Over several months, Central Florida Jobs with Justice has been engaging bus riders in the fight to save transit services.  A key bus route from Kissimmee that stops at  2 major hospitals, a bus transfer center and shopping mall was facing a potential cut in the last run of the night. Hospital and Service industry employees that depend on the bus would have had no way to get to and from work. When Lynx asked for public comment on this potential cut, CFJWJ mobilized riders to make their voices heard against this change.  People filled out comment cards with a simple demand …Don’t Cut Route 18! After 2 weeks of collecting comments and bringing awareness to this issue, the route was taken off the list of potential cuts.

Coming up in the next few months, Public Transit Riders in Central Florida have a huge fight on their hands.  Lynx transportation is looking into cost-cutting options in order to deal with a $9 million budget shortfall for the 2011-2012 fiscal years. This is the same yearly problem due to

Continue reading When Public Transit is Under Attack, Central Florida Transit Riders Stand Up and Fight back!

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. He was in Memphis to support sanitation workers, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment on the job. He famously said, “It is a crime to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

Dr. King’s legacy teaches us that workers’ rights, civil rights and human rights are inexorably linked. On the anniversary of his death over thirty years ago, we are also reminded just how far we are in fulfilling his dream of equality and dignity for all people.

Right now, we’re witnessing an unprecedented attack on public sector workers around the country. Here in New York State, our legislature and new Governor passed a budget of tax breaks for the wealthy and austerity for the rest of us. The budget features across-the-board cuts to vital public services, major concessions from public sector workers, and leaves unanswered many more

Continue reading Honoring Dr. King’s Legacy in New York

National Teach-in on Debt, Austerity and How People Are Fighting Back Tuesday, April 5th, 2011, at 2:00 PM

Wall Street Banks, American corporations and their political allies have declared a one-sided war on the American people. This war is being waged at our schools and colleges, on public employee unions, in our workplaces and in our communities.

Today, Americans are working harder and earning less while corporate profits soar. Homeowners, consumers and students are seeing their wealth being stripped away by banks. Our government plunges into debt waging trillion dollar wars. Meanwhile, our infrastructure erodes, climate change proceeds unchecked, our schools, daycare centers, senior facilities, clinics, parks and emergency services are all starved while corporations and elites get billions in tax breaks!

“Austerity” policies falsely suggest that spending on social needs is the reason why governments– at all levels– are facing massive budget short falls. NO! Our debt and deficit problems are a direct result of corporate tax breaks and extortionist bank practices that have lead to a scandalous and unprecedented transfer of wealth– from hardworking Americans to the richest segments of US society.

The

Continue reading A Call to Learn, A Call to Escalate Action

Published in the Burlington Free Press March 11th

In the past weeks, anti-worker Republicans have bared their teeth.  Republican leader Boehner’s budget proposal in Congress, and attempts by Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to roll back the basic human right for public employees to organize, demonstrate clearly that their agenda is not simply one of “fiscal conservatism.”   Instead, it is a highly ideological attack on many of our fundamental human rights.  Leaving in place the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Republicans — and many Democrats — are using the deficits created by those tax cuts to not only attack programs for the most vulnerable, but also to attack women’s reproductive health and prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from acting on climate change and the Federal Communications Commission from protecting net neutrality.

Vermont can be proud that many of our elected officials have stood up against this dangerous agenda.  Senator Bernie Sanders galvanized people across the nation with his 8 1/2 hour “Filibernie” in December, and our state is poised to be the first to truly solve the healthcare crisis, supported by a

Continue reading Defending and Expanding the Public Sector Benefits Us All

Right-wingers have historically cried about the deficit when it is convenient to them, and most potently when they are aiming to put more money into the pockets of their wealthy, corporate buddies—all of course while increasing the burden on working people (i.e. “cutting spending”).

So the report coming from the “deficit commission” should come as no surprise, proposing trillions of dollars in cuts and even slicing jobs, including 200,000 government workers.  Meanwhile there was no mention of any tax on the corporate fat cats who got our economy into this mess when it is widely understood that a modest fee on Wall Street’s daily financial transactions would bring in more than enough to say existing jobs, provide new jobs and, yes, get rid of the deficit.  In fact, Republicans are now pitting the extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans against unemployment benefits for the rest of us.

In all of its attempts to “solve the deficit”, the Commission—which did not even get the full 14 votes required to make it an official report to Congress—answered the wrong question.

The real question is how are we going to

Continue reading “Deficit Report” Answers Wrong Question

President Obama created the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility identify policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.  Specifically, the Commission attempted to propose recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015.  Today, the Commission approved the report but failed to reach consensus that would have pressured congressional leaders to vote on the proposal.

The proposals that the Commission has drafted fail to address the causes of either the current or projected budget deficits.  What’s more, they fail to recognize that a healthy government budget depends on a healthy economy, and a healthy economy depends on jobs.

During the Great Depression, this nation was in a similar situation to the what we’re experiencing now. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reduced unemployment from 25 percent to 10 percent in three years, but he was then pressured to reduce spending before the economy was fully stabilized, just as President Obama is being pressured to reduce spending now. The result was another sharp increase in unemployment and

Continue reading Opinion: Cutting Spending is A Means to a Grim End

We first want to congratulate our friends at United Students Against Sweatshops for their victory against Russell Athletics! Russell Athletics which closed their factory in Honduras after workers there tried to for a union nearly one year ago.  Students at 96 universities persuaded their schools to suspend or sever ties with Russell Athletic, a major supplier of college logo t-shirts and sweatshirts.  This week, Russell announced that they plan to re-open the factory and re-hire all 1200 workers. More details about the campaign here.

In California, the struggle continues. Across California students and workers have come together to fight against fee increases and the privatization of education. Thousands of students and workers met at the UCLA campus to demand the Regents from the UC system to stop the proposed increases and support funding of public higher

Continue reading Big Week for the Student-Labor Movement