UNITE HERE Won't Concede to Big Hotels

by Paul Abowd
from Labor Notes

October 28, 2009 - As dozens of contracts with hotel giants expired in three cities this summer, UNITE HERE launched another round of battles over health care, pay, and working conditions. Following civil disobedience actions and a nationwide tour of non-union housekeepers, members in Chicago and San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes as the union escalates its nationally coordinated “bargain to organize” campaign, which seeks to grow while raising contract standards.

As dozens of contracts with hotel giants Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood expired in three cities in late summer, UNITE HERE launched another round of battles over health care, pay, and working conditions. The union’s nationally coordinated contract campaign—known as Hotel Workers Rising—centers on building “bargain to organize” deals in its Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles hubs that will allow it to expand while raising contract standards.

The union scored bargaining and organizing victories in 2006 after fighting to line up contract expiration dates for 60,000 workers in six cities.

This year’s showdown finds hotel workers, and their union, at a moment of truth. The hotel giants are making unprecedented attempts to cut health benefits and up workloads in the recession, while the union is opening new organizing fronts that highlight stark contrasts between union and non-union working conditions.

The campaign this year has been hampered, though, by the March split in UNITE HERE, as its former laundry and textile division left and joined the Service Employees (SEIU). The resulting convulsion of raiding and counter-raiding has forced UNITE HERE to siphon staff from Hotel Workers Rising, most recently to battle over cafeteria workers in Philadelphia.

BOSTON’S HYATT 100

This year’s target, Hyatt hotels, hasn’t done much to bolster its public image lately: in late August it replaced 98 housekeepers at three non-union Hyatts in Boston with workers hired through a subcontractor at half the pay.

The company wasn’t banking on non-union workers resisting nor on their getting the support of UNITE HERE Local 26. Nearly all the workers met with the union, which strongly backed their fight. Within weeks of the firings, UNITE HERE had held protests nationwide in front of Hyatt hotels, demanding the “Hyatt 100’s” reinstatement.

The company scrambled, offering workers health care through the end of the year and one-year jobs with a temp agency at their former wages.

Workers rejected the offer, saying they didn’t want to replace other workers just as they’d been replaced. Instead, they joined 1,000 demonstrators who gathered in a Jobs with Justice-sponsored, bagpipe-led “march for jobs” October 1 that culminated outside the downtown Hyatt.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick called a statewide boycott of Hyatt, echoed by Boston’s city council and heeded by the city’s cab drivers’ union and dozens of others who switched their reservations in protest.

NATIONAL TOUR

While Local 26 targeted organizations that had events booked with Hyatt, Boston workers hit the road. The nationwide tour of six cities where the union is organizing began at a rally in Long Beach, where housekeeper Corpornia Belis wept recounting her abrupt dismissal after 25 years of service.

“My shoulders, my back, my knees stayed in that hotel,” she said. “And what did they give me? A garbage bag so that I could empty out my locker.”

The tour dovetails with contract fights in Chicago and San Francisco, where the union staged civil disobedience actions as a first escalation over dozens of contracts in the two cities.

Hotel business is off during the recession, but companies are hardly in line for a bailout. The industry has garnered $200 billion in profits in a decade. Hyatt is squealing about a $36 million loss in early 2009, but raked in $1.3 billion over the last four years. Starwood, Marriott, and Intercontinental are all still making money while asking workers to pony up.
NOT AFRAID IN CHICAGO

Boston workers arrived in Chicago, where Local 1 is fighting over 30 hotel contracts. “Me-too” rules dictate that the city’s smaller hotels, also with open contracts, follow the agreements hammered out by the major chains.

Hours after Chicago filled several police buses, San Francisco’s Local 2 followed in kind. At two downtown hotels, 1,700 showed up for an action that has sparked a series of smaller pickets.

After rallying outside the Grand Hyatt, Lorna Villanueva and dozens of her co-workers pushed further, taking over the lobby before getting locked up. Ninety-two were arrested, including Villanueva, a 36-year veteran room inspector—who chalked up her fifth protest arrest. This time, she says, the action was to protect future workers from the companies’ two-tier proposals. “We don’t leave anybody behind,” she said.

Talks over a citywide contract continue, with a 14-hotel multi-employer group covering 9,000 workers. One goal of the campaign is to win organizing rights at three city hotels, where drives are at a tipping point.

Hotels are putting the squeeze on. Ringo Mak, a veteran room service attendant, says the Hilton raised prices for the service so high that customers won’t use it—and then cut the department staff in half. “Everyone in the hotel besides the CEO is hurting,” he said.

Mak’s picking up extra hours serving in the hotel restaurant, and, for now, can maintain his family’s medical coverage even with reduced hours. Hilton wants to freeze its pension contributions and eliminate retiree health care.

Villanueva says frontline managers are playing nice while company negotiators lay down a hard line—a strategy that members recall from their 2004 strike and lockout, when a general manager brought breakfast to the picket lines. “Nobody touched the coffee or the donuts,” says Villanueva. “We buy our own food.”

Members continue their increased contributions to the strike fund, as they have for months. “The hotel lost a lot of money in the last contract fight,” says Mak. “I hope they learn their lesson.”

EXPANSION PLANS

UNITE HERE has achieved 90 percent density in New York and San Francisco through deals ensuring card check at newly built hotels. The union is also devoting resources to several “breakthrough markets” with low union density: Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, and San Antonio, and those with none: Long Beach and Indianapolis.

The Boston workers made a stop in San Antonio, where a tumultuous organizing drive has stretched out over a year. Worker-leaders who haven’t been fired are getting assigned higher workloads than co-workers. If company intimidation weren’t enough, SEIU showed up to disrupt the drive.

UNITE HERE presented cards from a majority of workers last spring, but SEIU organizers flew in, claiming to be the real bargaining representative—despite having no contact with the worker committee. Hyatt happily obliged SEIU’s request for closed-door meetings, which drew worker protests inside the hotel.

Eventually the NLRB called an election with both unions and “no union” on the ballot. SEIU pulled its staff out before the election, and in July UNITE HERE called off the vote.

Back to square one, Hyatt workers are pressuring the city council to support unionization at the hotel, which was constructed with city incentives on city land. They’re also hoping the nationwide campaign will tip their drive over the top.

While local committees build muscle and multiply, the International is trying to swing organizing deals with the chains. The union reached agreements in 2006 with Starwood and Hilton (where it has the highest density), laying out a broad framework for new organizing rights. This year’s target, Hyatt, is not amenable to such talks.

UNITE HERE researchers say that upwards of 80 percent of hotel workers are still without a union, but 14,000 have joined in 35 metropolitan areas in the last five years—a 14.5 percent gain.

The union is challenged on three fronts: battling global corporations in a recession, keeping a rival union at bay, and creating a culture where hotel workers are at the fore of a democratic union.

Though a loyal membership has repeatedly shown its willingness to confront management, some of the union’s former organizers are raising concerns about the degree of rank-and-file involvement in decisions shaping local campaigns.

In a public letter, a group of ex-organizers at San Francisco hotels challenged UNITE HERE to make good on its professed “bottom-up” strategy, decreasing staff’s role and opening more space for worker control as contracts expire in several major cities next year.

Labor Anti-War Group Refocuses on Afghanistan

by Jane Slaughter
from Labor Notes

October 29, 2009 - According to US Labor Against the War, the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid for a year’s worth of health care for 140 million people—almost every working person in the U.S. The wars have cost each U.S. family $12,750 so far.

U.S. Labor Against the War is preparing for its third national assembly in December as the original motivation for its founding—the Iraq war—is winding down to a more limited but permanent presence. No worries that the nearly seven-year-old USLAW coalition has outlived its usefulness, though: delegates to the Chicago meeting will debate the Afghanistan war.

Thus far few unions have taken positions on the increasingly unpopular U.S. presence there, even those that have historically been leaders within labor on questions of war and peace.

An example is SEIU1199, United Healthcare Workers East, which in 2003 sent 25 busloads of members to Washington to try to forestall the invasion of Iraq. Vice President Steve Kramer says war has not been on 1199’s front burner recently. “We’re not focused on world issues to the extent we’d like to be,” Kramer said, citing concessions demands, a slew of contract reopeners, and the health care reform fight.

Besides preoccupation with day-to-day survival, some union leaders may be hesitant to criticize the U.S. presence in Afghanistan for other reasons. Kathy Black of AFSCME District Council 47 in Philadelphia says, “Nobody knows squat about Afghanistan, which is why USLAW has slide shows and fact sheets.” Black, a USLAW co-convenor, sees a change in attitude since President Obama was elected.

“It’s been really simple as long as Bush was president to get a lot of these unions to oppose the obscene level of spending in Iraq,” Black said. “But anything that will smack of opposing Obama’s policies or saying he’s not withdrawing from Iraq fast enough—they have other fish to fry.”

Kramer noted also the general lack of anti-war protests in the country.

Black sees a “hesitancy to do anything to discredit the administration” during the fight to get health care and labor law reform.

“If we get sold out on those things,” she says, “it’ll be easier to get people to sign on [to an anti-war position].”

DEBATE IT AT HOME

USLAW leaders have sent out sample union resolutions in advance of the December meeting, asking affiliates to raise and debate the question in their own meetings.

One such resolution, from a big New York Teachers (AFT) local, United University Professions, says, “The $65 billion to be spent in Afghanistan this year, and the hundreds of billions of dollars required in coming years for counterinsurgency there, are desperately needed for urgent domestic social purposes.”

A USLAW slide show is chock full of eye-opening statistics that affiliates are encouraged to share with members: The money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid for a year’s worth of health care for 140 million people—almost every working person in the U.S. The wars have cost each U.S. family $12,750 so far.

John Braxton is co-president of the wall-to-wall Faculty and Staff Federation at the Community College of Philadelphia, AFT Local 2026, an affiliate of USLAW. He says that when some members opposed the local’s taking a stand against the impending Iraq war in late 2002, leaders took a membership poll. They found 60 percent supported the local’s position.

Afghanistan is trickier, Braxton believes. USLAW was formed after many official union bodies had begun to oppose the war, he notes, and was created to pull those unions together and expand their reach within labor.

But now, Braxton says, most locals don’t have any position at all. “We won’t be a very effective organization if it’s just the activists saying we’re against this war,” he said.

TALKING GUNS V. BUTTER

Given the enormous cost of war and the huge cutbacks this year in government spending on education, health care, and other public goods, it’s natural that some unions are educating members and the public on the trade-offs.

SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, for example, trains staffers on how to engage members on the “guns or butter” question, stressing that this is a union issue and shouldn’t be shied away from.

In July, when Pennsylvania failed to pass a state budget on time, some SEIU Healthcare members faced payless paydays. The union focused its protests on the impact of budget cuts on state-run veterans nursing homes, where nurses are SEIU members. The union said the cuts would close 400 beds and that the vet homes had already turned down 40 vets who needed a bed.

“Pennsylvania is experiencing the largest call-up of reserves in many years,” said local President Neal Bisno. “Every community is experiencing the impact of expansion of military action abroad.”

A day of action featured press conferences at five nursing homes, along with vets’ organizations. The legislature reversed the cuts.

HEARING FROM A VET

Last year, the local’s annual convention featured a march and rally at a VA clinic and talks by a member, a Pittsburgh nurse, and her son who had come back from Iraq with physical and psychological problems.

“His story touched a nerve with our members—the idea that we’re spending the kinds of resources we are on dubious military operations in Iraq,” Bisno said, “yet we can’t provide basic access to affordable health care for adults and children in the U.S., even those we’re sending abroad.”

Mike Zweig of United University Professions, which represents faculty and professional staff at the State University of New York, says his delegate assembly passed an anti-Afghan war resolution this month by a big majority.

The SUNY system just made a mid-year budget cut of $90 million, Zweig said, and “people are just disgusted with this war, they want the money. Nobody said a word about ‘let’s cool it till after we get health care reform.’”

Two recent national polls show only 40 percent and 52 percent of Americans supporting the Afghan war. Kathy Black believes union members’ opposition to the eight-year-old conflict is bound to grow.

“We can’t escape the reality of the money situation,” Black says. “As long as we are pouring money into overseas military operations we can’t possibly have full economic recovery. We have an opening to talk about war spending and the black hole of Afghanistan.”

Greatest Nation in the World? How the U.S. Stacks Up for Those In Labor

by Ellen Bravo
from Barbara Ehrenreich's Blog

Recently I gave a talk in Calgary, Canada for representatives of credit unions from around the world. The woman who introduced me, a director of marketing, was Canadian. “I just got back from maternity leave,” she told me, raving about her first child.

I know that Canadian law allows for nearly a year of leave at 55 percent pay. “How long did you take?” I asked.

“Oh, the whole year,” she replied. I mentioned that the Family and Medical Leave Act in the U.S. provides for considerably less time, 12 weeks, and that the time is unpaid. (I didn’t mention that it covers only half the workforce.) The vast majority of new mothers in the U.S. are back at work before 12 weeks. More than half of them get no pay at all.

Could she imagine having returned that soon, I asked. She worked her jaw for a few minutes without speaking. “I just couldn’t have done it,” she said finally. I felt as if I’d asked her to imagine feeding her child weeds.

Our interaction reminded me of that scene in Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” when he asks the Americans living in France how many sick days they received. “If you’re sick, you stay home,” one of them told him. “Yeah, but how many days do you get?” The answer: as long as you’re sick.

Hard to imagine for those living in the U.S., where no state or federal law requires any paid sick days at all – and where half the workforce has none. Seven out of ten workers in the U.S. have no paid sick time to care for a sick family member.

The next time you hear some lobbyist argue that our lack of standards is about economic competitiveness, remember this fact: Of the 20 most competitive nations in the world, the U.S. is the ONLY ONE which does not guarantee any paid sick days. Eighteen of those 20 countries guarantee at least 31 days of paid sick time.

Three decades years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, a friend in France wrote me to say how sorry she felt that I had to have my baby in the United States. She went on to list the standards available to everyone in France – not just paid maternity leave, but high-quality child care available on a sliding scale basis for babies, and pre-school free to every child at age two and a half. Nearly all French parents sent their kids to those pre-schools, even in homes where a parent was available during the day, because the experience was so positive.

At the time I was taken aback by my friend’s letter, a little embarrassed and a little envious. Today, I’m just angry – and determined to see this change before my children have children.

For those who labor and go through labor, or simply need time to care for loved ones of any age, it’s about time we created some new rules in this country – like a minimum number of paid sick days, and insurance programs that provide at least partial wage replacement during family and medical leave. It’s about time we made sure that family values don’t end at the workplace door.

I’d sure like to say to friends in other countries that the U.S. no longer stands alone.

***
Ellen Bravo is former director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women and author of the recently released Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation (Feminist Press at CUNY).

Steelworkers Form Collaboration with MONDRAGON, the World’s Largest Worker-Owned Cooperative

from United Steelworkers News
For More Information: Rob Witherell, 412-562-4333, rwitherell@usw.org

PITTSBURGH - The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada. The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.”

“We see today’s agreement as a historic first step towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. “Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants. We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Josu Ugarte, President of MONDGRAGON Internacional added: “What we are announcing today represents a historic first – combining the world’s largest industrial worker cooperative with one of the world’s most progressive and forward-thinking manufacturing unions to work together so that our combined know-how and complimentary visions can transform manufacturing practices in North America.”

Highlighting the differences between Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and union co-ops, Gerard said, “We have lots of experience with ESOPs, but have found that it doesn’t take long for the Wall Street types to push workers aside and take back control. We see Mondragon’s cooperative model with ‘one worker, one vote’ ownership as a means to re-empower workers and make business accountable to Main Street instead of Wall Street.”

Both the USW and MONDRAGON emphasized the shared values that will drive this collaboration. Mr. Ugarte commented, “We feel inspired to take this step based on our common set of values with the Steelworkers who have proved time and again that the future belongs to those who connect vision and values to people and put all three first. We are excited about working with Mondragon because of our shared values, that work should empower workers and sustain families and communities,” Gerard added.

In the coming months, the USW and MONDRAGON will seek opportunities to implement this union co-op hybrid approach by sharing the common values put forward by the USW and MONDGRAGON and by operating in similar manufacturing segments in which both the USW and MONDRAGON already participate.

Click here for the full text of the Agreement.

About MONDRAGON:

The MONDRAGON Corporation mission is to produce and sell goods and provide services and distribution using democratic methods in its organizational structure and distributing the assets generated for the benefit of its members and the community, as a measure of solidarity. MONDRAGON began its activities in 1956 in the Basque town of Mondragon by a rural village priest with a transformative vision who believed in the values of worker collaboration and working hard to reach for and realize the common good.

Today, with approximately 100,000 cooperative members in over 260 cooperative enterprises present in more than forty countries; MONDRAGON Corporation is committed to the creation of greater social wealth through customer satisfaction, job creation, technological and business development, continuous improvement, the promotion of education, and respect for the environment. In 2008, MONDRAGON Corporation reached annual sales of more than sixteen billion euros with its own cooperative university, cooperative bank, and cooperative social security mutual and is ranked as the top Basque business group, the seventh largest in Spain, and the world’s largest industrial workers cooperative.

Sugar Union Leaders Sentenced to Prison in Iran - Act Now!

from International Union of Food Workers

In a drive to destroy the independent union established last year by workers at the giant Haft Tapeh plantation/refining sugar complex in southern Iran, a court on October 12 sentenced 6 union leaders to immediate prison terms on charges stemming from October 2007. Three leaders convicted for their union activity last year for "endangering national security" in connection with worker action in 2008 had their sentences overturned on appeal in September. Two union officers, president Ali Nejati and communications officer Reza Rakhshan, both of whom face lengthy prison sentences, were still awaiting the outcome of their appeal when the court in the city of Dezful sentenced the six leaders on the similar 2007 charges.

Ghorban Alipour, Feridoun Nikoufard, Jalil Ahmadi, Nejat Dehli and Ali Nejati were all sentenced to 6 months' immediate imprisonment and 6 months suspended sentences over 5 years; during which time they are barred from union activity. Mohammmad Heydari Mehr received a 4 month term, 8 months suspended. Ali Nejati must serve his suspended sentence as prison time, meaning he faces an immediate one-year prison term. Should he lose his appeal on the 2008 conviction, his sentence could stretch to over 2 years.

Haft Tapeh workers in recent years have repeatedly had to resort to strikes and other actions to claim huge wage arrears and protest deteriorating working conditions. The union was officially founded in June 2008 following a 42-day strike to demand long-standing arrears. The Haft Tapeh union is an IUF affiliate.

Haft Tapeh president Nejati has been refused work at Haft Tapeh and blacklisted from all work in the region since being released in April from a month in solitary confinement in an intelligence detention center. The other Haft Tapeh leaders sentence on October 12 have now also been turned away from their work and instructed to report to prison.

The regime is clearly determined to crush the union by putting its entire leadership behind bars.

The fate of imprisoned transport and teachers' union activists shows that the Haft Tapeh prisoners risk prolonged physical and psychological abuse. The IUF urges all defenders of democratic and trade union rights to mobilize in their defense.

Act Now! - CLICK HERE to send a message to the Iranian state and judicial authorities, calling on them to immediately and unconditionally annul the sentences against the Haft Tapeh unionists! Please note that some messages may bounce back - do not be discouraged! Server overload is a common condition in Iran - some messages will get through, making the point that the persecuted trade unionists enjoy international support. The Haft Tapeh union leaders are also supported by Amnesty International.

You can also send a message to the Iranian embassy or diplomatic representation in your country - or pay them a visit! A complete list of embassies/consulates is available here, and you can generally find e-mail addresses by searching the internet for the individual representation in your country.

Celebrating the First General Strike - Philadelphia November 1, 1835

from Progressive Historians

Philadelphia was first in another major milestone in labor history - the general strike. Word traveled from city to city. By November 1, 1835, Philadelphia was ready.

Three hundred armed Irish longshoremen marched through the streets calling workers to join them on strike. Leather workers, printers, carpenters, bricklayers, masons, city employees, bakers, clerks and painters joined in, carrying their tools.

In all, 20,000 workers walked off their jobs and idled the city in a general strike for a 10-hour day. In what might be called the first "concern troll" in history, the Germantown Telegraph fretted for the well-being of the workers.

the brevity of only a sixty-hour week would be harmful to workers, that all the extra time would be "applied to useless and unworthy purposes."

After a week the city government caved. City workers would now only work 10 hours, from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., with one hour for lunch and one hour for dinner. Three weeks later the other employers in the city gave in to the general strike. The 10 hour day was adopted throughout the city along with some wage increases.

The success of the general strike electrified the labor movement, and a wave of strikes swept the east coast. By the following year the 10-hour day was the standard for skilled workers. In 1840 President Martin Van Buren instituted the ten hour day for federal employees.

Here is a video from the Great General Strike of 1919 in Seattle:

Marriage Equality in Maine is Down to the Wire

by Jim Maynard
from Queer Notes

Less than two weeks away from the vote on Maine’s marriage equality law, things are looking up for marriage equality supporters.

The latest poll, released Tuesday, shows voters evenly split—48 percent to 48 percent, with four percent undecided and a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percent. The firm of Public Policy Polling surveyed 1,130 “likely voters” between October 16 and 19. Prior to that, a poll conducted between September 30 and October 7, showed 51.8 percent of “likely” voters in November would vote “No” on Measure 1, 42.9 percent would vote “Yes,” and less than 6 percent were undecided.

Measure 1 seeks to repeal the state’s newly approved law allowing same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses the same as straight couples.

Socialists Elect a New National Committee

It's young.
It's diverse.
It's democratically elected.
It's the new National Committee of the Socialist Party USA!

Puerto Rico: General Strike Protests Layoffs

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

A one-day general strike protesting plans to lay off 16,970 of Puerto Rico’s 180,000 public employees in November shut down all state-owned enterprises and the island’s schools and colleges on Oct. 15; most private businesses reportedly remained open remained open, and ports and airports were said to be functioning normally. There were protests throughout Puerto Rico, with tens of thousands of people converging on San Juan's Plaza Las Américas, the biggest shopping mall in the Caribbean. Hundreds of trucks drove slowly around the Milla de Oro area honking their horns, while some employees of the companies along the way gathered at doors and windows to show their support for the protest. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” office worker Yadira de León told the Associated Press news service. “I support it because the situation is difficult [for the laid-off workers], but I have to work.” De León’s 11-year-old daughter was with her because the schools were closed.

Organizers said more than 100,000 people had participated in the San Juan demonstration, while the police declined to give an estimate. The general strike was backed by all the island’s main labor organizations, including the General Workers Union (UGT) and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition. Economists said the Oct. 15 strike would cost the economy at least $32 million.

If Gov. Luis Fortuño goes ahead with the November layoffs, the total job losses for the year will be above 21,000. The government laid off 7,816 employees in May but had to hire more than 3,000 temporary teachers and assistants when the school year started in August. Fortuño says the job cuts, expected to save $386 million, are necessary because the government faces a $3.2 billion deficit this year due to the world economic crisis, but economists say the cuts will prolong the recession. Union leaders accuse Fortuño of planning to privatize government services [see Update #1006]. (El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 10/15/09 from AP; Univision 10/15/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 10/16/09 from EFE)

In New York, with the largest community of people of Puerto Rican descent outside the island, labor unions and other groups held a press conference on the steps of City Hall on Oct. 15 to support the demands of the strikers. In the late afternoon, as many as 200 activists gathered in a heavy rain outside the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration office in midtown for a lively solidarity rally organized by the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights and other grassroots organizations. After the rally, protesters carried out a “huevazo,” hurling eggs at a poster with Gov. Fortuño’s picture. (Terra (Spain) 10/15/09 from EFE; eyewitness report)

Protests continued after Oct. 15. Members of the National Hostosian Independence Movement (MINH) demonstrated against the governor when he appeared at a ceremony at the Julita Ross amphitheater in Toa Baja on Oct. 17. The labor unions said on Oct. 16 that they planned to continue the struggle until they had overturned Law 7, which permits the layoffs. Methodist bishop Juan Vera, a spokesperson for protest organizers, warned that there may be another general strike. “The people are tired of so much abuse,” he told the Cuban news service Prensa Latina. (ED-LP 10/18/09 from AP; PL 10/16/09)

Arizona: anti-immigrant sheriff vows to continue immigrant round-ups

from World War 4 Report

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County is vowing to defy a federal order to halt immigration round-ups. On Oct. 16, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Arpaio to stop using the authority of the federal 287g program—which deputizes local law enforcement to help federal agents target undocumented immigrants—in his Phoenix street sweeps that have primarily led to arrests of people who haven't committed any serious crimes. Arpaio publicly refused as he headed a 12th major anti-immigration operation through the metro Phoenix county that day.

"You know what? They can take away anything they want. I’m still the elected sheriff," Sheriff Arpaio told Fox News' Glenn Beck this week. "I'm still going to enforce the state laws and I’m going to enforce the federal laws."

Arpaio, a veteran DEA agent, was first elected in 1993 and has since won five four-year terms as a Republican, all by double-digit margins. The county inmate population has doubled in that time to 10,000. With the county jail full, Arpaio began housing inmates in tent cities, telling critics that most jails these days are "like hotels." Claiming that pink is a calming color, he has marched inmates through the streets in pink underwear. He also instituted the nation's first female and juvenile chain gangs. Maricopa was the only county to lose its 287g authority. (CSM, Oct. 17)