On Amazon and Jeff Bezos

You're the CEO of one of America's largest & most successful corporations. You are worth nearly 200 billion dollars. You've made it. By any measurement, you're a success.

Wouldn't you be proud to offer ALL employees FULL BENEFITS? Wouldn't you be happy to support a Union for your employees?

Labor Day, 2015

Poor Detroit (literally and figuratively)

Thank goodness, Kansas City, we're not Detroit, Michigan, in so many ways.

The latest way is in their schools. This, yesterday, from NPR:

Detroit Teachers Mull Strike Over Imposed Contract

"The existing contract for Detroit teachers was ripped up and chucked into the trash by the school district's emergency financial manager. The teachers' union is angry and making noise about a possible strike."

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Public school teachers in Detroit have a new contract, one they didn't bargain for and didn't sign. It was imposed by the state-appointed official in charge of the district. And now, two months before the start of the school year, the teacher's union is considering going on strike.

This happened here in Kansas City, as I recall, a few years ago, under one of the Superintendents--John Covington, I believe, but would have to verify.

Anyway, there's the Detroit school district--broke, in debt--deep, deep debt and needing solutions so they tore up the old teachers contracts and want to start all over.

Wow.

The city's in trouble, financial and otherwise, and this, too, at the same time.

Then there's this:

Quinn Klinefelter (reporter, interviewer): "Decades of mismanagement and internal squabbles left Detroit schools hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. The state appointed an emergency manager to take over the finances in 2009 with the power to make sweeping changes. This year, emergency manager Roy Roberts is closing 15 schools. And with the state ending requirements that teachers be hired based on seniority, Roberts handed all 4,100 Detroit public school teachers a pink slip, told them to reapply for a job and says 800 of them will not be hired back."

That's tough.

And it stinks.

It seems to me Detroit is like this tiny, isolated country between Canada and the United States no one wants much, if anything, to do with and no one wants to help.

There's so much to this story, too. I want to be for the schools but they have to address their expenses, without doubt.

I want to be for the teacher's union because--well, just because.

I'm certainly for the teachers, sure, but cuts have to come from somewhere.

And you have to be for the kids, the students, whatever has to happen.

They have, apparently, far too many teachers and have to reduce the quantity somehow.

And you know that's not going to be pretty.

Whatever was bad about KCMO School District Superintendent John Covington's leaving us, at least he took care of the debt before it got any worse.

And before he dumped us.

Hey, at least we're not Detroit.

Link: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/16/156869052/detroit-teachers-mull-strike-over-imposed-contract

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

Click on picture for larger, better viewing and reading:
A better question: why do we let the wealthy and corporations do this to us?

The incredibly badly named "Right to Work" laws

Let's get something clear today. The "right to work" is a good thing. The right to work as Wikipedia so eloquenty writes "is the concept that people have a human right to work, or engage in productive employment, and may not be prevented from doing so. The right to work is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law through its inclusion in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, where the right to work emphasizes economic, social and cultural development."

But what the "right to work" is not, it is not even remotely even like the "Right to Work Law" or any Right to Work Law. It is a misnomer--it is badly, even deceptively, named. The "Right to Work Law", as was signed into law yesterday in Indiana, unfortunately is "a statute that prohibits agreements between labor unions and employers that make membership, payment of union dues, or fees a condition of employment, either before or after hiring." See that? Did you read that? The "Right to Work Laws" are laws that take power AWAY from you and I. Don't be confused, folks. I think the average person on the street figures the "Right to Work Law" sounds like a good--maybe even great--thing that we need to support. It is anything but. It is from and by and for the corporations and owners and wealthy to keep you and me from organizing and from having any power in the workplace. It's not good. Far from it. So don't be confused, folks. Don't let the language or title confuse you. The "right to work" is a good thing, sure. A "Right to Work Law" stinks. It's lousy. I don't think most Americans know the distinction. Let's get this word out and keep things clear. Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law; http://www.indystar.com/article/20120201/NEWS05/120201020/Indiana-Gov-Daniels-signs-right-to-work-bill-protest-winds-through-Super-Bowl-Village-?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CNEWS

Today's 150th Anniversary of the beginning of the US Civil War

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Southerners and their "Confederacy" waging war on the US so they could attempt to secede from the Union.

Lessons to be learned (I repeat):

--It was to fight for slavery

--It was wrong

--They lost.


Note:  When PBS' series "Slavery by Another Name", based on Douglas A. Blackmon's book comes out, don't miss it.  It's the history and education the country doesn't want us to know but that we owe to African-Americans and ourselves, frankly, to know and understand.  It isn't pretty but it's important we see and know it.  Unfortunately, it's not coming out until 2012.

It can't come out soon enough.

Links:  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/homepage-feature-1/coming-to-pbs-%E2%80%93-fall-2011/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsroom/20110412/us_yblog_newsroom/rare-civil-war-photos-document-life-between-battles
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Rare-Civil-War-Photos/ss/events/us/041211civilwarphotos

Where--and how--Steve Jobs' (rich white guy) and Apple get their iPads made

Foxconn worker dies in China, the 10th in a year

By WILLIAM FOREMAN

Associated Press Writer

A Chinese employee of Foxconn Technology Group fell from a building and died Tuesday, May 25, 2010, state-run media said, in the 10th such death this year at the world's largest contract maker of electronics, such as the iPod, Dell computers and Nokia phones


Hey, it's just some poor schlubs, right? Who cares?

At least, thank God, they don't have Union labor.


Link to original story:
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/24/1968510/foxconn-worker-dies-in-china-10th.html