It’s time for another Labor
South roundup as the nation slouches toward election day, Jim Beam workers
in Kentucky vote to strike, and the International Dockworkers Council meets in
Florida.
Echoes of Joe McCarthy
while no one’s talking about the nationwide prison strike and the Standing Rock
protest
(U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin)
Back in February 1950, U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin appeared
before a crowd in Wheeling, West Virginia, waving a sheet of paper that he said
included a list of 205 communists in the U.S. Department of State. In later
speeches, the number of communists he would cite ranged from as few as 10 to as
many as 81 or even 205.
I was reminded of Joe McCarthy as I listened to Sunday’s
presidential debate en route back to my home in Oxford, Mississippi, from a trip to North Carolina. At
one point, Republican contender Donald Trump blasted his Democratic opponent
Hillary Clinton for destroying 33,000 emails from her time as secretary of
state. At another, that number jumped 6,000 to 39,000.
It’s the same old demagoguery, and Clinton herself is not
above a certain degree of it. When asked about the Wikileaks revelations of her
speeches to Wall Street financiers, she quickly went ad hominem by attacking
the Russians for leaking the material to Wikileaks. My old logic professor
would have flunked me if I had tried that trick in his course.
I served on a panel discussion titled “Civil Discourse and
the Role of the Media in the 2016 Presidential Discussion” here at the
University of Mississippi Wednesday of this week. I joined the other panelists
in acknowledging the challenges facing journalists in holding the candidates’
feet to the fire of truth this election, particularly Trump. A group of
reporters found that Trump either misspoke, mislead or out-and-out lied 72
times in a single speech back in March.
Fox News journalist Chris Wallace, chosen to moderate the
Oct. 19 debate, has now famously
said “I do not believe that it’s my job to be a truth squad” when serving as
moderator. In other words, Wallace sees himself simply as a referee. Granted
it’s mighty hard for anyone to be a “truth squad” this election cycle, much
less a debate moderator. However, writing for Moyers & Company, Todd Gitlin had this to say: “If the boxer
comes out of his corner with his glove dripping with some unknown substance, is
it not the job of the referee to interfere?”
Beyond lies and misstatements, perhaps the worst disservice
to the public this election is what’s not being discussed. Where are the
statements from Trump and Clinton on the nationwide prison strike against poor
prison conditions and what is largely unpaid labor by convicts in prisons in
Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and beyond? This is labor that benefits huge
corporations such as Walmart and McDonalds.
What about the huge protest by Native Americans against the
Dakota Access pipeline planned near Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands in North
and South Dakota? It’s an issue that pits a Dallas-based private company against
one of the most put-upon groups of people on the continent, Native Americans,
who want to protect their ancestral lands against a potential environmental
disaster.
Jim Beam workers in
Kentucky vote to strike
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 111D voted
overwhelmingly this week to strike at two Jim Beam distilleries in Clermont and
Boston, Kentucky, after weeks of bargaining failed to produce a new contract to
replace the one that ends Friday.
Suntory Holdings Ltd., a Japanese company, owns Jim Beam.
Company officials defended their offer of a contract that they said did away
with a two-tiered wage system and included wage hikes.
Bourbon consumption on the whole is on the rise worldwide--most
of it is produced in Kentucky--and the relative prosperity has led to generally
good relations between management and labor in recent years. However, apparently
all is not well with workers in bourbon land.
Dockworkers and
longshoremen of the world unite!
Last month’s meeting of the International Dockworkers
Council (IDC) in Miami, Fla., provided an opportunity for many delegates to
praise the 97,000-member organization that has kept its grassroots identity
with the rank-and-file.
The IDC prides itself on international solidarity with
dockworkers and longshoremen around the world and keeping alive the old
IWW/Wobblies motto of “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
In yours truly’s 2008 book Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press (University
Press of Mississippi), I wrote about the importance of such solidarity in the International
Longshoremen’s protest against a union-busting Danish shipping line in
Charleston, South Carolina, in 2000.
“Hundreds of battle-ready, black-clad police and highway
patrol officers stood in formation, armed with riot helmets, wooden clubs, and
plastic shields” to put down the protest. Before long, protesters were throwing
rocks at the police, and the police were beating protesters with sticks and
firing smoke grenades at them, according to varying accounts of the event.
As indictments were filed against the so-called “Charleston
Five”, dockworkers around the world kicked into gear and joined the protest,
including the West Coast-based International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s
Union (ILWU) (which the legendary Harry Bridges formed in the 1930s) and
workers as far away as Spain. Criminal felony charges eventually were dropped
against the Charleston Five, and the Danish shipping line agreed to work with
the International Longshoremen’s Association local (ILA) in Charleston.
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