in the wind, horrified the nation and led to some of the first city, state and federal laws dealing with workers’ safety. It gave a powerful impetus to the fledgling labor movement, greatly strengthening the building of the international Ladies Garment Workers Union, which two years before the fire had led a three-month strike to focus attention on conditions in workplaces like the Triangle factory.
Her involvement in the fire never left her consciousness, and she appeared at labor rallies for the rest of her life.
She always expressed rage that the factory doors had been locked, either to keep workers at their machines or to prevent them from stealing scraps of cloth. She always told of how one of the owners tried to bribe her to say the doors were not locked. She refused.
The owners were eventually acquitted of manslaughter charges when the jury could not establish whether they had ordered the doors locked or had even known they were. But in 1914, civil suits brought by relatives of 23 victims ended with payments of $75 to each of the families.
On the day of the fire, Mrs. Freedman escaped the inferno by stopping to consider what the executives were doing. She somehow thought they would be safer, and went up to the 10th floor, where their offices were, to find out. They were taking the freight elevator to the roof, where firefighters pulled them to the roof of an adjacent building. She did the same.
The alternative was jumping. “Girls in shirtwaists, which were aflame, went flying out of the building so that you saw these young women literally ablaze flying out of the windows,” she said in a Public Broadcasting System documentary, “The Living Century,” shown in December and January. As she was taken down the steps of the adjacent building, she stopped on each stoop to sit down and cry. “When I came in the street, here comes my father,” she recalled. “He collapsed. He fainted. And I didn’t go back to work anymore. I went to college.
The anger about what she saw as the owners’ greed persisted. In the documentary, she said: “That’s the whole trouble of this fire. Nobody cares. Nobody. Hundred forty-six people in a half an hour. I have always tears in my eyes when I think. It should never have happened. The executives with a couple of steps could have opened the door. But they thought they were better than the working people. It’s not fair because material, money, is more important here than everything.
“That’s the biggest mistake — that a person doesn’t count much when he hasn’t got money. What good is a rich man and he hasn’t got a heart? I don’t pretend. I feel it. Still.”
Her passing ends a chapter of history. Steven Latham, director of the documentary, suggested it was something like the last Holocaust survivor dying.
“This is the last voice of an event,” he said. “This woman actually smelled the smoke.”
Governor’s Occupational Safety & Health Conference
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Walsh Construction and Advanced Technology Group were both recognized at the recent safety conference for their excellent safety procedures and good safety records. There was a display in the exhibit hall, where local vendors showed attendees the latest in safety equipment and procedures. |
An AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department-backed audit of Labor Ready Inc.’s workers’ compensation practices has revealed irregularities. The State of Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries found that Labor Ready, the nation’s biggest blue-collar temp agency, misclassified workers for purposes of premium payments to the 1998 state’s workers’ compensation system. By classifying workers as “ground maintenance” workers, Labor Ready paid just a 40-cent-an-hour premium to the workers’ comp fund. But the workers should have been classified as construction site clean-up workers, a more dangerous job classification with a $1.20-an-hour premium. The firm owes the state $734,000 in premiums, interest and penalties — and the department now has said it will look into the firm’s practices in 1999 and 2000.
Local 247 has participated in the community “Christmas in April” neighborhood fixer-upper benefit for the underprivileged for nearly 10 years. Saturday, April 28, will be the date for the event this year. If you were involved last year, you should get contacted directly by local organizers. If you are interested in volunteering for this very worthy cause this year, please call Julie or Dawn at the office and let us know. We will need several “House Captains” to coordinate the one-day repair blitz. We understand that a wider area will be covered this year, with some added houses in the Lents area. Call for details or to sign up.
