Category Archives: labor

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains

Orange is the New Green: Oakland’s community owned Solar Mosaic

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via Colorlines.com

Gwai Boonkeut suffers from severe heart disease.  He doesn’t smoke, has no family history of diabetes or heart problems, and he’s in his mid 50s — about 10 years younger than the average age for men who suffer from their first heart attack.  A doctor told Boonkeut that his heart operated at a third of the capacity of a normal heart.  Boonkeut, who supports his family by working as a school janitor, had to cut back his hours because of his health.

Boonkeut moved his family to Richmond, California in 1980 from Laos to escape the violence of the Vietnam War, where he lost his mother, two brothers, and a niece.  However, life in Richmond wasn’t any better.  In 2004, his 15-year-old daughter Chan was mistakenly targeted by gang members and killed at the family’s front door. Boonkeut’s older son was caught up drug use.

The city is dominated by the Chevron corporation, which operates massive oil refineries, spewing hazardous toxins in the air. Boonkeut is a member of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), a community based group advocating for the health and livelihoods of members such as Boonkeut.
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Public Sector Attacks Undermine Racial Progress

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via Indypendent

In March 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Memphis, Tenn. to support 1,300 striking sanitation workers who toiled for poverty wages in horrendous working conditions. Following King’s assassination there on April 4, the workers won legal recognition for their union.

Their victory was a landmark in the struggle of Blacks to reap the economic benefits of the civil rights movement. However, the modest gains that followed in the ensuing decades for some middle and working-class Blacks have been dramatically eroded in the past decade by a wave of home foreclosures and an official unemployment rate of 16.7 percent — a trend made worse by recent attacks on public sector workers and the services they provide.

Such is the case in New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council reached a budget deal in June that included layoffs of a thousand city workers. Most belong to District Council 37 whose membership is majority Black and Latino. The layoffs of school aides, parent coordinators and other non-teaching personnel, some of whom earn as little as $11,000 a year, are slated to begin Oct. 7.

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Vermont Breaks Ground in Health Coverage for Migrant Workers

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via Colorlines

Vermont, land of rolling green hills dotted with black and white Holsteins and picturesque red barns. White people, everywhere, lots of them. Home of state-sanctioned town hall meetings that are models for participatory democracy. And now, the first state in our republic to enact universal health care for all. Two weeks ago, Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law H. 202, “An act relating to a single-payer and unified health system.” It’s the first state to plunge into a single-payer system to implement national health care reform, which Harvard economist William S. Hsiao found was the best method to both reign in spiraling costs and diminish disparities.

Nationally, the need is perhaps more dire now than ever as safety net hospitals close down across the country. These hospitals are often places of last resort for care for the uninsured and for undocumented immigrants—populations that are disproportionately comprised of low-income people of color. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44.4 percent of Latinos lack insurance, as well as 28.5 percent of black people and 21.2 percent of Asian Americans. In contrast, 16.5 percent of whites don’t have coverage.
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