KC Labor Newsletter
Week In Review, July 5,
2004
by Bill Onasch,
webmaster, kclabor.org
A
Watershed Anniversary
This year
marks the seventieth anniversary of a watershed event in American labor
history—the 1934 Minneapolis Truck Drivers Strikes. Along with the Toledo
AutoLite Strike, and the San Francisco General Strike during that same year, the
Minneapolis Teamsters put an end to a long unbroken string of defeats for the
working class during the early years of the Great Depression. These victories
gave all workers hope again and prepared the way for the great upsurge that
later organized most basic manufacturing into the CIO. An all day celebration
will take place in Minneapolis on Saturday, July 24. You can find all the
details at:
http://www.1934strike.org/ I’m planning to go up to Minneapolis and will
bring back a report.
The Legislature Giveth and the Judge Taketh Away
You’re not going to believe this but a state legislature actually screwed
up. A pro-boss state senator in Virginia introduced a bill eliminating old
restrictions on Sunday work. But, through an oversight, when the day was done a
law was on the books requiring a full 24 hour rest day every week for all
non-management workers. And, if they claimed religious observance of the
Sabbath, workers could demand their rest day be on Saturday or Sunday, depending
on their faith. Convenience store, fast food, and strip mall bosses were beside
themselves with fear and anger. But the employers finally found a judge who
granted an emergency 90-day injunction against workers using the law while the
sheepish legislators planned how to fix it. The judge acted reluctantly, saying
he believed he was encroaching upon the legislature's prerogative.
A Nominee for News Of the Weird
The Portland [Maine] Press Herald reported “Pat LaMarche, the
Green Party's newly nominated candidate for vice president, said Tuesday that
her top priority is not winning the White House for her party, but ensuring that
President Bush is defeated. She is, in fact, so determined to see Bush lose that
she would not commit to voting for herself and her running mate, Texas lawyer
David Cobb.”
Go Figure
Reuters reported “Drug firms raised the prices of some medicines as much as
10 percent since the Bush administration enacted the new Medicare law late last
year, making it hard for some patients to afford them, a new report said on
Wednesday.” The author of this report? None other than the AARP—the seniors
group that stunned everyone by supporting Bush’s Medicare “reform.”
As We Have Said
I’ve repeatedly urged readers of this list to abandon Microsoft’s Internet
Explorer browser as well as their Outlook e-mail software. Now the government
agency Computer Emergency Readiness Team is finally issuing a
strong warning
about IE. It is riddled with security gaps that put users credit
card and other personal data at risk If you are using both IE and Outlook I
recommend that you replace them with the
Mozilla
suite, combining both browser and e-mail programs. If you’re already
using a non-Microsoft stand alone e-mail program then switch to Mozilla’s
Firefox
browser. Both of these open source alternatives are available for free download.