The State of the Union
Deficit Reduction and Common Sense:
Invest in the Economy, Reduce the Military Budget & Tax the Rich
with
Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor Columbia University,
Recipient Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

The ink was hardly dry on the massive compromise federal tax bill
when Republican leaders restarted their call for spending cuts in
the new Congress to close the deficit. But Nobel Prize winning
economist Joseph Stiglitz sets the record straight in his speech
before the Roosevelt Institute. He says that the main cause of the
deficits is the recession which premature deficit reduction would
cause to deteriorate further. He also offers us a way to rebuild our
economy which would also fight the increasing mal-distribution of
wealth in this country by taxing the rich, reducing the military
budget and investing in our cities, our infrastructure and new
technologies to increase our productive capacities to increase
economic growth.

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Bloomberg’s Snow Job and
The NYC Council Inquiry Into The Blizzard Fiasco
with
NYC Councilmember Jumaane Williams, Chairman, Oversight and Investigations Committee

The NYC Council held hearings into how the mayor's administration took nearly a week to clear city streets after a holiday weekend snow storm and we’ll go inside the hearings with Jumaane Williams. Specifically on the agenda, was determining what made the mayor say that streets were plowed while everybody was telling him they weren’t. While, the media blamed the sanitation workers, we know the buck stops with the mayor and the managers he appointed and we dig out their negligence and incompetence and find out why.
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Stop the Layoffs: City Workers Protest Bloomberg’s Budget Madness

DC 37 Locals 1113 and 375 held an angry demonstration at City Hall Park recently protesting the layoff of 129 Dept. of Finance workers which is partof the 889 layoffs announced by Bloomberg for this year. Recent forecasts by the NYC Independent Budget Office and the City Comptroller say that NYC will have a budget surplus in excess of $1 billion this fiscal year. Bloomberg’s credibility has been further eroded by the $80 million fraud in the overbudget $800 million CityTime payroll contract which many speakers mentioned as the tip of an iceberg of waste in the City’s $9 billion budget for outside contracts and high paid consultants. They also called for higher taxes on the rich to prevent layoffs and increase NYC services.

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
with
Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and litigator, author

Alexander offers a bold and innovative argument that mass incarceration amounts to a devastating system of racial control. “Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.” In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander argues that we have not ended racial caste in America, we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.

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Israel’s Building Boom Threatens Palestinian State
with
Richard Falk, prof. of international law emeritus, Princeton University and Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories for the United Nations Human Rights Council.

We’ll explore the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. And, we’ll examine the implications for Palestinian statehood of the Israeli settlement-building boom in the West Bank, in the months since the Palestinians were forced to withdraw from peace talks, and the construction of predominantly Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to make their future capital.
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Tell Israeli Diamond Merchant Lev Leviev, Financing Israeli Settlements Has Got To Go!
with
Adalah-NY

The heck with “chocolate” diamonds, there’s blood on Lev Leviev’s diamonds, the profits from which go to financing the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Leviev also continues to support human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola. So international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists against Israel led a protest against this international merchant of death, at Leviev’s diamond flagship store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
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Stop the Layoffs: City Workers Protest Bloomberg’s Budget Madness

DC 37 Locals 1113 and 375 held an angry demonstration at City
Hall Park recently protesting the layoff of 129 Dept. of Finance
workers which is part of the 889 layoffs announced by Bloomberg
for this year. Recent forecasts by the NYC Independent Budget
Office and the City Comptroller say that NYC will have a budget
surplus in excess of $1 billion this fiscal year. Bloomberg’s
credibility has been further eroded by the $80 fraud in the
$800 million CityTime payroll contract which many speakers
mentioned as the tip of an iceberg of waste in the City’s $9 billion
budget for outside contracts and high paid consultants. They also
called for higher taxes on the rich to prevent layoffs and increase
NYC services.

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Georgia Prisoners, In Longest Strike In History Against US Penal System Say Enough Is Enough Is Enough!
with
Edward O. Dubose, The Georgia State Conference, NAACP

On December 9, thousands of men, from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith and Telfair State Prisons went on strike to press the Georgia Department of Corrections (“DOC”) to stop treating them like slaves and institute programs that address their basic human rights. Some of their demands are: 1) a living wage for work; 2) educational opportunities; 3) decent health care; 4) an end to cruel and unusual punishments; 5) decent living conditions; 6) nutritional meals; 7) vocational and self-improvement opportunities; 8) access to families; and 9) just parole decisions. The Georgia prisoners refused to work, stopping all activities, in a peaceful protest for their human rights. This is a heroic act of resistance to inhuman prison conditions and racism.

Plus
Excerpts fromPrison Labor: Made in the U.S.A.
Produced by Free Speech Radio Newsreporter Karen Miller.

Prison labor is every US Corporation's dream: cheap labor, no sick
leave, no time off, no holidays and employees that can be easily
replaced. For human rights activists however, it's a nightmare for
the very same reasons - but on the other side of the coin: forced
labor, no unions, low pay and no protection for employees. The US
has used or currently uses prison labor for anything from holiday
coffee for Starbucks, cutting airplane components or Boeing,
Game Boys for Nintendo, equipment for war , shrink wrapping
mouses for Microsoft, making dentures, down to sewing lingerie
for Victoria's Secrets. It's a multi-billion dollar business.

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Wal-Mart/Sam Club’s Lawsuit Could Be A Game-Changer For Corporate Gender Discrimination
with
Stephen Tinkler, lead attorney for plaintiffs

Employers everywhere want to see whether the Supreme Court says a single class-action lawsuit can include as many as 1.5 million employees of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. Initially six woman filed suit accusing the retail giant of not providing its female workers with the same compensation and promotional opportunities as men. If the court rules this now class action suit can include all 1.5 million workers, it could set a new precedent for how broad class-action suits against businesses, particularly large employers, can become. The suit encompasses workers from nearly 3,400 stores nationwide. The scope of the suit could put tremendous pressure on Wal-Mart to settle and to remedy its offensive practices, as well as seriously affect other employers discriminatory gender behavior.

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Deny Waiver Coalition Rally at Tweed Shows Outrage over Appointment of Cathie Black as Schools Chancellor

The Deny Waiver Coalition gathered hundreds of parents, elected officials educators and community leaders at the Tweed Courthouse, Headquarters of the NYC Dept. of Education, in a broad based demonstration to denounce Bloomberg's appointment of millionaire publishing Executive Cathie Black as Schools Chancellor despite her lack of qualifications for the position. The Coalition, which will not accept Ms. Blacks appointment as a done deal, is filing a lawsuit to challenge the waiver by NYS Education Commissioner Steiner and is continuing demonstrations across the city. The protests, are evolving into a wider movement against Mayoral Control and the capture of educational decision making by business interests to the exclusion of parents and teachers. For 8 long years, NYC children have enduring the destructive education policies of the Bloomberg Administration and the time has come for a parent and educator led movement to fight for & protect the educational opportunities of NYC's 1.1 million public school children.
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Nine AIDS Activists Dressed As Bagels Arrested In Schmear Campaign Of Mayor Bloomberg
with
. Charles King, Pres. & CEO, Housing Works, a/k/a, an aggressive bagel
. Johnny Guaylupo, arrested baked goods

ACTing UpOn World AIDS Day—Police arrested nine Housing Works AIDS activists wearing giant bagel costumes outside Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s annual World AIDS Day Bagel Breakfast at the Brooklyn Public Library. “Mayor Bloomberg’s attitude to poor people with AIDS is ‘Let them eat bagels!’” said Charles “Sesame” King, president and CEO of Housing Works Bagels’ Schmear Campaign. “We bagels refuse to be implicated in the mayor’s World AIDS Day Bagel Breakfast hypocrisy.” The activists chained themselves together and blocked traffic at Grand Army Plaza to draw attention to Bloomberg’s relentless attacks on AIDS housing services for the poor. The brave bagels were cheered on by dozens of others, many wearing breakfast table costumes. AIDS activists are fed up with Bloomberg.
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Emergency Unemployment Protest
2 Million More Are Loosing Benefits in December
with
. Trudy Goldberg, Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition
. Bill Henning, Vice President of CWA, Local 1180
. Jon Bloom, Executive Director, Workers Defense League,
. Noreen Connell, Past Pres., NOW, NY State

The National Jobs for all Coalition held a protest demonstration in NYC to call for extension of unemployment benefits being held up in Congress by a Republican filibuster and to raise public awareness of the need for bold and decisive federal action to create jobs. The action came on the very day when the newly released monthly statistics reported that the unemployment rate increased to 9.8% highlighting the need for decisive action now. Over 5,000,000 workers have already exhausted their 99 weeks of extended benefits and if unemployment benefits are not extended by Congress beyond the basic 26 week limit over 2,000,000 more are loosing their benefits in December. The coalition will be holding vigils for jobs every first Friday of the month when the unemployment statistics are released, hoping to build grassroots support for jobs now!

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Austerity & Lockout Threats Roil NFL & NBA
with
Dave Zirin, author of "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love"

The former Indiana guard A.J. Moye starts rehabilitation after having a stroke following a head-on collision with a teammate. There has been an avalanche of media coverage of the helmet to helmet hits, and the cover of Sports Illustrated is about concussions. Meanwhile the response of the owners has been to sue 262 players over their workers compensation, and it still takes at least a 3 year NFL career to get any health care after retirement, and oh yes the League seeks to extend the playing season and threatens drastic cuts or elimination of health benefits to the players.

Plus
Host of Edge of Sports Radio Dave Zirin and former NBA guard Laron Profit speak with NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith about the players standing strong against the league's attempts to break their will. Smith also reveals that the NFL owners share the same legal representation as
the ownership groups in the NBA, MLB, and the NHL. All of these leagues are in labor talks as 2011 marks the year in which the four major sports' collective bargaining agreements expire.

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Emergency Unemployment Protest
2 Million More May Loose Benefits in December
With
Trudy Goldberg, Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition
Bill Henning, Vice President of CWA, Local 1180
Jon Bloom, Executive Director, Workers Defense League,
Noreen Connell, Past Pres., NOW, NY State

The National Jobs for all Coalition held a protest demonstration in
NYC to call for extension of unemployment benefits being held up
in Congress by a Republican filibuster and to raise public awareness
of the need for bold and decisive federal action to create jobs. The
action came on the very day when the newly released monthly
statistics reported that the unemployment rate increased to 9.8%
highlighting the need for decisive action now. Over 5,000,000
workers have already exhausted their 99 weeks of extended
benefits and if unemployment benefits are not extended by
Congress beyond the basic 26 week limit over 2,000,000 more
will loose their benefits in December. The coalition will be
holding vigils for jobs every first Friday of the month when the
unemployment statistics are released, hoping to build grassroots
support for jobs now!

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NYC Unemployed Arrested Protesting Benefits Termination
With
Members of Flashmobs4jobs

Workers who have exceeded the 99 week maximum limit on unemployment benefits (called 99ers) were arrested for blocking traffic on Varick Street at a demonstration outside the NYS Dept.of labor. They were demanding that Congress, in the lame duck session, immediately pass a bill granting benefits to those workers who have passed the 99 week limit. They also called for the reauthorization unemployment benefits extensions set to expire on November 30 and new legislation to create jobs. There are currently 4.5 million 99ers with an additional 50,000 jobless losing their benefits each week - this is an emergency!
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A Fair Wages Act Is A Matter Of Faith For Coalition of Religious Leaders

Clergy members across NYC recently led a procession of congregations, community groups and union members to demand that the City Council pass the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act. Every year NYC spends approximately two billion dollars, to subsidize development and create jobs. Too often the jobs created with these public subsidies pay poverty wages with no benefits -- whether it's retail and stockroom jobs at shopping centers, mailroom jobs in office buildings, or food service jobs at stadiums. When public dollars are used to promote private enterprise, the public has the right to expect jobs with good wages and benefits.

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Robin Hood In Reverse: Presidential Commission Outlines $3.8 Trillion Theft From The Workers, Seniors, The Disabled, And The Sick
with
Dean Baker, co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

A presidential commission’s leaders outlined a $3.8 trillion deficit-cutting plan that would trim among other things Social Security and Medicare, reduce income-tax rates and eliminate tax breaks including the mortgage-interest deduction, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. Deficit reduction would also make it harder to emerge from the recession, causing tax revenues to fall further setting the stage for further budget cuts. The Social Security retirement age would rise to 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075. AFL-CIO Pres. Richard Trumka said the panel chairmen “just told working Americans to ‘drop dead.’” In an e-mailed statement, Trumka said, “The very people who want to slash Social Security and Medicare spent this week clamoring for more unpaid Bush tax cuts for millionaires.” While the Commission’s Allan Simpson said the plan was designed to give members of the panel something to “chew on” for further discussions, it’s enough to choke the rest of us.

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Election 2010: The Best Defense Was a Fair Trade Offense"
withTodd Tucker, Research Dir., Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

That Democrats and the GOP alike ran against the trade policy status quo, highlights the intensity of public ire about our job exporting trade policy -- a phenomenon also seen in national polls. It also reveals the trouble that the White House and GOP leaders should face if they try to pass the leftover Bush trade pacts with Korea, Colombia and Panama. Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, just released a report illustrating that House Democrats that ran on fair trade platforms in competitive and open-seat races were three times as likely to survive the GOP tidal wave than Democrats who ran against fair trade. We’ll discuss the findings of the report “Election 2010: The Best Defense Was A Fair Trade Offense”.
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Rally to Defend Mumi Abu-Jamal in Philadpehia

On Nov. 9 in Philadelphia, hundreds of supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal rallied outside a hearing at the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals where his attorney argued against the reimposition of his death sentence. We go to the Press conference with Mumia's new lead counsel , Judith Ritter, Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Widener University School of Law, Delaware campus and then to a Statement by Professor Johanna Fernandez, of Baruch College; she is the producer of the new documentary "Justice on Trial" about Mumia's case.

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Where The Right to Join a Union Can Make the Difference
Between Life and Death
With
Cecil Roberts, President, United Mineworkers of America
Ricky Polk, Member, United Mineworkers of America

With the deadly explosion in the Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West
Va. which killed 29 miners last April still fresh in their minds, Ricky Polk and
Cecil Roberts blast the Republicans in Congress who have held up mine
safety legislation. Both also make the point that the safest mines are union
mines because of collective bargaining safety provisions but because of
employer intransigence to unionization, we also need Legislation to make
it easer for workers to form unions. We talked with them at the One Nation
Working Together Washington, DC March and Rally.
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Prostrated at the Altar of the Balanced Budget - Sacrificing Economic
Recovery, the Unemployed, Social programs, and Social Security,
with
James Galbraith, Chair in Gov't/ Business Relations, at the School of
Public Affairs, at the University of Texas at Austin

Budget deficit mania is hobbling Washington’s response to economic
recovery. Having a balanced budget is more important they say than
implementing an economic stimulus to create our real bottom line – jobs, and
more jobs. To cut federal budget deficits without first rebuilding the economy
is a sure path to stagnation, to a double-dip recession – possibly to a second
Great Depression!
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NYPD's Crime-Tracking Method, CompStat, Pressures Police To Frivolous Arrests, But Ignores Serious Crime Reports To Doctor Statistics
with
Graham Rayman, reporter Village Voice

Two years ago, police officer, Adrean Schoolcraft in Brooklyn’s 81st precinct, in Bedford Stuyvesant became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, be began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. Graham Rayman, staff writer for the Village Voice reports on the NYPD officer who was told to distort crime statistics and what the revelations in his series hasled to for the public.

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PACIFICA NETWORK SPECIAL:

"Fighting for Jobs, Jobs, and Green Jobs! "
a 58 minute SpecialA production of
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report, WBAI-Pacifica, New York City
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

Building a Movement for Green Jobs to Re-industrialize the U.S.
with
Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers

We feature the voice of a labor leader who is building bridges between workers internationally and sees the ties that bind the labor and environmental movements in the U.S. Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers with 850,000 members in the USA and Canada is a co-founder of the Apollo Alliance, whose goal is developing efficient energy alternatives to fossil fuels and jobs, jobs, jobs. Labor & environmental activists are pressing for the creation of green jobs as the way to re-industrialize the U.S., and are fighting to make sure that U.S. trade relations change so that jobs are kept in the U.S.. The Steelworkers recently filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization(WTO), which the Obama administration is investigating, which accuses China of violating the WTO free-trade rules by subsidizing exports of clean energy equipment like solar panels and wind turbines.

President Gerard spoke recently at a forum sponsored by the organization Rekindling Reform and by the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the City University of New York.

And then building more bridges

The One Nation Working Together March on Washington

We present excerpts from the One Nation Working Together March on Washington, which brought hundreds of thousands of men and woman from the working class
sponsored by the AFL-CIO, NAACP, La Raza and hundreds of diverse organizations,
to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC to continue the call 47 years earlier of the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King for jobs, jobs, jobs and justice.
with
Van Jones, Author, The Green Collar Economy
Mary K. Henry – Pres., Service Employees Intl Union (SEIU)
Arthur Cheliotes, President, Local 1180, CWA
Harry Belafonte, a remarkable call for Jobs, Peace and Justice from the great actor, singer and social justice activist

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Still Fighting for Their Forty Acres And A Mule: The Plight Of Black Farmers
with
. Gary Grant, Pres., Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Assn., N.C.
. Eddie Carthan, Pres., Mississippi Family Farmers Association
. Hezekiah Gibson, Pres. United Farmers, USA , S.C.

It’s been more than a decade since Black farmers filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, because of decades of discrimination. Thousands of farmers have not yet had their day in court or been allowed to file a claim even though the second phase of the suit (known as Pigford v Vilsack) was settled in February 2010. The reason for this is that Congress has not provided the $1.25 billion for farmers, who through no fault of their own, suffered discrimination from the same government that now denies them relief.
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Alice Walker Remembers Her Parents:
The Plight of Black Sharecroppers

Recently, author Alice Walker accepted an award from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund. Her brief but insightful remarks convey a sense of the real value of life and what we work for, as we continue to build bridges. Alice Walker talks about her parents who were sharecropers, their struggles and the sacrifices they made for her.

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Today part 2 of our special program coverage with speeches and interviews from the Massive Demonstration on Saturday, October 2nd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

The One Nation Working Together March on Washington sponsored by the AFL-CIO, NAACP, La Raza and 100’s of progressive organizations to demand the jobs to put people to work, and back to work.Jobs, economic security, comprehensive immigration reform, safe and renewable energy policy and a reversal of national priorities from making wars to meeting human needs - that’s the message!

featured on todays program are:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Pres., Rainbow Push Coalition
with immigrant righs activist Yves Gomes
Members of the NAACP
Ellie Flores – youth activist
Mary K. Henry – Pres., Service Employees Intl Union (SEIU)

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Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
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We present a special program with speeches and interviews from the Massive
Demonstration on Saturday, October 2nd at theLincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

The One Nation Working Together March on Washington

sponsored by the AFL-CIO, NAACP, La Raza and 100’s of progressive organizations to demand the jobs to put people to work, and back to work.Jobs, economic security, comprehensive immigration reform, safe and renewable energy policy and a reversal of national priorities from making wars to meeting human needs - that’s the message!
Featured on today’s program are AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez, and a remarkable call for Jobs, Peace and Justice from the great Harry Belafonte along with thevoices of American workers for Jobs with Justice.
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to play go to:
http://www.archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesOneNationWorkingTogetherMarchOnWashington/BuildingBridgesOneNationWorkingTogetherMarchOnWashington_vbr.m3u

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http://www.archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesOneNationWorkingTogetherMarchOnWashington/onenationntl.mp3

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Bloomberg To FDNY Vulcans, “Burn Baby Burn”
with
Paul Washington, Past President, Vulcan Society, FDNY
Richard Levy, attorney for Vulcan Society

Rather than complying with a Federal court order to choose among five plans to increase hiring of African American and Latino candidates for the NYC Fire Dept. to reverse long standing discrimination, Mayor Bloomberg choose to suspend hiring for the next class of 300 firefighters. This will result in short staffing in the Department and an expensive increase in overtime pay. The class action lawsuit was initiated in 2002 by the Department of Justice and the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization of NYC Black firefighters, against NYC’s discriminatory hiring practices.
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Laundry Workers Rally To Protest Privatization & Save Union Jobs

In the battle against filth, the workers at the Brooklyn Central Laundry in East Flatbush are stalwart foot soldiers. Union workers wash the dirty sheets, towels and uniforms for most of New York City’s hospitals, folding more than 10 million pounds of laundry a year. Employees say the linens sometimes hold body parts. They nearly always contain blood. But under a proposed reorganization plan announced in May by the Health and Hospitals Corp. (HHC), which runs the laundry, the service would be taken over by an undetermined private company. The city says private companies can beat the laundry’s price per pound, which the union estimates at $1.30. Privatization will cause the loss of 120 living wage union jobs. So while HHC says get back, the workers fight back.
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