Speaking of which-- Gov. Walker is now the laughing stock of Wisconsin after his recorded butt-kissing conversation with David Koch impersonator and Buffalo Beast editor, Ian Murphy. Trying to impress his patron with his cleverness, Koch revealed his secret plan to trick boycotting Democratic senators back to Madison for a pretend compromise meeting. What great grist for Jon Stewart's mill.
President Obama's lips remain sealed.How far he's drifted since that December, 2008 day of hope, when then president-elect Obama came out strongly in support of Chicago union workers who sat-in at Republic Window and Door to keep the plant from leaving the state.
Side Note on the Republic battle: Obama's new chief of staff, Bill Daley, was Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase, which owned 40 percent of Republic.
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If you can make it to Mad City this Saturday, the teachers unions have scheduled a giant rally at the capitol for 3 p.m. See brother Fred's blog on this.
Australia contracts with Teach for America. U.S. researchers, like ASU's David Berliner, ask: "What in the world are you thinking?"
The researchers also found that 69 per cent of TFA teachers had left by the end of their second year of teaching and 88 per cent had left by the end of their third year. That is, most TFA teachers do not stay in education long enough to make up for the damage they cause to their students during their first few years of teaching. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Busted for fraud
Remember Richard Gillman? Probably not. He's the former owner of Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors, the sight of last winter's plant takeover by workers. It was the first national response to corporate bailouts and drew praise from Pres. Obama.
Well Gillman, who tried to sneak the factory out from under his workers' noses and move it to Iowa, where he could set it up as a non-union operation, has been busted for fraud. He faces one count each of organizing a continuing financial crimes enterprise; mail fraud; money laundering; wire fraud; involvement in a financial crime conspiracy and a handful of other charges, the police official says. (Chi-Town Daily)
Like Roosevelt, Obama is merely offering workers some space in which to organize. What's significant is that UE, an independent union with roots to the militant labor organizing of the 1930s, is seizing the space. And unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition are supporting a small struggle with a big message. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country…"
Bob Bruno, director of the labor studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predicted organized labor would be emboldened by the workers’ success. “If you combine some palpable street anger with organizational resources in a changing political mood,” he said, “you can begin to see more of these sort of riskier, militant adventures, and they’re more likely to succeed.”
Untold labor history
In all the coverage of the Republic victory, I keep reading that this was the first plant takeover by workers since the '30s. As I read about what's on the horizon for millions of auto industry workers facing job losses if the current bailout fails, I can't help but thinking about the wave of wildcat strikes and yes--plant takeovers--in Detroit by militant black workers back in the '70s and why they are being erased from current labor history. It's all documented in Dan Georgakas' book, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying.
