By Steve Zeltser - Labor Video Project, November 14, 2015

Eighty thousand workers at the Brazilian Petrobras oil company are striking against further privatization and union busting. The strike started on September 24, 2015 and the PT Workers Party government is selling off shares of the companies to multi-national oil companies and the banks and outsourcing more and more of the work creating serious health and safety problems.

Striking Petrobras oil workers talk about their strike and the role of the Dilma Rousseff Workers Party government in dismembering the national oil company. They also discuss the role of the CUT union leaders who opposed the oil workers striking since they are supporting the Dilma government.

This interview was done on November 6, 2015 in Sao Paulo, Brazil at a meeting of the Conlutas union federation.

For more information on the strike visit this page.

By Climate - Capitalism vs the Climate, November 16, 2015

There’s going to be a climate rally at the state Capitol soon about replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. That all sounds good, but we want to form a contingent that’s loud and clear about the need for systemic social change. We hope you’ll join.

Look for us with the banner that says ‘End capitalism’ at the bottom.

• Capitol Building Hartford CT
• Saturday, Nov 21st, at 12 PM
• https://www.facebook.com/events/1518104615179767/

“100% renewable energy” isn’t enough.

We need community control and a rejection of false solutions. Putting a wind turbine on top of a genocidal system doesn’t make it green. Did you know Solar City has been installing solar panels made by prisoners paid pennies to the dollar? That Malloy’s been counting renewable mega-hydro power as green despite its infringement on indigenous Innu land in Quebec? That Bridgeport takes trash from surrounding suburbs and burns it in a low-income neighborhood in order to produce so-called renewable energy? Sometimes renewable energy is just as socially and environmentally destructive as fossil fuels.

Rallies and lobbying aren’t enough

We need direct action. We don’t think the Keystone XL would have been (partially) stopped if it hadn’t been for the countless actions and arrests of the Texas tree-sitters, the Lakota spiritual campers, the White House protesters and others. We’d like to see climate campaigners in CT learn from the (partial) KXL victory and step it up a little bit.

Get Spectra out of Connecticut

Spectra Energy’s fracked gas pipeline expansion could endanger tens of millions of lives, due to its dangerous location near the Indian Point nuclear power plant and its contribution to global climate change. We see Spectra’s expansion as a symptom of the deadly grow-or-die system that’s squeezing the Earth and its inhabitants to extinction. Isn’t stopping Spectra one of the things we can unite around, or is naming it being too specific and divisive for those trying to play nice with Malloy?

By Renee Hamel - Capitalism vs the Climate, November 16, 2015

Web editor's note: The following article details the exploits of one or more IWW members.

Chaplin, CT: Early in the morning, Bernardo McLaughlin of Capitalism vs. the Climate (CvC) obstructed the start of the work for Spectra Energy, locking himself to equipment at a compressor station that Spectra is expanding as part of a massive expansion of fracked gas pipeline infrastructure.

“I placed my body here because we’re out of options. The political class has decided they can survive climate catastrophe and written the rest of us off as acceptable losses. Nobody is coming to save us. Our only hope is organized grassroots power and direct action,” said McLaughlin. Protesters explained that the nonviolent blockade took place as part of Flood the System, a national mobilization for climate justice called by Rising Tide North America.

Spectra’s billion-dollar “AIM Project” creates an incentive for increased fracking, a dangerous method of extracting methane gas from shale fields. Spectra plans to build part of the pipeline, which carries highly-flammable gas, just one hundred feet from New York state’s Indian Point nuclear power plant, running the risk of catastrophic injury to tens of thousands of people. The engineer Paul Blanch has said that a disaster at this part of the pipeline could cause the release of more radioactive materials than were released in Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The Federal Regulatory Commission has said that the Chaplin area construction would directly impact Mansfield Hallow State Park, twelve streams, two wetlands and habitat for state-protected species.

So far, activists have been arrested 66 times in the campaign against Spectra’s pipeline expansion. The actions have had an impact. Last week, dozens willing to risk arrest in West Roxbury, Massachusetts arrived at a vacant construction site. Spectra had abruptly decided to pause construction in West Roxbury until the spring. Meanwhile, Spectra has been seeking $30,000 in damages from three protesters who nonviolently blocked construction in Burrillville, Rhode Island in September. Activists see Spectra’s extreme response as a scare tactic to deter future demonstrations and as an acknowledgement that the ongoing blockades and lockdowns are effectively disrupting the company’s construction plans.

Earlier this month, the climate justice movement won a partial though major victory by stopping the northern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Protesters in Chaplin said that although they welcomed President Obama’s rejection of the northern part of the Keystone XL pipeline, the fight against dirty energy infrastructure has barely begun. During this morning’s blockade against Spectra, CvC members and supporters stood outside the site holding a banner with a “To-Do” list:

• 1) Stop Keystone XL ✔
• 2) Stop Spectra
• 3) End Capitalism

“After several years of blockades, arrests, and protests against the Keystone XL, Obama finally announced that he would not allow construction of the pipeline’s northern segment. While this was a victory for the climate justice movement, the fight is very far from over,” said Gabby Rodriguez of Capitalism vs. the Climate.

Capitalism vs. the Climate is a horizontally-organized, Connecticut-based group that takes direct action against the root causes of the climate crisis. Capitalism vs. the Climate invites people to join their Anti-Capitalist Contingent at the climate movement’s upcoming November 21 March for 100% Renewable Energy at 12 pm at the State Capitol.

By Arthur J Miller - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, November 17, 2015

Casting a stare of confusion out to the cosmos Why do things just get worse no matter how hard we work to make them better? We still labor to produce all needs and we can't even produce our own needs within this system of all possible wealth going to a few at the expense of the many. Food workers who produce the simple most important production of all (if we can't eat, nothing else matters) and yet they are the poorest paid workers around. Makes a lot of sense don't it?
Think about it, those who do the work to provide the needs of society only receive in payment as small of a return that the corporate system can get away with paying them.

This dirty rotten system, I call corporate fascism. It is 100% controlled by the corporations. They control the greatest part of the wealth produced directly. In order to advance their wealth and control, they created an institutionalization of policies that benefit them. Such policies as racism, sexism, nationalism, and so on, all benefit the rich, not the poor and cannot be reformed. How do you reform racism?, may I please ask?

We live under a military dictatorship. We are forced to fight other poor folks in wars that only benefit the rich. In these wars of conquest we defeat other poor people, we are then used to oppress those poor folks into submission to the compute state. How do you reform corporate wars? You can't. The dirty rotten system is meant to be just that, the dirty rotten system that steals from us all and that it uses us poor folks as their collateral damage in industry, in wars and political posturing.

The system uses tactics to get us thinking we have a say in things that we don't. Like the political parties. Both corporate political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are equally the institutionalization of corporate fascism. They work hand in hand to deceive us into thinking we have a chose to choose from. Then we are told to pick the lesser of the two evils. And there you have it, the dirty rotten system cannot be reform to be anything other than what it is, an evil. You cannot reform that which is created to be evil. And when the liberals come up with the next new White Rich Savor to be that lesser evil that others should follow, we need to reject them outright.

When we understand that the system cannot be reform, then we must look at changing the social system ourselves. We can trust no one else to do it for us.

In my view Syndicalism is the most effective means of true social change and it has the most rank and file control that is possible. Part of this is that it came out of work place resistance and organization thus it was always organizing at the source of the problems. That meant those in control were that same as those with the need. That is the only way to get real working class unions. No so-called reform is possible in capitalism, the state or statist institutions they control like the business unions and political parties. Simple, we can let others from the outside organize us and tell us what to do. Or we can organize ourselves at the source of the problem by those in need and are most effected.

Fact is undeniable that the mayor cause of our problems comes directly out of industry. Given that, industry must change. And thus Syndicalism would say that we need to change at the point of production by those who do the work. We know how to make the changes but it has been these outside people who pay no attention to us. Simple example, after a major tanker oil spill, folks were meeting about what to do.

Many answers based upon outside ideas. I tried to explain what would make tankers much safer based upon my experience working on tankers.

That had no place in their discussion. Even when I advocate something so damn simple as to ask the question: Why don't tankers carry no oil spill equipment? Two small power boats and enough booms for two containment circles? Booming a ship is easy, I have done it a number of times. Rather when a spill happens everyone just sits around waiting for some oil spill ship to come in from some far away port.

Nearly every social struggle that starts from the people at the source comes into conflict with those. on the outside. Thus you have the basic Syndicalist organization at the point of production. This Syndicalists have been doing long before the term Syndicalism was ever used.

It has become much more than just about one expression of organization, but rather stands as an example for nearly all working class struggle. My class analysis is very simple. There are two classes, the rich and the poor. Between them is an area that gets rather foggy as some have a little money identify with the interests of the rich and thus should be seen as on that rich side. There are those that identify with the interests of the poor and are on our side. The rich try to exploit everything that can be exploited for profit and suppress those that resist. That includes develop social projects against about every one except what we think we are. Thus such issues as racism, sexism, and so on are based in the industrialized of class in the dirt rotten system. In my view we must organize around the complete oppress of poor folks and their needs, if for no other reason there are always connections to them in industry and must be changed.

By Tadzio Müller - Rosa Luxenbourg Stiftung , November 11, 2015

The UN climate summit in Paris is certainly important. But an agreement in Paris is unlikely to include a number of urgently needed policies, and may instead constitute a shift in a disastrous direction. What can we realistically expect from the Paris Agreement, and what would the Summit actually need to achieve?

On Saturday, 24 October 2015, two media reports were published that perfectly summarise the challenges we face from climate change:

The first report - "Yesterday, the final meeting in the run-up to the Paris Climate Change Conference took place in Bonn". After months of optimism ("This time we'll make it work - not like in Copenhagen", "We've learned from our mistakes", "This time it will be different"), our hopes were dashed when the report ended by stating, "Climate talks fail to break deadlock". But what is blocking the negotiations? The participants can't still be haggling over emission reductions, because this issue has already been settled (through voluntary commitments) and it's not even on the agenda. So what's the problem? As always, it's about the struggle over global resources. But it's not natural resources that are the focus here, because fossil fuels are not discussed at climate summits. The deadlock is not even about the climate as such. It's about the Northern states finally coughing up the agreed financial resources, despite numerous declarations of intent; financial resources that were to be made available to assist the South in adapting and mitigating the problems caused by climate change; financial resources that would help the North do justice to its historical responsibility for climate change.

The second report - This one reached us from Mexico; it's simple, clear and direct: "'Worst hurricane of all time' sweeps across Mexico". The President of Mexico, Peña Nieto, tweeted that this had been the most severe hurricane that had "ever occurred on the planet". More than 60,000 people had to be brought into safety. Fortunately, the hurricane weakened before striking the Mexican mainland, but it clearly demonstrates what we are up against. What would happen if the international community were to respond properly to the challenges demonstrated by these media reports? What would happen at the UN climate summit in December and what kind of resolutions would it pass?

By Brian Tokar - Common Dreams, November 11, 2015

The last time this much public attention was focused on the climate talks was in the lead-up to the Copenhagen conference in 2009. We should not forget how that turned out. (Image: via PabloSolon.com)

From the end of this month through early December, much of the world’s attention will be focused on Paris, the site of the upcoming round of UN climate negotiations. This is the twenty-first time diplomats and heads of state will gather under the umbrella of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a document first put forward at the landmark 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro – the same global conference where the elder George Bush told the world that the “American way of life is not negotiable.” The UNFCCC process has had its ups and downs over the years, including the approval of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the first international agreement to mandate specific reductions in climate-disrupting greenhouse gases.

As this year’s conference approaches, people around the world are suffering the consequences of some of the most extreme patterns of storms, droughts, wildfires and floods ever experienced. Western wildfires last summer reached as far north as the Olympic rainforest, and unprecedented mudslides earlier this fall in a corner of drought-baked southern California nearly buried vehicles caught on the route from Tehachapi to Bakersfield. Central Mexico recently experienced the most severe hurricane to ever reach landfall, and the role of persistent regional droughts in sparking the social upheaval that has brought nearly a million Middle Eastern refugees to central Europe is increasingly apparent. It is virtually certain that 2015 will be the warmest year ever recorded, with several months having surpassed previous records by a full degree or more. While we are always cautioned that it is difficult to blame the climate for specific incidents of extreme weather, scientists in fact are increasingly able to measure the climate contribution of various events, and rising temperatures also heighten the effects of phenomena such as the California drought, which may not have global warming as their primary underlying cause.

The last time this much public attention was focused on the climate talks was in the lead-up to the Copenhagen conference in 2009. At that time, the first “commitment period” of the Kyoto Protocol was about to expire shortly, and Copenhagen was seen as a make-or-break opportunity to move the process forward. Even as close observers decried the increasing corporate influence over the preparations for the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN climate convention, most observers held onto a shred of hope that something meaningful and significant would emerge from the negotiations. There was a huge public lobbying effort by Greenpeace and other groups urging President Obama to attend, and China put forward its first public commitment to reduce the rate of increase in their greenhouse gas emissions. While the Kyoto Protocol’s primary implementation mechanisms – tradable emissions allowances and questionable “carbon offset” projects in remote areas of the world – had proven inadequate at best, the Copenhagen meeting was seen as the key to sustaining Kyoto’s legacy of legally binding emissions reductions. Perhaps, activists hoped, the negotiators would agree on a meaningful plan to prevent increasingly uncontrollable disruptions of the climate. It soon became clear, however, that Copenhagen instead set the stage for a massive derailment of the ongoing negotiation process, and unleashed a new set of elite strategies that now render the Paris talks as virtually designed to fail.

Officials in Copenhagen were determined to spin the conference as a success, no matter what the outcome. Still, even before the conference began, they began to proclaim the advantages of a non-binding “political” or “operational” agreement as an incremental step toward reducing worldwide emissions. As described in my book, Toward Climate Justice (New Compass Press, 2014), the assembled delegates from nearly all the world’s nations failed to accomplish even that. COP 15 produced only a five-page “Copenhagen Accord,” with no new binding obligations on countries, corporations, or any other actors, and the document was not even approved – only “taken note of” – by the conference as a whole. The accord essentially urged countries to put forward voluntary pledges to reduce their climate-disrupting emissions, and to informally “assess” their progress after five years. Every substantive issue was hedged with loopholes and contradictions, setting the stage for most of the global North outside of Europe to simply withdraw from their countries’ obligations under Kyoto as the 2012 renewal deadline approached. Still, all but three countries – Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua – went along with this scheme; one main reason was that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had promised skeptics that the US would raise $100 billion a year in funds to assist with climate stabilizing measures, a promise that is still to be realized in the halls of Paris.

By Steve Ongerth - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, November 11, 2015

Author's Note: This article is a sequel of sorts to my previous piece, Unions and the Climate Justice Movement, which briefly mentions the No Coal in Oakland campaign. The image, depicted at the right, compares a pro-capitalist-logging poster (yellow, near right) ostensibly created by timber workers (but actually crafted by the employers) to mobilize support for a counter-demonstration to a rally and march, held in Fort Bragg in July 1990, organized by the Redwood Summer coalition (which included timber workers). The green poster (far right), represents the Redwood Summer coalition's response, and accurately summarizes their position on timber workers and timber jobs.

At first glance, the Oakland City Council meeting, held on September 21, 2015 looked much like many public hearings where public opposition had organized in response to the plans, practices, or proposals of capitalist interests that threatened the environment. For most of the evening, and well into the night, council members and the Mayor watched and listened as speaker after speaker (out of a total of over 500) either spoke in favor (or against) coal exports or ceded their time to their allies. On one side were a widely diverse group of activists, organized by a coalition known as No Coal in Oakland-- adorned in red (union made and printed) T-shirts--opposed to plans to export coal through a proposed Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT), as part of the Oakland Global Trade and Logistics Center (or Oakland Global), and on the other were the project's supporters, dressed in business attire accompanied by several dozen union workers, many of them from the Laborers' Union, dressed in yellow.  As is often the case, the project's supporters tried to frame the opposition as being composed of insensitive outsiders, and themselves and the supporting "workers" as placing the economic interests of Oakland and its residents above all else. "We support good paying union jobs that will help the struggling, predominantly African-American residents of west Oakland" opined the supporters, trying to suggest that those in opposition didn't.

This is an old, and shopworn script, that has been trotted out numerous times in the past quarter century or more. Anyone who has experienced or studied the "Timber Wars" that took place in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s will recall the armies of loggers and mill-workers decked out in yellow shirts, sporting yellow foam car radio antennae balls or yellow ribbons who would show up en massé (at the behest of their employers, often with pay) to oppose limits to clear-cutting or protections for the Northern Spotted Owl and to denounce (often) green shirted environmentalists as "unwashed-out-of-town-jobless-hippies-on-drugs" and/or upper middle class "elitists" (or--defying logic--both). Sometimes, in drawn out campaigns, the employers have often furthered this illusion by creating false front "Astroturf" groups, ostensibly composed of workers, to distract attention away from themselves.

The truth is far much more complex and nuanced, of course. Usually the "jobs" promised by the projects' supporters often don't materialize (indeed, the opposite--namely automation, downsizing, and outsourcing--usually occurs). Those in opposition to environmentally destructive practices and proposals are usually composed of and led by locals, most of whom are, themselves, gainfully employed, and sympathetic to the needs and concerns of the affected workers (in fact, the opposition's counter proposals, if well thought out, do more to create "jobs" and job security than those in support of the project). Meanwhile, the actual level of support among the rank and file workers purportedly backing up the capitalists interests could accurately be described as a mile wide and an inch deep, at best. And the bosses? When they speak of jobs, they actually refer to profits. Nevertheless, in the past, the capitalist media has typically and dutifully reported that these projects are opposed by "green clad environmentalists" (or red in this particular case) and supported by "yellow clad workers" (often neglecting to draw any distinction between the workers and their employers).

Therefore, it is both surprising and refreshing, that in spite of the attempts by the employing class to replay that same script on September 21, 2015 in Oakland, the attempt backfired, due to the diligent and tireless organizing by their grassroots opposition. A closer examination of what happened, and how the opposition organized, will illustrate why this is so and how others can duplicate the organizers' efforts to defeat further attempts by capitalist interests to use divide and conquer tactics to push their climate and environment (not-to-mention job) destroying projects through.

By Eric Dirnbach - Waging Nonviolence, November 4, 2015

The debate on how to revive the troubled U.S. labor movement has been around for decades. Labor activists generally believe that much greater rank-and-file democracy and workplace militancy is the key to labor renewal. However, an essential perspective that is usually missing from the conversation is well represented by Staughton Lynd’s “Solidarity Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below,” which was first published in 1992 and has been recently reissued.

Lynd is a legendary progressive lawyer and activist from Youngstown, Ohio. He is the coauthor with his wife Alice Lynd of the classic “Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers,” a collection of oral histories of militant union organizers, which informs much of the framework of “Solidarity Unionism.” At around 100 pages, the book reads more like a summary of his organizing philosophy, and many readers will come away wanting a more extensive discussion. It should be read along with several other recent books which make similar arguments: Stanley Aronowitz’s “The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement,” and “New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism,” edited by Immanuel Ness, who also provided the introduction for “Solidarity Unionism.”

Lynd argues for a rethinking of the assumptions of the labor movement and for a revived version of labor organizing that was more prominent in the pre-New Deal era that he calls “solidarity unionism.” What may surprise most labor-oriented readers is that central to this kind of unionism is the absence of a contract between the union and the employer.

Isn’t the whole point of forming a union to get a written collective bargaining agreement? Lynd doesn’t think so and he argues that workers fighting together with direct action on the job to make improvements in the workplace do not need a contract and may be hurt by having one. He is critical of the “management rights” and “no-strike” clauses that are standard in almost all union contracts. He believes they reduce the power of workers to influence major decisions in how the workplace is run and to solve their problems at work immediately as they arise. Contracts tend to remove agency from the workers and place it in the hands of union staff who typically bargain and process grievances while the members may be uninvolved and cynical. Lynd is also skeptical of a union’s exclusive representation of all workers in the workplace and automatic dues check-off, preferring for workers to actively join the union and pay dues because they want to.

Lynd’s view of the prevailing “contract unionism” differs from standard labor history, which considers the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, labor reforms as a progressive advance for workers. In the mainstream view, workers organizing, with the support of President Roosevelt, finally won full government enforcement for the right to organize and bargain collectively. In exercising this right, unions typically hold workplace elections and then negotiate contracts with employers that set the conditions of employment and also guarantee labor peace (no strike/no lockout) for the term of the contract. This industrial relations framework led the way for millions of workers to organize and improve their wages and working conditions. This “class compromise” held for several decades until employers changed their mind and increased their opposition to unionization again.

By Dek Keenan - Union Solidarity International, November 5, 2015

In recent years, new or rediscovered forms of worker self-organisation have begun to appear – and often in the most unlikely of places.

Small independent unions, using a combination of often audacious direct action tactics combined with innovative campaign strategies are bringing victories to some of the most marginalised and precarious groups of workers. Punching way above their weight, these dynamic new (and some not so new) unions are fighting to win and organising with few or no full-time officials and on shoestring budgets.

Are they the work of anarchist wreckers, alien to the traditions of the labour movement, or do they offer a way out of the impasse that our movement finds itself in?

In London, new unions such as the United Voices of the World (UVW) and Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) have been at the forefront of precarious, out-sourced and greatly migrant labour struggles. Recent high profile fights for the Living Wage, for sick pay and the reinstatement of union activists at the Barbican and at Sotheby’s auction house have brought the UVW into the media spotlight.

The first signs in the UK of this ‘new unionism’ were seen in 2011 when the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the famous ‘Wobblies’, organised a Branch for cleaners in London, recruiting dissatisfied members of Unite associated with the Latin American Workers Association (LAWA).

This Branch built on the existing community of solidarity in the LAWA and, through the establishment of workers’ advice clinics, language classes and much aggressive outreach by unpaid activists, expanded beyond the Latin American community to other groups of cleaners searching for an effective voice at work. London Living Wage victories at Canary Wharf and elsewhere followed, heightening the profile of the IWW and paving the way for subsequent initiatives from the UVW and IWGB.

By Arun Gupta - Telesurtv.net, November 5, 2015

Far from fizzling, the movement has a contested legacy that continues to shape the political landscape One of the more puzzling aspects about Occupy Wall Street is not that there was a moment when millions of people hoped or feared it might overthrow the rule of the banks, but that so little is said about it four years on.

Its anniversaries come and go without comment: Occupy’s founding on September 17, 2011, the high-water mark of the Oakland general strike on November 2, the eviction of of the New York camp on November 15, the creation of Occupy Sandy after the superstorm walloped the Northeast on October 29, 2012.

Occupy lost its luster because most people concluded it was a failure. It failed to articulate demands, failed to create a lasting impact, failed to spark a revolution. The haters dismiss Occupy as the “Frenzy that Fizzled.” True believers maintain Occupy triumphed for shifting the conversation from economic austerity to inequality, while ignoring the lack of infrastructure to carry its work and ideas forward. Many who joined or were inspired by it would up feeling confused, bitter, or disappointed at losing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to upend the status quo. Others blame Occupy’s dissolution on police forces that aggressively swept out all the major encampments. But it’s defeatist to say Occupy was vanquished “by a concerted government effort to undo it.” State violence is a given, and some radical movements still succeed.

Occupiers tried repeatedly to resurrect the movement after the main bastions in Oakland and New York City were evicted in November 2011. But it never regained its footing despite the national May Day general strike, protests against a NATO summit in Chicago, the Occupy Our Homes anti-foreclosure movement, Occupy Sandy, and attempted re-occupations of parks, plazas, and buildings across the country.

No, Occupy Wall Street did not fizzle or fail. Its outsized ambitions were destined to crash as there are no left forces strong enough in the United States to keep a mass movement flying high. Occupy is as relevant as ever; the difficulty in coming to terms with it is because of its mixed legacy. When radicals lost the initiative against a bankrupt political system, liberals stepped in to divert energy back into the system.