Day: May 24, 2008

American Axel Update #9

This is from the newsletter of the rank and file at AAM:


Shopfloor Newsletter Condemns Axle Settlement “Lowlights”

Shifting Gears, an American Axle rank-and-file newsletter, pointed out the following “contract lowlights” in a special leaflet urging strikers to reject the proposed contract:

  • different wage scale within Detroit Axle, with production workers ranging from $14.35 to $18.50 per hour
  • different wage scales among Detroit Axle ($14.35-$18.50), Cheektowaga ($14.35-$16.50) and Three Rivers ($10-$18) production workers, so that for future work the plants can be pitted against each other
  • no increase in wages over the life of the contract
  • instead of 5 percent premium, second shift would get 55 cents per hour; instead of 10 percent premium, third shift would get 80 cents per hour
  • pensions frozen as of January 2009; receive 3 percent of wage in a 401(k) plus matching additional contribution (But who will have extra money to put anything into it?)
  • combining skilled trades into only four classifications and reducing their hourly wage to $25-$26 (This is a proposed cut near and dear to CEO Dick Dauch, who would be the first executive to reduce skilled trades wages—the Big Three didn’t, and neither did Delphi.)
  • added health care costs: weekly “contributions” will start at $10 (individual)-$25 (family) and increase 3 percent per year, cost of living adjustment (COLA) sees 12 cents diversion each quarter for health care as well as higher up-front deductibles
  • overtime only kicks in after a 40-hour week, not after an 8-hour day
  • The unemployment support SUB fund of $18 million (donated by GM) is limited and underfunded
  • new hires would start at $11.50 per hour with no provision for COLA or even 5 percent in a 401(k); only to get dental after three years. Most other benefits would not match current workers: less shift premium, higher co-pays, etc.
  • increasing the number of workers each committeeperson represents
  • eliminating the right to strike during the term of the contract for issues such as health and safety, speed-up, sub-contracting, and bargaining in bad faith
  • decreasing the time frame the union has to counter the company’s plan to outsource from 150 days to 30 days
  • nickel and dimes a whole range of benefits including co-pays for generic drugs, capping health care for future retirees, tuition assistance
  • closing down Detroit Forge and Tonawanda Forge (while opening up a $10 an hour non-union plant in Oxford, Michigan)
  • removing Three Rivers from the no-plant-closing provision
  • shoving us out of the GM Umpire System, to be replaced by an inferior system of arbitration
  • eliminating some holiday and vacation time
  • taking some of our products out from under the protection of the successor clause (which ensure that the contract’s negotiated terms continue in the event of a sale)
  • cutting relief time from 23 minutes to 15 minutes

Is The “Surge” Working?

This story is from an Iraqi newspaper, Azzaman:

U.S. occupation forces have killed more than 800 people, most of them innocent civilians, in their three-week long military campaign to subdue the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, the leader of Sadr movement in Baghdad said.

Sheikh Salaman al-fariji said the troops have also injured more than 1,800 people and caused large-scale destruction of private property and the city’s rickety infrastructure.

Fariji made the remarks as he accompanied a delegation of 20 members of parliament on a tour of the impoverished city home to more than 2 million people.

U.S. troops have imposed a tight embargo on the city and bombing by war planes and helicopter gun ships in the densely populated Baghdad neighborhood continued even during the MPs’ tour.

Falah Shanshal, an MP,  said the group would write to the parliament to lift the siege of Sadr City and reach a peaceful solution to the standoff with Mahdi Army.

Mahdi Army is the military wing of Sadr movement which has 30 deputies in parliament.

“The MPs were shocked by the scale of damage,” said Fariji.

Shanshal said: “The people of Sadr City undergo horrific humanitarian conditions as a result of U.S. military operations and embargo.”

An interesting thingy, the US papers are not reporting anything like this.  WHY?

More Absurd News From The Eastern Front

The United States has leaked what can only exist in the imagination of science fiction writers. It wants to turn its fortress in Baghdad called the Green Zone into a shiny, tourist village with a ‘dream list’ of attractions.

This ‘science fiction’ mentality has been there in the minds of the architects of the Iraq invasion in the U.S., both military and civil leaders.

The U.S. still dreams of transforming its Green Zone, the symbol of its dreadful and horrific military and security machine that has imploded a whole nation into a ‘tourist village.’

The zone is seen in Iraq as a symbol center of terror and oppression. It is dislocated from its surroundings. It is a world the U.S. has created for itself and ringed it with blast walls and concrete bocks.

It is already a very beautiful place for its reclusive inhabitants who even lack the courage to drive to the airport and are mostly airlifted there.

Iraqis resisting U.S. occupation and its lackeys target the zone almost on a daily basis hoping to force their occupiers to leave.

Iraqis do not expect positive things from the U.S. They have already seen what its troops and policies have done to their capital and the rest of their country.

The thought of constructing a fascinating village around its $700 million embassy intensifies their rancor and indignation at what U.S. policy makers have done to their country.

The U.S. has dismembered Baghdad through the concrete barriers it has built to separate its neighborhoods.

The U.S. wants to build a ‘dream village’ in Baghdad at a time its bombers are being deployed to strafe the streets and densely populated areas.

The engineers and the architects the U.S. will hire to design and build this village will need to pay more attention to watch towers, electronic fences and war gadgets on how to protect it.

U.S.’s dream village is a plan to set up a paradise in hell.

Why not?  Americans try to find ways to kill themselves daily, just make it easier and all will be happier.

News From Iraq

We, the US, just keeps trying and trying and getting nowhere.  First it was a trooper using the Qu’ran for target practice, that pissed the locals off.  And now airstrikes take out a hospital.

Health authorities in the Province of Babylon say U.S. troops are paying “peanuts” to cover for the extensive damage they have inflicted on the main hospital in the southern city of Hilla.

The troops say they bombed the hospital “by mistake” and they have offered $6500 as compensation.

But Mostafa al-Hiti, chairman of the Health and Environment Commission at the Iraqi Parliament, said “the money is not enough to cover for the broken class.”

Hiti said the health authorities at the hospital in the provincial canter of Hilla are determined to either get the U.S. pay for all the damage..

Still worse, Hiti, said the U.S. was offering $100 for the families and relatives of those who were injured and killed as a result of what it allegedly calls “misfire.”

Hiti gave no figure of the casualties but the money other officials described as “an insult” which has further angered the bereaved families.

Not the way to win friends and influence people.

Does This Mean That Preachers Are Out?

He can only pray that this may be the last crap we hear on what some religious type has to say.

It started with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the leading Democratic candidate, who denounced his own former pastor and spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., after Mr. Wright aired his Afro-centric version of conspiracy thinking at the National Press Club.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican candidate, stood next to Mr. Hagee at a news conference and announced how delighted he was to have his endorsement, Mr. McCain renounced it. He acted after a Web site released a recording of a sermon in which Mr. Hagee said Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God’s plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.

Mr. McCain also rejected the endorsement of the Rev. Rod Parsley, an Ohio pastor who had been retooling his church into a get-out-the-vote machine for Republicans. The problem for Mr. McCain was that Mr. Parsley was vocally anti-Islam.

Now that we have this out of the way, can we please return to “real” issues and let the crap flow down the toilet?  THANX!

Do You Remember Phyllis Schlafly?

If you are a political junkie from the Boomer gen, then you will remember her, but unfortunately Gen x’ers, or Gen y, or whatever they call themselves now, will probably have no idea who this woman. I bring up this woman because in the past she has made such comments as, “the bomb is a gift to the country from a wise God”. She was a mouthpiece against such movements as the Equal Rights Amendment, The UN, Evolution, and the promoter of numerous crack pot right wing conspiracies.I mean she blamed the VA Tech shootings on the English Dept and the banning of women from traditionally men’s jobs, but my fav was she defended the man’s right of ownership of his wife’s vagina by say, “getting married, the women has consented to sex, and I do not think you can call it rape”.

Anyway, I bring up this flaky broad because she is about to receive an honorary degree from Washington University, the 155 year old school in St. Louis. That should set back women’s movements about 50 years. I put Schlafly in the same category as Anita Bryant, as the most irritating women of the 20th century.

Schlafly did more to harm women and to help defeat measures that would have improved women’s lives, what part of her history makes her worthy of an honorary degree?

What’s In A Word?

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton apologized Friday after she mentioned the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to remain in the race against Sen. Barack Obama.

In a taped meeting with the editorial board of the Argus-Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, S.D., Clinton said: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Clinton’s comment brought a swift rebuke from the Obama campaign. Obama, who’s likely to be the first African-American to be a major party’s presidential nominee, was given Secret Service protection early in the campaign season because of concerns for his safety.

So I ask, what’s in a word?  Let me see there was a week’s worth of crap from the media over Michelle Obama’s, “proud” comment, then there was the now famous bitter comment, so it will be interesting to see if the media is gonna play ball and let it go.  Personally, I think they will.  Why?  The media let Clinton tap dance on the “hard working wjite Americans” comment, so they will let her go with this most recent one.