UAW WINS PROTECTION FOR GM BATTERY PLANT WORKERS iN MAJOR CONCESSION. MEMBERS STRIKE AT MACK TRUCK FACILITIES AFTER REJECTING DEAL. United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain told the union’s 145,000 members that brand-new progress made in contract negotiations with the Big Three automakers made one thing clear: “We are winning.”
Fain addressed the union as thousands of its members concluded the third week of a “stand-up” strike, in which autoworkers have been gradually called to join the work stoppage to build pressure on the companies—Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis—to provide a fair contract commensurate with their record-breaking profits and including a just transition to renewable energy, Julia Conley reported at CommonDreams (10/6).
Just minutes before Fain was planning to announce that workers at GM’s assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, were being called on to join the strike, the automaker told UAW negotiators it would include workers at its electric vehicle factories to be covered under the union’s national agreement.
The Big Three have previously said their battery plants are being set up through joint ventures with other companies and shouldn’t be a factor in negotiations—a position the UAW said would harm its ability to secure a just transition.
The threat of expanding the walkout to Arlington, where some of GM’s top-selling cars are manufactured by 5,300 workers, “provided a transformative win,” said Fain as he explained that the strike would hold off on further expansion for now.
“We’ve been told for months that this is impossible ... and now we’ve called their bluff,” he said. “Today, because of our power, GM has agreed to lay the foundation for a just transition.”
The announcement made the week ending 10/6 the first since the strike began that more workers were not called to join the work stoppage.
About 17% of UAW members—25,200 workers—were on strike after three weeks. GM said the work stoppage has cost the company $200 million so far, while the UAW has been able to preserve its $825 million strike fund and pay striking members $500 per week.
Then, the following Monday, nearly 4,000 United Auto Workers members walked out of Mack Trucks facilities in three states after voting down a five-year contract with the Volvo Group subsidiary, Jessica Corbett reported at CommonDreams (10/9).
“I’m inspired to see UAW members at Mack Trucks holding out for a better deal, and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it,” UAW president Fain said. “The members have the final say, and it’s their solidarity and organization that will win a fair contract at Mack.”
In a Sunday letter informing company leadership of the strike, Fain wrote that 73% of members voted against the tentative agreement. He also highlighted outstanding issues including wages, cost-of-living allowances, health and safety, job security, holiday and work schedules, overtime, healthcare coverage, and retirement benefits.
The rejected deal—which Fain previously called “a record contract for the heavy truck industry”—featured 19% gross wage increases, a $3,500 ratification bonus for seniority employees, an additional $1,000 annual 401(k) payment, pension benefit boosts, and a freeze in healthcare costs.
Mack Trucks president Stephen Roy said in a statement that “we are surprised and disappointed that the UAW has chosen to strike” at facilities in Jacksonville, Fla.; Macungie and Middletown, Pa.; and Baltimore and Hagerstown, Md.
Noting the potential ties between the Mack Trucks developments and the UAW’s ongoing battle with automakers Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, Barron’s reported:
The negotiation between the Detroit Three and the union has been unusually public. The fact that Fain has made public what the union is demanding from Ford, GM, and Stellantis gives the Mack workers a basis of comparison. And the offer made to them doesn’t seem to be as good. The Mack offer included a roughly 20% raise over five years, while the Big Three all agreed to pay more than 20% over four years.
“This war is not against some foreign power. The frontlines are right here in our homes. It’s a class war on humanity,” said Fain at a rally in Chicago (11/7). “We’re gonna keep going until we win social and economic justice at the Big Three and beyond.”
The strength of that rhetoric, plus Fain’s disclosures about the talks with the Big Three, may well have tipped the balance. The union had no immediate comment on how Fain’s rhetoric might have affected the vote.
Several unnamed Mack Trucks workers in Pennsylvania who have spent a decade or more with the company and spoke with CNBC ahead of vote pointed to the Big Three negotiations.
“In my opinion, the master contract is not horrid. It’s not a bad contract, but it’s nowhere near what we were expecting,” said a 12-year employee who planned to vote against the deal.
“When we were going in, we were following basically like the automakers,” added the worker. “They’ve changed some things for the better but, in my opinion, not enough.”
MEDIA WORKS HARD ON SPINNING GOOD JOBS NUMBERS INTO BAD ECONOMIC NEWS. The September jobs report, released 10/6, soared above expectations, with the economy gaining 336,000 jobs and the unemployment rate staying at 3.8%, amid other good news.
However, multiple major media outlets rushed to explain why the good newswas actually bad news, Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos (10/6). The New York Times ran with, “U.S. Job Growth Surges Past Expectations in Troubling News for the Fed,” and, “The markets are jittery. Here’s why the strong jobs report may not help,” before editing the former headline to: “U.S. Job Growth Surges Past Expectations in a Sign of Unexpected Vigor.”
CNN went full fearmongering:
Why? Two reasons: inflation—even though it has cooled substantially—and the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will try to fight inflation by jump-starting a recession. “Inflation has been falling much faster than wage growth,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould noted. While cooling wage growth in this month’s report should make the Fed less inclined to raise rates, you won’t see that in this CNN analysis about how very scared you should be by the good jobs number.
Once again, the real media outdoes the parodies:
The satirical New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon tweeted:
“You might think that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who were looking for jobs would be happy that they found them. But you would be wrong.”
The economy is complicated, and good news can come alongside bad news. But during Joe Biden’s presidency, the media steadfastly reported the bad news first and foremost every time.
TEXAS ATT’Y GENERAL FILES CRIMINAL COMPLAINTS AGAINST IMPEACHMENT MANAGERS. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he plans to file criminal complaints against the group of state representatives who led the impeachment against him for releasing his personal information, the Texas Tribune reported (10/9).
“The impeachment managers clearly have a desire to threaten me with harm when they released this information last week,” he said in a statement. “I’m imploring their local prosecutors in each individual district to investigate the criminal offenses that have been committed.”
The 12 House representatives targeted by Paxton (R) led the impeachment trial in the Senate after the House overwhelmingly voted to impeach Paxton in May. The Senate (9/16) acquitted Paxton of 16 articles of impeachment that alleged corruption and bribery.
In a statement (10/9), Paxton accused the House impeachment managers of violating a new state law with an 10/2 release of documents related to the case. The new legislation cited by Paxton prohibits posting an individual’s personal information such as a home address or telephone number with the intent to cause harm to that individual or their family.
Paxton said he plans to file the criminal complaints in each of the eight counties represented by the dozen impeachment managers. It is not clear which address is in question. Several of Paxton’s addresses are available through already-published public records, often found online from any location through local municipalities’ appraisal district databases.
House lawyer Rusty Hardin, who prosecuted Paxton, said the documents released contained the same information that was included in other documents that had already been filed or were admitted into the impeachment trial without objection.
He also said that the information about Paxton’s residence is available through public records, and has been for years. Further, he said the release of documents was not conducted with an intent to cause harm to Paxton as he alleged — it was “simply a repeat of public information to anyone that wants to look into it.”
If Paxton makes good on his pledge to file the criminal complaints, Hardin said his Houston law firm will consider countering with a criminal complaint against Paxton for making a false report to police.
“This is the exact kind of bullying, uninformed vengeful act that we predicted if the attorney general was not impeached,” Hardin said. “He’s trying to misuse the criminal justice system to cower and punish people who sought to impeach him under the law. It’s just one more outrageous, vengeful act by a man who has no business being attorney general.”
TRUMP BOASTS OF SUPPORT FROM HANNIBAL LECTER AT CAMPAIGN RALLY IN LATEST DISPLAY OF MENTAL SLIPPAGE. Donald Trump likes to suggest that current President Joe Biden is in mental decline, but the former president actually raised questions about his own grip on reality and mental fitness to be president when he boasted of Hannibal Lecter’s support at an Iowa rally (10/7), Charles Jay noted at DailyKos (10/8)
The Huffington Post reported that the former president was criticizing what he described as open border policies, claiming that people were coming to the US from “insane asylums.” And then he brought up the 1991 film “The Silence of the Lambs,” which set him off on this rant in which he mixed up the character Hannibal Lecter and the actor Anthony Hopkins, who won the Best Actor Oscar for playing the psychiatrist who likes to eat people with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
“Hannibal Lecter, how great an actor was he?” Trump said. “You know why I like him? Because he said on television ... ‘I love Donald Trump.’ So I love him. I love him. I love him. He said that a long time ago and once he said that, he was in my camp, I was in his camp. I don’t care if he was the worst actor, I’d say he was great to me.”
Huffington Post wrote that Hopkins has never publicly supported Trump, nor have other actors who have portrayed Lecter, including the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, who starred in the TV series “Hannibal,” and Brian Cox, who was the first to play Dr. Lecter in the 1986 film “Manhunter.”
As for Hopkins, he told The Guardian in a 2018 interview that he doesn’t care about Trump and doesn’t like to talk about politics because focusing on the details makes him too unhappy.
But that’s not the most egregious divergence from reality in a recent Trump speech. The 77-year-old Trump has constantly dismissed the 80-year-old President Joe Biden, whom he refers to as “Sleepy Joe,” as being too old and cognitively impaired to be president. But it’s more like projection.
During a speech in September at the Pray Vote Stand summit in Washington, D.C., Trump warned that if reelected Biden will drag us into a war … that ended 78 years ago.
“We have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst president in the history of our country, who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and who is now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war,” Trump said. “Just think of it. We would be in World War II very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man.”
And later in the same speech he got confused and said he ran against Barack Obama in 2016: “With Obama we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.”
And that prompted “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough to say: “But yeah. You think they may want to take out the ‘cognitively impaired’ part of his speeches from now on.”
Co-host Jonathan Lemire added, “That’s an attack line the Republicans and Trump love to use [against Biden] but, man, that does seem like he was looking in the mirror just there.”
And then we have Trump’s social media posts and speeches in which he called federal prosecutor Jack Smith “deranged” and “a psycho,” suggested that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley be executed for treason, and advocated shooting shoplifters as they left the store.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
GUNS ARE NOW THE LEADING CAUSE OF ACCIDENTAL DEATH AMONG AMERICAN KIDS. The rate of firearm fatalities among children under 18 increased by 87% from 2011 through 2021 in the US. The death rate attributable to car accidents fell by almost half, leaving firearm injuries the top cause of accidental death in children, the New York Times reported (10/5).
The finding underscores additional data showing that firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 20, after excluding deaths of infants born prematurely or with congenital abnormalities.
Some 2,590 children and teenagers under the age of 18 died of firearm injuries in 2021, up from 1,311 in 2011, according to the study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which was published in the journal Pediatrics. In other industrialized countries, guns are not even among the top three causes of death for children.
“Looked at from space, this is a view of a country gone mad. Looked at from the ground, this is a view of a country without decency or shame, Charles P. Pierce noted at Esquire.com (10/5). “Firearms are now the leading cause of accidental death among the country’s children. Deaths among our children from gunfire increased 87% over a decade during which political power was pretty much evenly divided between the two major parties, a decade bookended by one Supreme Court decision that established an individual right to arm yourself like a heavy weapons platoon and another that demolished a state’s ability to restrict that ability on behalf of its citizens. And, this November, the Court will weigh in on a law that would disarm anyone subject to a restraining order based on domestic violence. A federal law to that effect was struck down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the funhouse mirror of the federal judiciary.”
RFK JR.’S SIBLINGS DENOUNCE INDEPENDENT RUN, CALL IT ‘PERILOUS FOR OUR COUNTRY.’ Family members of 2024 US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy—including several of his siblings—said in no uncertain terms that they oppose his continued bid to lead the country, as the lawyer and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist announced he would run as an independent instead of as a Democrat, Julia Conley reported at CommonDreams (10/9).
Four of Kennedy’s siblings—documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, human rights advocate Kerry Kennedy, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.), and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — released a statement saying their brother’s decision to run as a third party candidate is “dangerous to our country.”
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision, or judgment,” they said. “We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
After saying repeatedly in recent weeks that the Democratic National Committee is “rigging” the 2024 election against him, Kennedy—who was previously running for the party’s nomination as a challenger to President Joe Biden—said Oct. 9 that he was proposing a “new Declaration of Independence” for the country.
“I’ve come here today to declare our independence from the tyranny of corruption which robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future, and our respect for each other,” Kennedy said. “But to do that I must first declare my own independence. Independence from the Democratic Party and from all other political parties.”
Though Kennedy is a scion of one of the most prominent Democratic families in the US, polling has shown Republican voters think more highly of his candidacy than Democrats.
After building a career as an environmental lawyer, Kennedy has become well-known in recent years for spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, including a claim that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and the long-debunked belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.
Kerry Kennedy has spoken out about her brother’s presidential aspirations at least twice before, including when he said “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people have the most immunity to COVID-19 and that the pandemic was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.”
Kennedy’s cousin and the grandson of assassinated former President John F. Kennedy, Jack Schlossberg, also expressed disgust earlier this year over Kennedy’s campaign, saying in a video posted to social media that he had “no idea why anyone thinks he should be president.”
“What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment,” said Schlossberg. “Let’s not be distracted again by somebody’s vanity project. I am excited to vote for Joe Biden in my state’s primary and again in the general election, and I hope you will too.”
Author and activist Naomi Klein noted earlier this year, Kennedy’s political priorities bear little resemblance to the anti-poverty, civil rights, and pro-labor work of his father, assassinated former US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.).
Despite running as a so-called “populist,” she wrote, RFK Jr. has shown little interest in advocating for policies that would center working and low-income people, such as higher taxes for the rich or Medicare for All.
Climate experts and advocates have also noted that Kennedy’s background in environmental law does not make him the candidate the US needs to combat the climate emergency.
As University of California, Berkeley environmental law professor Dan Farber and UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment official Evan George wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle (10/9), Kennedy said in one campaign video that the climate crisis “is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls, the same way the COVID crisis was.”
“RFK Jr. is not a Democratic challenger,” said economist Robert Reich. “He is not an independent. He is a right-wing tool being used to help elect [Former Republican President Donald] Trump.”
“RFK Jr. has nothing to do with his father—who stood for racial, economic, and social justice (and for whom I worked in the 1960s),” Reich added. “His candidacy saddens me. He could have done something meaningful with his life and name.”
LIZ CHENEY OUTLINES JIM JORDAN’S ROLE IN JAN. 6 INSURRECTION. Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney spoke at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (10/4), the day after Kevin McCarthy was demoted from speaker. One of her last roles in Congress was as vice chair of the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. In her UM speech, she laid out her thoughts on Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has a very real chance of becoming the next speaker of the House, Walter Einenkel noted at Daily Kos (10/6).
In a video tweeted out by Republican Accountability, Cheney tells the attendees, “Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives.” She added that “people” can try to blame former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for security lapses on Jan. 6, but Jordan was “in those meetings” with Trump and never said a darn thing. “Somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, ‘Why didn’t you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned?’” she said.
Cheney told the audience that she doesn’t believe Jordan can secure the votes to become the next speaker. However, she said, if he somehow were able to get the votes, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”
Cheney was ousted from office due in no small part to her vocal opposition to Trump and his attempts to overthrow our government on Jan. 6. Cheney is a right-winger on most issues, but she has been stellar at delivering withering criticisms of fellow Republicans like Jordan. The swampy creature known as the Republican Party has ignored every warning Cheney has given so far, and it will be interesting to see if they do the same here.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2023
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