Ingredients
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* Beans, black, , 1 can
* Yellow Sweet Corn, Canned, 1 can
* Red Ripe Tomatoes, 1 medium
* Onions, raw, .5 cup, chopped
* Avocados, Florida, 1 fruit
* Lime Juice, 2 fl oz
* Olive Oil, 1 1tsp
* Cilantro, raw, 4 tbsp
Directions
The candidates -- Shawn Fain, Brian Keller, Will Lehman, Mark Gibson and current President Ray Curry -- weighed in on the corruption scandal as well as a range of other issues, from concerns about tiered wages and how to address them to experience in the face of negotiations next year with the Detroit Three.
The forum ran for more than two hours.
In his opening statement, Lehman—a tiered worker at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania—clearly established that his campaign is giving voice to and is directed at rank-and-file workers.
“The only reason there is an election,” he said, “is because the UAW’s leadership was convicted for taking bribes from the companies and selling us out. This isn’t a question of a few bad individuals but of the bureaucracy as a whole. The UAW bureaucracy is a part of management. There are 450 bureaucrats who make over $100,000 in our dues money. The richest 15 UAW executives made a combined $3 million just in 2021. Ray Curry alone has made $2.7 million since 2004.”
It is necessary, he said, to “replace the rule of the apparatus with workers’ committees in each factory and workplace to build real rank-and-file power. It is the workers who must make the decisions and establish genuine workers’ democracy in our workplaces. This means transferring power from the unaccountable apparatus onto the shop floor, to fight for what we need, not what the UAW says the company wants.”
And WSWS reports on reaction to the debate:
A worker at the Stellantis Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit who watched the debate said, “Curry and Fain were selling the same old thing, we know what you need. They haven't been on a factory floor in so long they don't have a clue.
“He [Will] did very well because he told the truth about what's really going on the factory floor and how the reps don't care. The International is a house of cards, it doesn’t take much to expose the lies. It’s hard to believe they think the lies will be believed”
Lehman pointed out that the only reason workers were being allowed to vote was due to the massive corruption scandal that has sent two former UAW presidents to prison, as well as numerous other top officials. “This isn’t a question of a few bad individuals but of the bureaucracy as a whole. The UAW bureaucracy is a part of management,” Lehman declared.
In his closing remarks Lehman made a powerful case for the need to build a rank-and-file movement guided by the principles of socialism and internationalism. The entire working class has the power to change things, but we must take power ourselves.
Will Lehman's campaign site can be found here. And this is from his campaign site:
At UAW Monitor’s VP debate, Solidarity House candidates lie about eliminating tiers
Watch me debate UAW President Will Curry and other candidates for president Thursday, September 22, at 6:00 p.m. EDT. You can watch the debate and find out more information at WillforUAWPresident.org/debate.
In the UAW vice presidential debate Monday night, I heard the most outrageous lies from Chuck Browning, Bryan Czape and other members of the Solidarity House bureaucracy running on the same slate as my opponent in the presidential race, UAW President Ray Curry. One of the biggest was the claim that the UAW has eliminated tiers at the Detroit automakers as well as at Volvo, Mack Trucks and other heavy truck makers.
The UAW Vice Presidential debate, September 19, 2022
Excuse me, I am a second-tier worker at Mack Trucks, so I can assure you the tiers have not been eliminated here. My brothers and I must work side by side doing the same work for less money as senior workers and only reach top pay after six years. In fact, employees are on multiple tier progressions in my plant. On some, you can work for four years and not get a $1 an hour increase, if you are lucky enough not to get laid off.
Not only are there wage tiers, there are pension tiers. You used to be able to retire at full pension with 85 points (years of service plus age). The UAW gave that away long ago. New employees no longer get pensions, only much inferior 401(k) plans. Basically, this means you save your own money so someone else can gamble it, and Mack will match some of what you put in.
At GM, new hires still take eight years to reach top pay. Virtually all new employees hired at GM and other Big Three plants are now temps or “Supplemental” workers with no contract rights, no paid time off and making a starvation $16.67 per hour. These workers must work two years without being laid off to make it to full-time. Starting pay for new full-time workers at GM is now just $18.04 an hour.
A temp worker at the GM Flint Truck Plant told my supporters last month that many of his coworkers had been working as temps for much longer than two years, because if a temp worker is laid off for 31 days, the clock resets to zero.
He said: “Despite workers of every tier doing the same work, temps and those without seniority are paid substantially lower wages and receive little or no benefits aside from the most rudimentary health care plan compared to their seniority and legacy counterparts.
“In addition to the insulting pay inequality is the fact that part-time workers are only given 24 hours of unpaid time off a year, but only after working a minimum of 12 continuous months. Part-time temps do not have a guaranteed and stable work schedule either, necessitating a second full-time job for many.”
When he heard what Browning said, a worker at the Toledo Jeep plant said, “That’s a lie. Tier ones get pensions, tier twos don’t. Anyone made full-time after the last contract tops out at a dollar less per hour. That also means they don’t consider Supplementals as a tier, they don’t consider us as workers really.”
A worker showing support for my campaign at Toledo Jeep
Workers should also recall that the Curry leadership orchestrated the defeat of a resolution at the 2022 Constitutional Convention that would have banned the negotiation of a tiered wage structure in all future UAW contracts. If they actually thought tiers were already eliminated, why would they have opposed this resolution?
In addition to in-progression and temp workers, there is another set of tiers: the subcontract workers who are doing jobs at the Big Three at vastly lower pay rates and are not covered by the national agreement. The UAW has not only sanctioned the use of contract workers, but it has encouraged their use to increase “competitiveness.” This past July, the UAW negotiated a contract for GM Subsystems workers that maintains these workers at poverty wage levels, with temp workers hiring in at $15 an hour and maxing out at just $22 after six years. The UAW told Subsystems workers that if they voted down the contract and struck, the union would order GM workers to cross their picket lines!
It is also important to be aware that full-time senior autoworkers have not had a real wage increase in years. The 2019 national auto agreement contained two 3 percent wage increases and two lump sum bonuses. All of that has been eaten up by inflation.
When my supporters were in Toledo recently, a worker at the Stellantis Jeep plant told them, “I’m making the same thing that my brother was making here back in 1986.”
In fact, I did some calculations based on the Consumer Price Index, and top-tier UAW autoworkers at the Big Three are making substantially less in real terms than they did in 1979. If the UAW had maintained the three percent annual improvement factor in 1979 and the full cost of living allowance, the standard base pay would have risen from $9 an hour to over $100 an hour in 2022.
Browning also had the gall to claim that the contract he helped negotiate at John Deere was the “best in decades,” when it did not meet workers’ demands for a substantial wage increase to make up for decades of pay freezes and concessions and when it left retirees in the lurch by failing to restore health care for all retirees.
If it was truly the “best contract in decades”, why was the UAW forced to strong-arm workers into accepting it with threats of retaliation? Why did Deere workers reject Browning’s “best” contract twice, before having it rammed through on a revote? Why did the largest local at Waterloo, Iowa vote down the contract even a third time? To say this was the best contract they ever negotiated speaks volumes against Curry and Browning and the rest of Solidarity House.
As one Deere worker said after he heard Browning speak, “Yes they tried shoving that contract down our throat… BS is what I say. They are a bunch of liars; don’t believe any of them.”
At John Deere, to the extent there were any improvements made, it was because workers rebelled against the UAW bureaucracy’s repeated attempts to force another concessions contract through and organized a rank-and-file committee.
And this leaves out of the picture our brothers in the auto parts industry that the UAW has abandoned. In the 1980s, auto parts workers still made on average 80 to 90 percent of the pay of workers at the Big Three. At the Ventra Evart parts plant in Michigan, the UAW refused to call a strike earlier this year, in defiance of what workers were demanding. One International rep told workers that they could not get higher wages because “You’re not the Big Three.”
One more point on Browning’s lying performance. He said that he was “fighting for workers at Case.” Really? The UAW has hung striking Case New Holland (CNH) workers out to dry for five months, isolating them from the other UAW members and starving them on $400 strike pay.
Monday’s debate showed the futility of trying to reform the bureaucracy at Solidarity House. It is not a matter of shuffling in a few faces but clearing out the whole apparatus, which has completely lost any connection to rank-and-file workers.
We need to discuss a strategy to reverse the decades of givebacks and win what workers need, not what management says it can afford.
My campaign is running to put the rank and file in power and abolish, not reform, the UAW bureaucracy.
If workers want an end to all tiers and wage progressions by bringing up lower tiers to top pay and benefits, and all temps to full-time pay and benefits, with full funding of pensions and high-quality health care for all current workers and retirees, they should support my campaign.
Watch me debate UAW President Will Curry and other candidates for president Thursday, September 22, at 6:00 p.m. EDT. You can watch the debate and find out more information at WillforUAWPresident.org/debate.
And I'll ask C.I. if she'll post that campaign release at The Common Ills..
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:
Friday, September 23, 2022. Did US forces kill a 15-year-old girl in Iraq this week, does no one get insult humor when Whoopi Goldberg practices it, what MSNBC program brought on a guest to praise Joe Biden and the Democrats this week and failed to disclose that Joe Biden has nominated the guest's wife for a post?
Whoopi responded to the question with a quip at Graham’s expense. “Maybe he’s getting married. Do it quick, because I know people are fooling around with our marriage rights,” she said. While the co-host didn’t make any outright statements about the senator’s sexuality, some interpreted the comment as such. An editor for Media Research Center and conservative outlet Newsbusters Nicholas Fondacaro accused Whoopi of “dabbling in homophobic bigotry,” on Twitter. “This plays to the smear that Graham is closeted,” he wrote.
When the show returned from a commercial break, Whoopi explained that she wasn’t making a serious statement. “I was doing what I do as a comic. Sometimes I make jokes,” she said. “I just got a whole conversation about people misunderstanding the joke. I mean, okay. I should probably never do this show again if this is what it’s coming to. It was a joke, guys.”
Iraqi security forces have vowed to reveal the "truth" behind the death of a 15-year-old girl killed on Tuesday.
Zainab Essam Majed was allegedly killed following a "random shooting" in the Abu Ghraib district of Iraq, just west of Baghdad, which has sparked outrage over her death.
Pro-Iran and Tehran-linked media outlets and militias have blamed "American army drills" at a "US military camp" near Baghdad Airport.
It did not mention which location the alleged gunfire referred to the former US base Camp Victory, located close to Baghdad Airport, was handed over to the Iraqi government in 2008.
This has not prevented pro-Tehran militias from blaming US forces for her death and comes after international outrage over the alleged killing of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, by Iranian morality police.
AL BAWABA covers the events here. This is a scandal brewing. No, the facts aren't known yet. Could be US forces had nothing to do with the death. Could be they are responsible. But this is a scandal and, for some reason, the US press isn't interested.
Just like Joe Biden's apparently not interested in meeting with Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the caretaker prime minister of Iraq. Joe can dash off to London for the funeral of a woman who never attended the funerals of even one US president -- not the funeral of Harry Truman, not the funeral of Dwight Eisenhower, not the funeral of John F. Kennedy, not the funeral of Lyndon B. Johnson, not the funeral of Gerald Ford, not the funeral of Ronald Reagan, not the funeral of George H.W. Bush. But Joe can scurry across the Atlantic to act like a royal subject.
This week, Joe wouldn't have even needed to take Air Force One to Baghdad in order to meet face-to-face with Mustafa because Mustafa came to the US to speak at the United Nations. He's met with many leaders while in the US. For example . . .
RUDAW reports on the above meeting here. When not meeting with world leaders, Mustafa has been meeting the press.
Mina al-Oraibi (THE NATIONAL) reports:
Asked about the solution to the political crisis, Mr Al Kadhimi said one word: “Dialogue”.
He went on to say that there are two options: either “we go towards a clash in a society that has tried all types of violence or an opportunity for dialogue”.
Since taking office more than two years ago, some of the primary concerns for Mr Al Kadhimi have been to limit the role of militias, reinforce security in the country and re-establish an effective state.
But two years in, he is dealing with emboldened militias and complete political gridlock. His critics say he should take a stand against the militias, but that could lead to more bloodshed.
“A thousand years of dialogue is better than one moment of killing,” he said.
He said it was high time to “divorce the violent past and a future built on true democratic values built not just on the ballot box votes”.
But dialogue takes time. Though time is not in Iraq’s favour with all the crises it faces, he said: “What other choice do we have?”
For those who've forgotten -- or never knew -- his term is over. Iraq held elections October 12th. There's still no prime minister or president. Both positions have still not been determined all this time later. Joe Biden likes to go on and on about respecting election results. Well he could have stood next to Mustafa and addressed the press pointing to what is happening right now in Iraq when the results (and the process) are not respected. We'll note one more thing from Mina's interview in a moment but this is from Andrew Parasiliti's report for AL-MONITOR:
Kadhimi came to office in May 2020, in the wake of the resignation of his predecessor, Adel Abdul Mahdi, who stepped down after security forces and armed groups killed over 500 anti-government protesters between October and December 2019.
The popular Tishreen movement, and the increased role of new independent parties in Iraq, is a sign of change, which Kadhimi takes to heart.
“My priorities are dialogue, then dialogue, then dialogue,” said the Iraqi prime minister.
The government deadlock occurs in the wake of some noteworthy achievements in foreign policy and regional integration over the past two years.
Kadhimi’s regional policies have included being “very clear with the Iranians, telling them that we want relations, a state-to-state relationship, and we want noninterference in internal affairs.”
“Iran has friends in Iraq, and it is able to influence them and push them toward dialogue rather than using the weapons that they currently possess,” Kadhimi noted. “We need a good relationship and we currently do have a good relationship with Iran.”
We'll wind down with this from Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT):
Every day the republican governors of Texas, Greg Abbott, and Florida, Ron DeSantis, eagerly announce that they are sending people generically labeled as migrants to what are known as sanctuary cities. The corporate media report that thousands of people have been convinced to board buses to New York City or Washington DC or Sacramento or Chicago or even chartered flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. What they don’t explain is who these migrants are and why their status is highly problematic and a function of imperialist foreign policy.
Republicans rail against what are called sanctuary cities and imply that federal law doesn’t apply in these places or that undocumented people get some sort of special deal. However, the term sanctuary city doesn’t really mean very much. In New York it means that the city government and its employees will not assist in the deportation process. It does not mean that no one is ever deported or that federal rules don’t apply. Undocumented people are eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other benefits only under very limited circumstances and applying in a sanctuary city doesn’t change that fact. The media cannot seem to disseminate this easily provable information and people in this country are whipped into a frenzy over non-issues.
But there is a larger issue at work here that also goes unaddressed. The people taken to Martha’s Vineyard have made legal requests for asylum, which may be granted because of U.S. policy against their home country of Venezuela. Migrants from nations targeted by the U.S. are automatically eligible for asylum. In this hemisphere Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans are likely to be granted asylum because the U.S. doesn’t like their governments. Ukrainians are favored because the U.S. supports their government’s role in attacking Russia and they are also given asylum when they arrive at the border. Some 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived here since February 2022.
Conversely, Haitians are routinely deported. Their country is in worse shape than any of the others mentioned and entirely because of U.S. interference in their sovereign rights. In 2010 the Obama administration even ordered Haiti to hold an election twice because they didn't like the initial result. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously pressured the Haitian government to lower the already low minimum wage there. Now the U.S. orders the current illegitimate president Ariel Henry to enact austerity programs that create misery. The U.S. coups, UN occupations and other interventions have made Haiti unlivable.
But the Joe Biden administration has no sympathy for Haitians fleeing the problems of U.S making. As of February 2022 more than 19,000 Haitians were deported in the first year of Biden’s term. That figure is more than three times the number deported in the last three administrations combined.
Not only do Abbott and DeSantis lie about who they are sending around the country, but no one in the media calls them out on their subterfuge. They are scoring points by claiming to send undocumented people when they are in fact sending people who under international law have a legal right to request asylum in the U.S.
The corporate media are complicit because they are joined at the hip with the Biden administration. Sloppy reporting is not a problem for them. Pointing out the inherent injustice of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela might damage precious connections and white house access. Any responsibility for informing readers and viewers doesn’t matter and journalistic ethics go out the window so that the media can be slipshod and curry favor simultaneously.
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