CLINTON – OBAMA –
TRUMPERNOMICS: STEAL FROM THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-
CLASS and HAND IT TO
THE SUPER RICH ON A SILVER PLATTER!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/clinton-obama-trumpernomics-rich-get.html
"The Wealth-X report shows that the world’s billionaire population has grown by 15 percent, to 2,754 people, since 2016, and that the wealth of these billionaires “surged by 24 percent to a record level of $9.2 trillion,” equivalent to 12 percent of the gross domestic product of the entire planet."
AS
WALL STREET PLUNDERS: A Nation of One Million Homeless and Overrun By Mexico’s
Export of “cheap labor”!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/wall-street-plunders-ceo-pay-banksters.html
“But
a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over
the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are
wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
MASSIVE TRANSFER OF
WEALTH TO THE RICH: YOUR DEMOCRAT PARTY AT WORK…. for Wall Street, Banksters,
Billionaires and LA RAZA.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-democrat-party-for-billionaires.html
“But
a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over
the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are
wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
Union blocks strike by
50,000 Las Vegas casino workers
By
a WSWS reporting team in Las Vegas
2 June 2018
With 50,000 workers primed to walk out of dozens of Las Vegas
casinos when their five-year labor agreement expired on Friday at 12:01 am, the
Culinary Workers Union Local 226 cancelled any strike and ordered its members
to remain on the job. Nearly three hours later, the union announced that it
reached a tentative agreement with one of the casino owners, Caesar
Enterprises, which employs 12,000 workers.
The union is explicitly defying the mandate of its members, who
voted by 99 percent to authorize a strike against the casino and resort owners
who have refused to budge on their demands for a freeze in real wages and other
concessions. The widespread support for a walkout, which would be the first
citywide casino strike since 1984, is another expression of the growth of
working-class militancy in the United States and internationally since the
beginning of the year.
The workers, members of UNITE HERE’s Culinary and Bartenders
unions, include bartenders, guest room attendants, cocktail servers, food
servers, porters, bellmen, cooks and kitchen workers at 34 casinos and resorts
on the Las Vegas Strip and downtown. With MGM Resorts International, Caesars
Entertainment and other casino owners making large profits and squandering
millions on CEO pay and stock buybacks, workers are determined to improve their
wages and benefits.
The so-called “historic” 5-year deal reached with Caesars,
announced at 2:41 am on Twitter, only covers one-quarter of the total union
members and thus leaves over 38,000 workers without a contract. Furthermore, if
the workers do strike in the coming days, the strike will be weakened by the
absence of 12,000 workers. In a tweet, the union explicitly called for Caesars
workers not to participate in a strike if one breaks out.
Though the details of the tentative contract have not been
released, union leaders have made clear that significant improvements to wages
and working conditions are not included. Instead, the major “victories” in the
agreement concern the income and institutional interests of the union
apparatus.
This includes establishing a “formal role in the ongoing and
escalating process of new technology adoption and implementation in the
workplace,” a proposal for a “jointly-funded study by an independent expert to
analyze housekeeping workload” due to room renovations, and finally a successor
clause to “ensure the continuity of union contracts and the protection of a
workers’ union rights if and when a MGM property is sold to a new owner.”
Union representatives and shop stewards organized a “Strike
Headquarters” meeting on Friday in a desolate parking lot miles from the busy
areas of the Strip. Around one hundred members attended what was largely a
media stunt by the unions to show off their supposed ongoing “strike
preparations,” despite the repeated statements by the unions that their goal is
to avert a strike.
As a shop steward attempted to answer the questions of WSWS
reporters regarding the status of wage increases in the new contract, a
communications director interrupted, stating, “We’re not speaking about wages
right now. That is an important aspect, but the average union worker here in
Las Vegas makes $23 [an hour] including their benefits.”
Geoconda Arguello-Kline, the Secretary-Treasurer of the Culinary
Workers Union, summarized the de facto alliance between the unions and
corporations, hailing the Caesars deal as a victory for the casinos while
downplaying the conditions of workers they nominally represent. “I can tell you
that this is a success for us, and a success for the company. They can continue
to do their job, and we can continue to have the American dream.”
The union has kept workers completely in the dark about the
details of the deal, which will not be released until the day of the vote. Many
workers who spoke with reporters to the WSWS expressed their frustration with
the unions’ conduct. They also detailed their most urgent demands for wages
that keep up with the cost of living, job security, and safe and fair working
conditions.
“I have to clean 20 rooms a day, thirteen of them were checkouts
today,” said Martha, a housekeeping attendant at Circus Circus hotel. “We have
to do more and more work, but our wages go down. And the work is unsafe and
dangerous. Sometimes random people will come into our rooms while we’re
cleaning, but our supervisors don’t check on us very often so we are all
alone.”
Martha added, “Everyone, everyone wanted to go out on strike when
we voted.” Since the walkout was called off last minute, “Now we’re all just
waiting. We don’t know if we’ll go out today, maybe tomorrow, or not.”
In 2013, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and the Bartenders
Local 165 said workers had no choice but to bow to the demands of the casino
owners for major concessions, including pay freezes, due to the ongoing fallout
from the 2008 financial crash and the mountain of debt incurred by MGM and
Caesars. The five-year agreement in 2013 resulted in an average annual 2.2
percent rise in all-in labor costs (wages and benefits), the equivalent of a de
facto wage and benefit cut when inflation is taken into account.
In the time since, the casino owners have completed billions of
dollars in upgrades, reduced their debts and seen their share prices rebound.
Profits have fully recovered, tripling year-over-year from 2016 to 2017. Flush
with cash from Trump’s corporate tax cuts, MGM and Caesars have announced $2.5
billion in stock buybacks and large payouts to their corporate executives.
Caesars CEO Mark Frissora pocketed $24 million in total compensation in 2017,
601 times the median employee compensation of $39,869 for a worker at one of his
operations.
Despite this, the unions limited their demands to an average
annual increase of 4 percent in wages and benefits,
which would include a 2.2 percent pay increase, roughly the equivalent of the
rate of inflation. This would in effect be another pay freeze for workers
struggling with rising prices for gas and other necessities. Nevertheless, the
casino owners have rejected this meager demand and insist they will not grant
more than a 2.7 percent increase in all-in costs. The contract likely
established wages that were between the 2.7 percent and 4 percent mark, caving
into the greedy interests of the owners.
Workers’ jobs and working conditions are also under attack, as the
casino owners implement cost cutting measures, including new technologies like
self-service hotel check-ins and automatic food and drink ordering, along with
increased workloads and the corporate shell games of switching ownerships.
However, the UNITE HERE union is not opposing these attacks. It is only looking
to become further integrated into the process of corporate decision-making and
cost-cutting.
Joint committees on technology and workloads, along with the
successive clause, are chiefly aimed at defending the salaries and position of
the union executives. While the Culinary Union secretary treasurer enthuses
over workers making $23 an hour, UNITE HERE President Donald Taylor really is
living the “American dream” with a salary of $362,000, plus perks.
The struggle of casino workers takes place amid a growing wave of
struggles by workers around the US and the world. Major work stoppages in the
US during the first five months have already surpassed the total for 2017.
These include the largest wave of teachers strikes in decades, including
statewide walkouts in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Colorado and
North Carolina. In each case, rank-and-file workers, who initiated the strikes
using social media, came into a direct collision with the unions, which did
everything to isolate their struggles and then agreed to sellout deals that
ignored the strikers’ demands.
Workers are beginning to break through the decades-long
suppression of the class struggle by the unions, which function not as
defensive organizations of workers but tools of corporate management and the
government, headed up by privileged business executives.
For casino workers to take their struggle forward, they must take
the conduct of the struggle into their own hands by electing rank-and-file
strike committees, which answer to workers themselves, not the unions, the
corporate owners or the big business politicians. These committees should
immediately fight to mobilize all casino workers and every section of the
working class—teachers, health care workers, public sector workers, UPS
workers—in a common fight to defend the social right to good-paying and secure
jobs, decent working conditions, health care and a comfortable retirement.
Striking workers must be on guard in particular against the
Democratic Party politicians who claim that they are friends of workers and
opponents of Trump and the Republicans. In reality, both the Democrats and
Republicans speak for big business. An industrial counter-offensive by workers
must be combined with the fight for the building of a powerful political
movement to unite all workers, black, white, immigrant and native-born, in a
common struggle against the capitalist system and for socialism.
No comments:
Post a Comment