www.whatnowtoons.com Wow, what a difference a few weeks can make. Less than a month ago, every mainstream mass media outlet, U.S. politician, economic analyst, and probably the majority of average citizens would still have been singing the praises of the unfettered free market. Regulation was still a dirty word and privatization was still equated with efficiency and prosperity. Granted, the sand had already begun to shift under this ideological edifice of 30+ years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble had seriously shaken the confidence of some in the system. I had mentioned repeatedly on Labor Express Radio over the Summer the glaring contrast between the soaring gas prices we experienced here in the laissez-faire fuel market of the U.S. as compared to the low and stable prices maintained by the state oil company of our neighbor to the south. But none of that seemed to really change the mainstream belief in this country that free markets solve all prob...

Info on financial crisis Here are some links on articles and resources about the financial crisis now upon us. Check back here tomorrow for a much more complete report… From National Jobs With Justice, ACT NOW – CONGRESS VOTES TOMORROW!!!... Tell Congress it's time to STEP UP! (Save The Economy, Pronto & Undo Profiteering) Over the past 30 years, conservatives successfully gutted regulation and preached 'smaller government' while millions of Americans lost good jobs and Wall Street and corporate America made record profits. Wall Street invented new, more complicated ways to make money off other people’s money Now that the party’s over, Bush & Co. want to plunder the rest of us to pay the bill for Wall Street’s greedy rampage. Tell Congress: Stop the Bail-out; Pass a recovery plan instead. Now that they’ve made so much money, they say that the huge Wall Street firms, paying grotesque salaries, are "too big to fail," so a q...

Ten days ago, 27,000 workers for the aircraft manufacture Boeing, who are members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) went out strike in three states – Washington, Oregon, and Kansas. Boeing, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, a company that has been tremendously profitable in recent years, has pushed concessions on its workforce in the past few contracts. In 2005, Boeing workers halted some of these concessions with a month long strike. But the workers have gone without a pay raise for 4 years, and entry level wages for new hires haven’t been raised since 1992. Outsourcing has reduced the amount of union jobs at Boeing, as the company has continued to shift more and more of its production to non-union sub-contractors, some locally, some around the globe. Preventing further outsourcing and protecting job security is a key issue for the union. In contract negotiations this Summer, the company once again asked for further concession...

As I stated on last night’s Labor Express Radio program, I hoped to have an announcement about an action at Boeing HQ in Chicago this week, in supporting of the 27,000 Boeing workers, members of the IAM (The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) who are out on strike now. From conversations I had today with labor activist in Chicago, it appears there will be an action Friday, but noe details have been released as of yet. As soon as they are I will post them here. In about an hour there should be another post with more info on the Boeing strike and a link to an audio interview with IAM spokesperson Connie Kelliher.

Below is more info on the struggle of Mexican workers to fight the privitization of PEMEX. See me first story on this here... http://pilsenprole.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-have-returned.html The first is from UE's Mexican Labor News & Anaylsis, put togther monthly by Mexican labor movement anaylst Dan Labotz. The second is from Alan Benjamin, Executive Board member of the San Francisco Central Labor Council and long time Mexican worker solidarity activist... National Referendum on Privatization of Petroleum The Mexican Congress has been carrying on an extraordinary debate over the last few months on the reform of the energy sector, or more specifically on the privatization of the petroleum industry. The government of President Felipe Calderón and his National Action Party (PAN), together with much of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have been pushing for the privatization of petroleum. Many believe that the left has won the debate against privatization, though the right...

It seems as if ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the new name for the INS) is out to break records as fast as the gold medal swimmers in the 2008 Summer Olympics. After undertaking the “largest single-site operation of its kind in American history” when ICE raided Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville Iowa, last May, ICE apparently decided they could best that record and did so at the Howard Industries plant in Laurel, Mississippi last week. In Postville 900 ICE agents detained roughly 400 undocumented immigrant workers. A 60 acre cattle fairground was turned into a concentration camp for the detainees, off limits to cameras and most of the media. One court interpreter, Prof. Erik Camayd-Freixas, described the scene as the detainees were brought into the trailers that served as courtrooms on the fairgrounds… “Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignme...