News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed – and a common need for unionized resistance.

“It was like a nuclear bomb went off,” said the mayor as a mushroom cloud soared above his tiny Texas town. The explosion “ripped through three feet of concrete floor slab and then tore apart 10 additional feet of earth,” scattering the wreckage more than 1,000 feet and leaving a blast crater 93 feet wide.

This was the second mushroom cloud to be seen over Texas in recent years. The first was also a workplace explosion, at an oil refinery.

Bystanders weren’t safe in Bangladesh, either. The Savar building collapsed during rush hour, hurling debris through the air while crushing and killing hundreds of the workers inside.

The Whole Story

News reports offer information, but don’t tell the whole story. There’s an underlying theme behind the barrage of words and images from the fertilizer plant explosion and the collapse of a textile factory, and it’s this: When one worker is unsafe anywhere, we’re all unsafe everywhere.

One word that’s conspicuously absent from these news account is “union.” Without it this story of death and disaster will be repeated, again and again and again.

These aren’t just stories about strangers. The Texas plant endangered us all with lax security which failed to safeguard highly explosive materials used by terrorists like Tim McVeigh, and permitted the repeated theft of chemicals used to make methamphetamines.

The Texas plant was surrounded by a school, a retirement home, and private residences. The explosion ripped the roofs from some of those homes and the elementary school, and lawsuits are already being filed by the plant’s newly-homeless neighbors.

And the Savar story is as close to us as the clothes on our backs. The factory manufactured clothing for American distributors that included Benetton, Joe Fresh, The Children’s Place, Primark, Monsoon, and DressBarn.

Godless

The Texas Attorney General’s Office brags about its “Right to Work” laws, which became “Right to Die” laws last week. Union membership in Texas is roughly half the national average, and the national figure has been declining precipitously for far too long.

Trade union activity in Bangladesh was suspended for two years in 2006 when the government declared a “state of emergency,” and its unions are frequently cozy with political parties. They possess neither the strength nor the independence to fight for workplace wages and safety.

The workers in Savar weren’t just endangered. They were underpaid, working 14 or more hours a day and yet still living in deprivation. As “War On Want” documents, 3.5 million garment workers in Bangladesh subsist on poverty wages while laboring in 4,825 factories. More than 85 percent of them are women.

Pope Francis correctly described their condition as “slavery,” adding that their employer’s behavior “goes against God.”

A Pattern of Death

Their deaths weren’t random or unpredictable, no matter what the politicians want you to believe.

Texas Governor Rick Perry denied that lax oversight caused the West explosion, while the Bangladeshi Finance Minister who outraged the world by saying the accident “wasn’t really serious” added that “These are individual cases of … accidents. It happens everywhere.”

That’s a lie. It’s the lie they tell to hide the underlying pattern behind these deaths – a pattern of under-represented workers and unrestrained greed.

And they endanger us all. As the AFL-CIO notes, the West plant hadn’t been inspected by OSHA for twenty-eight years. The plant did not report the fact that it was storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate to the Department of Homeland Security as required by law, even though that’s more than 200 times the amount Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. We’re expected to suspend our civil liberties in the name of national security, but businesses aren’t even being asked to follow safety regulations.

And, absurdly, the deficit debate in Washington is still centered around how much to cut from vital regulatory agencies, rather than on how much to should increase to their budgets.

A Story That Changed the World

There was a time when such a tragedy changed the world.

Like that workplace in Savar, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory primarily employed women. And like their Bangladeshi counterparts, those women worked seven days a week for at least 13 hours each day. In 1911, 146 garment workers burned to death in that factory during a half-hour of horror. Their deaths led to a public outcry, gave new momentum to the union movement, and triggered a wave of new worker safety laws.

Their deaths weren’t unexpected. Union organizers had been fighting for better working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory for years. The 1909 Shirtwaist Strike, also called “the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand,” led to marginal improvements in hours and pay. But even after a 1910 factory fire killed 25 people in nearby Hackensack, New Jersey, it took the Triangle tragedy to galvanize a movement.

A documentary called “Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl” tells the story of the 1909 strike. But heaven alone couldn’t protect the working girls at the Triangle factory, any more than it can protect workers in Savar or Texas.

Sometimes heaven needs human help.
Read the rest at
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/04-6

i'm anti union... they should all be disbanded

yep,every last crooked one!

http://laborpains.org/2013/05/01/newsflash-benefits-of-union-membership-declining-by-the-year/

http://laborpains.org/2013/04/30/kaiser-permanente-seiu-scrum-shows-labors-weakness/

Usually when the SEIU is in a (figurative) dogfight with another group, it isn’t another union. In California though, the SEIU is fighting another union (the National Union of Healthcare Workers or NUHW) for the right to represent employees of Kaiser Permanente hospitals.

SEIU, which lost 45,000 members last year, currently represents Kaiser employees, but the NUHW (which incidentally is run by former SEIU officials) wants the possible dues windfall that poaching them offers. The Wall Street Journal reports on how the battle is playing out:

The SEIU is pulling out all the stops to hold on to Kaiser Permanente. Over the past five years, the SEIU has spent tens of millions of dollars to fend off the NUHW. The smaller union represents just 10,000 workers, but is backed by the California Nurses Association, which has provided $4 million to the NUHW since the beginning of the year, according to NLRB testimony by an official at the nurse’s union viewed by The Wall Street Journal. That is on top of a $2 million loan the nurse’s union made in 2009.

There’s clearly a lot of dues money at stake, as well as prestige. The Journal notes that losing the Kaiser bargaining units to NUHW would lead to a reduction in SEIU’s membership of up to 45,000 workers. As the Journal notes, with workers more reticent to sign on indefinitely with a labor movement with a checkered recent record, the NUHW model of raiding an existing union for new members becomes attractive.

Only 6.6 percent of private-sector workers are now unionized, the lowest level of private-sector unionization in 70 years. That’s as strong a sign as any that workers are fleeing the sinking ships of un-reformed labor unions. Thus far the labor movement has rejected widely supported reform proposals like the Employee Rights Act that might bring some of those workers back. Until they do, unions will have little to do but fight over the scraps.


its Dog Eat Dog now!
And the Workers and Taxpayers have to foot the Bill!

http://laborpains.org/2013/05/03/union-corruption-update-dead-union-bosses-tell-no-tales/


Union Corruption Update: Dead Union Bosses Tell No Tales

Scandal has rocked the Auburn Teachers Association, an affiliate of the New York State United Teachers and American Federation of Teachers. The Auburn Citizen reports that an audit showed that the former (and now deceased) President of the Association allegedly misappropriated up to $800,000 in dues money for various personal uses. Local police are investigating to determine if she had accomplices. The union boss had been widely praised at her death, but now former cheerleaders are questioning how she might have been able to fleece teachers for so long.
* The former President of Metal Polishers Local 8A-28A of New York pleaded guilty to charges that he committed wire and mail fraud and evaded taxes. He agreed to pay restitution totaling over $1 million and will be sentenced in August.
* The founder and former president of the National Association of Special Police and Security Officers was sentenced to 76 months in federal prison after being found guilty by a jury last December for stealing from the union’s treasury and pension funds. He had faced decades in prison for offenses related to thefts totaling over $150,000 including thefts to pay his personal legal bills in a separate civil case, according to a Justice Department release.
* The President of a Louisiana Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America International Union local has been charged with embezzling over $16,000 from the union. The U.S. Attorney’s office alleged that he had skimmed the money using unauthorized checks and ATM withdrawals.

Good Night Irene!

Say what you wish, these horrible events never would have happened in a Union shop.

I am in favour of Unionised workforce. Going back to Thatcher/miners and Murdoch/printers the unions at that time were too powerful and needed to be moderated but Thatched wanted them destroyed and gave Murdoch backing to do so. Thatchers Legacy is well documented as having led us to present day disaster. Greed and corruption is now the order of the day.

yeah,right!

I absolutely agree. Cutting corners for profit, life is cheap in the eyes of profit makers.

Workers of the world need to unite now before we all end up as slaves.

seems you all are on the way to end up as Slaves to the Unions in the US!
Daily you get crooked stiff by the Union Bosses and their Politician Cronies!

The way forward is the regeneration of small communities and the revival of cooperatives. Take the power away from the big boys.

True!

But at least while they are crooking me I'd be getting decent pay,
health care, safe working conditions, and a retirement plan.

Oh please your asking for far to much.

I don't understand how union bosses can get away with stealing funds. (I don't understand how anyone can get away with that. Don't they have someone double checking that sort of stuff? geeeze.

As far as safe working conditions are concerned, companies should practice that anyway - to keep from getting sued.

(I think that place in Texas should be sued.)

I'm sorry, i thought that you said we need Onions.

yep,after the Government bails out the Union-Pensionfunds with Taxmoney!

http://laborpains.org/2013/04/09/the-next-great-bailout-teamsters-pensions/

http://laborpains.org/2013/04/23/proposed-management-reporting-rule-a-costly-gift-to-union-bosses/

I think I'll going to have myself a non-Union Twinkie!

http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/13459-twinkie-is-making-a-comeback-without-big-labor

They have Politician-Friends helping them steal!

That Place will definitely get sued!
They violated all the Safety Guidelines!

Garlic too!

People steal all the time CEO's do it too politicians and Priests, so who gets all the bad press in our corporate media?

Again a good union shop is a safe shop no one in their right mind can deny this.

The real great thing is how the Corporations and Union Bosses screw over the Workers together,with the help of the Body Politic!
Thieves,Thieves,Tramps and Thieves!