[Educationforall] spam con huevos labor news, views and concerns, 2.11.12-I

Sun Feb 12 06:51:04 UTC 2012

Gov. Scott Walker to Use Foreclosure Settlement Money to Balance His Budget, Not Help Homeowners Finally! Trader Joe's Signs on to Fair Food Agreement for Farm Workers  Amid General Strike, 7,000 Protest Austerity in Greece, And Violence Erupts Between Demonstrators and Police  75 Years Later, Families With Ties To Sit-Down Strike Of 1936-37 Still Remember   FNS: Mexican Workers Pulverized-Resend‏Walk a Mile in Shoes of the Jobless‏King of the UAW Plans to Scam Members Again with Sham action While He joins Corporate Board What $100 Million Could Do for Out of Work, Underpaid Teachers  The Two Americas Clash at CPAC: Union Demonstrators March on the Conservative Enclave   Apple, Accustomed to Profits and Praise, Faces Outcry for Labor Practices at Chinese Factories  @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Gov. Scott Walker to Use Foreclosure Settlement Money to Balance His Budget, Not Help Homeowners
Read the Article at ThinkProgress

Bank Settlement Could Spur More ForeclosuresBy NPR Online
Fifty-State, $25 Billion Mortgage Settlement: Relief for Struggling Homeowners or Bailout for Big Banks? (Video)Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now!: "The U.S. Justice Department has unveiled a record mortgage settlement with the nation's five largest banks to resolve claims over faulty foreclosures and mortgage practices that have indebted and displaced homeowners and sunk the nation's economy.... 'The settlement, on the surface, does look like it's helping homeowners,' [longtime financial analyst Yves] Smith says. 'But, in fact, the bigger part that most people don't recognize is the way it actually helps the banks with mortgages on their own books.'" Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

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Finally! Trader Joe's Signs on to Fair Food Agreement for Farm WorkersBy Tara Lohan | AlterNet
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Amid General Strike, 7,000 Protest Austerity in Greece, And Violence Erupts Between Demonstrators and PoliceBy AFP@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
75 Years Later, Families With Ties To Sit-Down Strike Of 1936-37 Still RememberBy The Huffington Post News Editors | Huffington Post
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Dear Reader, 

There was a slight error in the editing of yesterday's story on Mexican workers. For the record, here is the corrected story. 
Thanks for your understanding. 

The Editor 

February 9, 2012

Labor News 

Mexican Workers Pulverized in the 21st century

A new study reconfirms what many people know from first-hand experience: Mexican workers' purchasing power has plummeted since the turn of the century. 

In a just-released report, the economics department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) documented the number of hours the lowest-paid workers need to labor in order purchase a basic basket of goods made up of rice, cooking oil, beans, milk, sugar, coffee, and other routinely consumed products. According to the analysis, Mexican workers earning the daily minimum wage had to toil 11.38 hours in December 2011 to buy a basic basket of commodities, compared with the 9.55 hours of work necessary to buy the same group of products in December 2001. 

The UNAM study also compared Mexican workers' purchasing power with their counterparts in five other Latin American nations. While Costa Rican and Peruvian workers also witnessed a drop in their purchasing power between 2001 and 2011, low-income workers in Guatemala, Uruguay and Brazil actually experienced significant jumps in the buying value of their wages during the same decade. 

In view of the deterioration in the purchasing power of Mexican wages vis a vis those in the other Latin American countries examined, David Lozano, UNAM economist, called the study's findings "alarming." Of the six nations studied by UNAM researchers, Mexico ranked Numero Uno in the devaluation of the purchasing power of minimum wage workers. The study reported that the daily minimum wage in Mexico lost 24.42 percent of its consumer punch in the ten year period analyzed. 

While only 9.2 percent of Mexican workers earn the daily minimum salary of about five bucks, the UNAM report gives a general idea of the pressures facing much bigger slices of the working class. A large group of workers, or 26.3 percent, earns between one and two minimum salaries daily, while another nearly-as-large segment, or 26.1 percent, makes between two and three minimum salaries every day. In sum, more than 60 percent of Mexican workers struggle to get by on wages that hover between $5 and $15 each day. 

In 2012, a new round of price hikes bodes further ills for workers' purchasing power. 

In the southern state of Guerrero, for instance, the cost of a kilo of the staple corn tortilla has now reached 16 pesos- well above a dollar- in the small neighborhood outlets Mexicans are accustomed to shopping. By the end of last year, tortilla prices reportedly hit 18 pesos a kilo in some places in the northern border state of Chihuahua. In Guerrero tortillas can be purchased for significantly lower prices at large commercial supermarket chains like Walmart's Bodega Aurrera (7.90 pesos) or Comercial Mexicana (9.90 pesos), which process huge amounts of corn flour and operate on economies of scale the mom-and-pop stores are unable to match.

Yet even the going prices at the big box stores are well above the average tortilla price of about six pesos in 2006, the year when the outgoing Calderon administration assumed office. 

In a broad economic context, the Mexican economy during 2001-2011 was characterized by the signing of numerous free trade agreements, macro-economic stability, infusions and contractions of foreign capital investments, two recessions linked to international economic crises spawned in the United States, spikes and plunges in migrant remittances, and declines in international tourism. 

Other trends included the weakening of unions, the increased outsourcing of workers and booms in the illicit economy. Especially during the last five years, millions of young Mexicans came of working age at a time when the historic safety valve of migration to the United States was largely slammed shut. 

Sources: El Sur/Agencia Reforma, February 6, 2012. La Jornada, December 19, 2011. Article by Susana Gonzalez G. 

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University 
Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription 
email:fnsnews at nmsu.edu 
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Feb. 10, 2012
Union and progressive activists are making their voices heard at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Follow live on Twitter, #OccupyCPAC.Starting today and continuing next week, jobless workers in 15 states who face a Feb. 29 cutoff of their unemployment insurance (UI) will ask members of Congress back in their home districts to “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.” Republicans are holding a UI extension hostage by insisting on cutting 40 weeks of benefits and imposing onerous restrictions on jobless workers.
Got comments? Post them at blog.aflcio.org. Live Tweeting from Occupy CPAC iSlaves: Forced Labor Key to Apple Profits Locked-Out Workers to Embark on Journey for Justice RTW Circus Continues in New Hampshire Ariz. Update: ‘Focus on Real Priorities,’ Union, Community Leaders Today at Capitol Occupy CPAC, Summit of the 1% Mine Workers Help Power AmericaRead more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.Follow the AFL-CIO:
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To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.Click here to unsubscribe.

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King of the UAW Plans to Scam Members Again with Sham action While He
joins Corporate Board 
United Auto Workers President Bob King used
the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike to
call for "direct action" — including nonviolent civil disobedience
— to take back America from the "right-wing Republicans" and
"one-percenters" who he says have hijacked this democracy. 
King said the UAW would begin training its members and other activists
this spring to take part in peaceful, but potentially illegal,
protests across America to stop what he called the rollback of
workers' rights and civil rights.  
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120210/AUTO01/202100428/King-says-UAW-prepping-nationwide-protests?odyssey=tab
[33]|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
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What $100 Million Could Do for Out of Work, Underpaid TeachersBryce Covert, New Deal 2.0: "President Obama is announcing a new plan to spend $100 million on training 100,000 new teachers over the next decade. Obama's plan will focus on training more STEM teachers - aka those teaching science, technology, engineering, and math. Spending more money on education is a healthy priority, but is this the right tactic? Rather than enticing and training a new army of teachers, perhaps we could start by putting the ones we've already got back to work. It would likely be a lighter lift to retrain them." Read the Article 

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The Two Americas Clash at CPAC: Union Demonstrators March on the Conservative Enclave
Read the Article at Salon

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Apple, Accustomed to Profits and Praise, Faces Outcry for Labor Practices at Chinese FactoriesBy Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez | Democracy Now!
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Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monitory gain to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material for research and educational purposes. This is in accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. section 107..
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

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