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www.tradealert.org
is a new website run by the USBIC Educational Foundation, dedicated to
protecting American interests against the damaging effects of
international trade.
During the past seven years of Conservative
government in Ontario, working people
and their unions have been under attack by the provincial
government. Changes to labour laws have left Ontario with the worst
employment standards laws in the country. It's time for Ontario
Government decertification.
Hector Ramirez
tells how he loaded as many people as he could on his train, rescuing them
from the Courtland Street - WTC Train Station.
Get Your Convention Gear
Check out gear for the
2004
IAM Convention
Order your 2002 IAM Calendar
Now. The 2002 calendar features winners of this year's IAM Photography
Contest.
Send a check for $5.00 to:
IAM Calendar
c/o IAM Communications
9000 Machinists
Place
Upper Marlboro, MD
20772-2687
Local Lodges and Districts
can download
a bulk order form for large calendar requests.
The IAM
Executive Council
International President
R.
Thomas Buffenbarger
Secretary Treasurer
Donald
E. Wharton
GVP Western
Territory
Lee
Pearson
GVP
Canada
GVP Canada
Dave
Ritchie
GVP Midwest
Territory
Alex
M. Bay
GVP Headquarters
Robert
V. Thayer
GVP
Southern
GVP Southern
Territory
George
Hooper
GVP Eastern
Territory
Warren
L. Mart
GVP Transportation
Robert
Roach, Jr.
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Friday, February 8,
2002
Thayer Blasts Bush
Budget Blunders
The Bush budgetary scheme came
under withering attack as GVP Bob Thayer delivered his closing remarks
to the MNPL Planning Committee meeting in Savannah, GA, this week.
“Bush brags that his budget ‘can be summed up in one word: jobs,’
Thayer said, “but the reality is that his budget cuts funding for job
training, cuts apprenticeship programs and cuts extended unemployment
for laid-off workers.”
At the same time, Bush clings doggedly to the massive tax cuts for
Corporate America and the wealthiest taxpayers, while his trade policies
erode the nation’s industrial base and accelerate the export of U.S.
jobs, technology and capital to overseas trading partners who welcome
the White House largesse.
Thayer urged the MNPL planners to devote all available resources to
picking up a half-dozen governorships and to shaping a more
worker-friendly Congress. A pickup of just six seats would return the
House to Democratic control and slow the anti-worker assaults from the
White House.
MNPL Planners
Prepare for Election Battles
Members of the MNPL National
Planning Committee began developing strategies and making plans to
reshape the nation’s political landscape and install worker-friendly
governments at every level.
That won’t be easy, noted Charlie Cook, a respected political analyst
and editor of the Cook Report. “This election could not be
closer,” he said. Democrats hope to retake the House, build on their
narrow Senate majority and pick up several governorships in the November
elections.
Cook rates 24 House seats as “toss-ups,” and finds each party has
six Senate seats at high risk in the coming election. At the state
level, he says Democrats stand to gain “as many as six or seven”
gubernatorial offices.
Bush Budget:
Reaganomics Revisited
President Bush’s budget plan
brings eerie echoes from an earlier White House tenancy that whipsawed
working families and left the nation reeling. During his first year in
the White House, President Ronald Reagan promised his supply-side fiscal
policies could “cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the
budget” and would achieve that goal within four years.
Instead, twelve years of Reagan-Bush saw the federal deficit soar from
$35 billion when Reagan first entered the White House to a staggering
$292 billion in 1992.
The current White House occupant inherited a budget surplus as well as
healthy Social Security and Medicare programs. In barely 12 months,
President Bush returned the nation and its working families to the bleak
prospect of federal deficits for the foreseeable future. Bush broke his
promises and dipped into surplus Social Security funds to finance his
massive tax cuts. Now he asks huge cuts in such jobs-creating programs
as highway and infrastructure projects, workplace safety, job training
and help for laid-off workers.
An in-depth analysis of Bush’s proposed budget is available at the
AFL-CIO’s website www.aflcio.org.
Business
Leader Urges Political Alliance
An
unlikely figure drew a standing ovation from MNPL delegates after
attacking “weak-kneed politicians who won’t stand up for America and
its workers.” The speaker, Kevin Kearns, is president of the U.S.
Business & Industry Council, which represents small business firms.
The Council stood in the forefront of the opposition to NAFTA, Fast
Track and other trade policies that have wreaked havoc with America’s
industrial base.
“We have to send a message to Congress,” Kearns said. “The message
is simple: you take our jobs. You’re fired.”
Related Link:
http://www.tradealert.org
Sioux
City Machinists Notch New Contract
In less than a week’s time, members of LL 1426 working at Sioux City
Brick & Tile negotiated and ratified a new contract. The four-year
agreement calls for substantial increases in wages, improvements in
benefits and health care, and the introduction of the IAM
defined-benefit pension plan.
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