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Domestic Workers Push to Pass Bill of Rights

The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) has introduced new legislation at the federal level that could be game-changing for domestic workers across the country. This National Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, if passed, would dramatically increase legal protection for domestic workers, as well as increase potential earnings.

The U.S. has some 2 million domestic workers, including caregivers for children and the elderly, as well as house-cleaners. Although domestic workers greatly contribute to the economy, they are currently excluded from most protections that have been won by other sectors of workers. Conditions for domestic workers are currently dismal. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean hourly wage for housekeepers is only $11.84 per hour. A major 2013 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that 23.4% of domestic workers live below the poverty line, and 93.1% are women. Domestic workers are also disproportionately immigrants.

The new bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Kamala Harris, but the momentum has come from the grassroots. The legislation is based upon recommendations from domestic worker organizers, and is similar to bills that have already been passed in eight states and in Seattle.

If passed, the Bill of Rights would include domestic workers in Civil Rights and Occupational Health and Safety Act protections. It would also create requirements for fair scheduling, meal and rest breaks, written contracts and protection from employer retaliation. It would also increase access to retirement benefits, paid sick leave, healthcare, and occupational training programs. The bill would make live-in domestic workers eligible for overtime pay. Importantly, domestic workers would also be given increased collective bargaining rights, making unionization easier.

It should be noted that the potential power of domestic workers is tremendous and growing. For example, by 2030–because of an aging population—caregiving is predicted to represent the largest segment of the U.S. workforce.

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Proposed Bill Good for Workers

A new bill introduced in both the House and the Senate could bring an end to employers forcing workers to sign non-arbitration clauses. Many workers do not even know what these clauses are, but about 60 million U.S. workers have already signed them as part of the hiring process.

Major companies like Walmart, Starbucks, Macy’s, Uber, Google, and McDonalds require all or some of their workers to sign them. Basically, what these clauses do is to prevent workers from suing a company that breaks the law, whether it has to do with wage theft, discrimination, or some other illegal practice. This forces workers to take their claims to private arbitration, where they are less likely to win and they generally get less money when they do win.

If it passes, the bill would bring an end to the practice. It has support among some Democrats in both houses of Congress, but, since the Democrats are the other party of capital, our best bet as workers is still organizing and causing a ruckus in the streets. Nevertheless, the new bill could help workers get some edge over the bosses, who currently are dominating the playing field.

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Parents and Students Protest For-Profit School Closures

By Dylan Borne

They Demand: “Arrest the Board!”

On December 20th, 200 parents, teachers, and students packed the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) meeting to demand that McDonogh 35 Senior High School remain direct-run by the Board. They exposed the OPSB for intentionally letting McDonogh 35 fail so that a for-profit charter corporation could take it over.

“The School Board is coming as a business man. It’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s that they don’t care… OPSB has never raised an arm or eyebrow to their word, they shy away from it” –Alex, parent

“We’ve been told so many untruths, the word ‘lie’ isn’t strong enough… Pres. Trump has a better track record.” –Woodson, McDonogh class of ’85 graduate

Statement from youth organization Rethink New Orleans: “Equitable education for all young people to stand in solidarity with all students in New Orleans, and we want to make sure we keep McDonogh 35 direct-run”

“The police officers around here remind me of the charter I went to… y’all prepared us more for prison than anything else… for me this is life or death” –Antonio Travis, Black Man Rising

“Any school district worth its salt would jump at the opportunity to work with parents that are this involved… don’t say it’s about children if you don’t respect the voices of their parents”—G 2 Brown, Journey 4 Justice Alliance

“The time for us pleading, begging crying is over, the time now is to fight… we’re gonna recall the entire board. They refuse to listen to children, parents, and community. We’re done. We’re done begging and making our case. We sent them reports, we sent them data, we had people from Chicago come and talk about what happened to them, we’ve done it all. So if you’re still not listening, it’s over…we don’t wanna wait until it’s time to vote.”—Ashana Bigard, Families and Friends of Incarcerated Children

Paid representatives of Inspire NOLA, the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, and other pro-charter organizations tried to make speeches. Audience members drowned them out with boos and chants. Parents and youth yelled “Whose Schools? Our Schools!” and “Arrest ‘em and do the time it took to make ‘em!”

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US Senate Resolution Not Enough to Save Millions Of Yemenis From Being Killed by U.S./Saudi War Against the People

TOTAL WITHDRAWAL, IMMEDIATE HUMANITARIAN AID NOW!

Yemen is home to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The U.S. Saudi Arabia-led intervention in the civil war between the Yemeni government and the Houthi militia has ravaged the country and has left 80% of the country starving. An estimated 500,000 people along the secondary fronts south of Hudaydah have taken shelter in refugee camps. 1.8 million children in Yemen suffer from malnutrition. Even United Nations projections warn that 14 million people may die if this continues.

The United States has been providing the fascist royal Saudi government with bombs, planes, surveillance, drones, military intelligence and personnel.  This is not secret information but known to all members of Congress who have ignored the genocide.

The deaths of Yemenis mattered nothing to Congress until the Saudi royalty murdered a journalist. Only then was a resolution introduced in the Senate that even mentioned the US role in the war. When the US Senate (but not the House) drafted and passed Senate Joint Resolution 54, the world hoped strong measures would be taken to bring an end to this genocidal war. But the resolution only minimally scales back U.S. involvement leaving loopholes for continued total involvement.

What we need is an act of Congress (not a resolution) that immediately withdraws all U.S. involvement, cancels the sales of military weaponry and military aid to Saudi Arabia, lifts all humanitarian blockades, and allows emergency medical and food aid in without conditions. Anything less and the deaths of millions will be on their hands.

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Mass Rebellion in Haiti

Photo credit: Haïti Liberté

By Joseph Rosen

Waves of popular uprisings have been roiling Haitian society for months. Workers, peasants, teachers and students have taken to the streets to oppose the corrupt U.S. backed oligarchy in control of their government. The last upsurge in protests began on Nov. 18, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières which decided the hard-won war for Haitian independence in 1803. For several days, workers across the country mounted a general strike. The streets have surged with hundreds of thousands of people fed-up with a government that has not only ignored their needs but has met their protests with lethal violence.

The most recent mobilizations have centered around the embezzlement of as much as $3.8 billion dollars in public funds by government elites since 2008. There are obvious reasons that so many have rallied against the injustice of the stolen public funds. While Haiti’s bourgeoisie and their crony bureaucrats have been taking vacations to Miami, less than half of the Haitian population has access to potable water. The masses of Haitians are still struggling to rebuild basic infrastructure after the devastating earthquake of 2010. The funds could have been used to meet the dire needs of the Haitian people, one in four of whom lack access to sanitation.

In fact, the so-called PetroCaribe funds in question were intended for development, for the construction of much needed infrastructure and social programs as part of an accord with oil-rich Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. This deal reflects a longstanding historical bond of solidarity with Venezuela. In 1816, the young republic of Haiti lent arms and aid to Simon Bolivar and his army in their fight for independence from Spain on the condition that slavery be abolished in the founding of Venezuela. In 2017, the PetroCaribe program was halted due to the imposition of financial sanctions on Venezuela by the Trump administration.

Acts of international solidarity fly in the face of U.S. rulers who have sought to undermine the popular will of the Haitians and the Venezuelans ever since this country was founded by wealthy slaveowners. For more than two hundred years, the U.S. has been relentless in its attempts to keep Haiti as a colony where low wage workers would produce goods for export, up through the bloody coups that removed the last popular government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Even today many Haitians work in sweatshops for an average of $3 a day to produce textiles and garments for U.S. companies.

The current U.S. backed government of President Jovenel Moïse as well as the government of his predecessor Michel Martelly are both implicated in the theft of billions. Some in the streets are still calling for an accounting of the lost funds. An increasing number are learning through struggle that this demand is akin to asking a thief to arrest himself. Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is calling to remove Moïse, his ministers, and to establish a transitional government. In their indifference to the suffering of Haitian masses, Moïse and his government have become more an enemy of the people by the day.

As repression grows more brutal, the masses are awakening to the need for a complete overhaul of the state. The Haitian National Police have killed a mounting number of protesters. More troublingly, there have been reports of killings carried out by paramilitary forces, recalling the death squads of the U.S. backed Duvalier regime. On November 13, mercenaries carried out a massacre of dozens in the La Saline neighborhood near Port au Prince; images of the brutal aftermath have fueled the outrage of the anti-government opposition. Among the National Police are 1,300 armed United Nations police officers forming an occupying army that answers to the U.N. Security Council, an instrument of U.S. imperialist rule. For the Haitians set on real revolution, they will have to contend with up to 10,000 U.N. troops should the Security Council authorize it.

The historic destiny of workers and oppressed people in the United States is intimately bound up with the destiny of the Haitian people. In the first case of U.S. aid to a foreign government, the slave-owning George Washington lent over $700,000 to the French planters of St. Domingue in order to put down a rebellion of African slaves. Neither Washington nor the French got their way. Instead, Haiti became the first oppressed nation in the colonized world to win its independence and the Haitian revolution became the standard to which oppressed Africans across the United States aspired in their never ceasing struggle for liberation. Indeed, the heroic example of the Haitian revolution has long shone brightly as a beacon to all oppressed people of the world. Let the freedom seeking people of Haiti lead the way! « Chavire chodyè a » “Overturn the pot!”

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French Masses Take to the Streets, Rebel Against Government of the Super Rich

By Nathalie Clarke

Paris, France—Since May, French workers from all industries and students of all ages have been rising up against continued austerity. Austerity means cuts to wages and social programs making people poorer. Emmanuel Macron, the bankers’ president, as he’s often called because of his work with super rich bankers and his pro-rich, anti-worker policies, has been doing everything to turn back any small victories workers have won through class struggle.

After privatizing the French railway company, which puts workers at risk of mass layoffs, reducing government investment in public hospitals, and attempting to reform schools to side-line working-class students, he’s recently decided to increase the price of diesel fuel.

In response, over 280,000 workers from various parts of France headed to Paris and other big cities, created makeshift barricades from trashcans and old chairs, and reminded the ruling class how powerful a mass movement of workers can really be. Beyond the big cities, thousands of actions happened all over the country, in small towns, on the sides of roads, at tolls, at roundabouts.

This movement, called the “yellow vests” for the high-visibility jackets they wear, began without a political party or union, amongst workers complaining on social media—now driven to the streets by their fury.

The “yellow vests” movement, so-called for the high-visibility jackets the protesters wear, started without the leadership of a political party or union; the movement began among workers whose protests on social media spilled into the streets.

The movement has not only galvanized thousands of workers, it has widespread support: 80% of French citizens declared they support the yellow vests.

The movement erupted in response to a few cents increase on the price of diesel fuel, but it has come to encompass all workers’ frustrations at the elite government’s disconnection with most of France. Most recent demands include a capped monthly salary of 15,000 Euros (around 10 times minimum wage in France), a tax on airplane and boat fuel (which would affect large corporations and not workers), and an end to French interventions in Syria. The class struggle has allowed people who felt divided because of their race, their political party, the industry they work in, their religion, or their sexual orientation to realize that they have far more in common with each other than with the ultra-rich capitalists.

The yellow-vests have fueled a widespread feeling amongst workers: anger at inequalities stemming from the government’s imposing anti-worker and poor rightwing policies. But because elite politicians like Macron and his cabinet are not amongst those who benefit from welfare, unemployment benefits, or housing aid, they see no problem in reducing spending that literally saves lives. Macron’s Trump-like government claims that the increase in the price of diesel is an ecological tax, acting as though they are not aware that taxes on diesel will disproportionately affect rural areas, where people drive to work every day and where most live below the poverty line. Any tax (that does not depend on income), whether the proposed diesel tax or the absurdly high sales tax in Louisiana, is unjust because people who make 7 dollars an hour pay the same as those who earn over 250 dollars an hour.

The big business media, if it speaks of the yellow-vests at all, will probably talk about the rioting that occurred in several big cities. It was not rioting; it was a justified rebellion. They, of course, make no mention of the billionaires who steal MILLIONS of Euros from France every year by cheating on their taxes. No one will mention that these workers are engaging in the greatest act of self-defense there is: fighting for their right to exist. Poverty is deadly: an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people die per year because of unemployment in France and 6,000 people die because of homelessness.

A few cents may seem like nothing to elites who have never lived on minimum wage, but we workers know how much a few cents can mean when the paycheck won’t come for another week, rent is due tomorrow, electricity and gas bills were due yesterday, there is no food in the fridge, and the kids need coats for the cold weather. Whether in New Orleans, Louisiana or Orléans, France, workers generate all the wealth of society. Our children don’t deserve to go hungry. We deserve better than to struggle every month to make ends meet. We deserve more than the crumbs the capitalist offers us. We deserve better because it is from the sweat of our labor that the capitalists make their profits, because we are the unsung heroes—carpenters, electricians, culture-bearers, hospitality workers, nurses, teachers, builders, truckers, train drivers—upon whose labor society is built. The capitalists, whether in France or the United States, will not give us what we deserve, but, united as a class, we can take it.

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Women Hospitality Workers Declare: “We’re Fed Up and We’re Organizing for Ourselves & Our Families. Return $180 Million in Tourist Tax Dollars to the People!”

The Hospitality Workers Alliance (HWA) and Peoples’ Assembly have issued the following call to Action:

Honor Women Hospitality Workers Saturday March 16, International Working Women’s Day

Billions of dollars flow into New Orleans which has been designated a number one tourist spot. This is due to the hard work of restaurant, hotel, retail and other workers. It is our labor that brings in $180 million a year in tourist tax revenues that go directly to Private Commissions and Corporations, not the city budget. This is free money to boost profits.

$180 million in Tax Revenues belong to the people

When you add in tax exemptions for real estate developers, private universities, and other corporations, the working class of our city is being defrauded and our tax revenues stolen. Yet our wages are low, our jobs are insecure and we lack benefits. The conditions of hospitality workers affect all working-class communities and our families’ lives.

We protested at the Tourist Commission asking that money be used for health care clinic or insurance for hospitality workers. At the Convention Center we protested the further rip-off to build a hotel that will not pay taxes but will produce private profit and get public funds.

We take note that Mayor Cantrell has finally asked the Convention Center for a mere $7 million for infrastructure, and even this is being rebuffed. We Demand:

  1. The $180 million a year in stolen taxes go to:
  2. $50 million for sick, maternity leave, vacation pay and pension funds for hospitality workers
  3. $50 million for health coverage for all hospitality workers
  4. $40 million for fully funded, free, accessible child care centers
  5. $20 million be used for infrastructure like fixing streets
  6. $20 million to fully fund all early child hood education

We are inviting all organizations, social clubs, unions, and faith-based institutions to join us that day. We cannot depend on the politicians in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. We must mobilize a movement to demand our rights.

All workers, women and men, can get involved.

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Students of All Ages Rise Up In France

By Remy Herrera, Paris, France

In France, in these troubled times, extraordinary scenes have become an everyday occurrence. On December 5th, over 200 high schools across the entire country were completely blocked off, and there were many smaller high school walkouts and protests. The “yellow vests” struggle has inspired students to join in the struggle for their rights. Sometimes answering the high school students’ unions call, sometimes spontaneously, students across France are standing up against Macron’s neoliberal reforms. When we say neo-liberal, we mean benefitting the ultra-rich capitalists.

Currently, university in France is basically free—only 300 Euros a semester when the minimum wage is 1,200 Euros per month—and admission standards are designed to avoid marginalizing working-class, first-generation college students. Higher education in France is by no means perfect—first of all, just like in any capitalist country, it’s underfunded—but Macron’s policies will increase the cost of higher education and make it more difficult for working-class students, especially black and brown students.

In response to students’ frustrations, the government has simply elected to tear gas the lot of them. On December 5th, over 150 minors were arrested. But the students’ fury won’t get tear gassed away. The student unions at universities have also decided to join in the mobilizations. In Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest city in France, several middle school students (11 to 14 years-old) set up barricades outside their middle schools—and faced the police violence.

On Thursday, December 6th, hundreds of high school students in a peaceful, working-class neighborhood near Paris trickled out of the gates to head to lunch, chitchatting, joking, relieved that the school day was half over. As they stepped outside, it became painfully clear that this was no ordinary Thursday: across from their school, a group of police officers had blocked the road those students take to go home. These students, used to police brutality and harassment, did what they’d always done in such a situation and took another street, when about twenty police officers in riot gear—helmets, batons (sticks the French cops carry to hit protesters- NC), shields, tear gas in arm—raced towards them. The police officers stopped and lined up in front of the terrified kids. When three of the police officers started charging their tear gas cannons, one student shouted:

“Let’s get out of here!! They’re gonna fire!”

They fired. The high school students that weren’t too shocked to move ran off as fast as they could. The cops tear gassed, insulted, and beat up anyone too shell-shocked to get away. One student heard the cops who were brutalizing him yell: “You dirty bastard “; another girl, bleeding, covered in bruises, is told:  “You’re a little bitch! “

Running from the violent attacks, the students barely made it back to their school safe and sound. What had these kids done? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They were leaving class, heading home, and the riot police brutalized them. With no reason!

Unacceptable. But unfortunately, things like this have been happening all over France these past few weeks. President Macron’s right-wing policies are carried out through blood and brutality. The day before, on December 5th, several students from high schools across the country were severely injured by flash balls. One, a sixteen-year old, was hit in the forehead; the other was hit in the cheek. Both students got support from their schools; the following day, the teachers’ assemblies (a part of the union that defends teachers’ hard-earned rights in France) released messages of solidarity with the students protesting and calling on students and educators across France to bloc high schools as a sign of protest to Macron’s policies.

One thing is clear: the old regime, the one that exploits its youth and offers most of us nothing but unemployment, low-wage jobs and poverty, is condemned.

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Only the Organized Working Class Can Stop Climate Change

By Casey Resto

In early October, the UN issued a special report updating specific aspects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of 2014. The results suggest a centuries-long expansion in detrimental economic and environmental effects on humanity. Lower income individuals will be the most severely impacted as we’re the ones least able to afford what insurance companies deem “Acts of God.”

While international agreements require governments to pledge a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases, only an organization of the workers of the world will have the power to meet the severity of the crisis.

The United States’ decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and recently, to withdraw from the Paris Agreement show that a government will ignore eventual and irreversible consequences for humanity if it’s set up to maintain the rule of the rich over everyone else. We, the majority, will be the ones working in hotter and nastier weather.

Natural disasters have occurred at alarming rates: in 2018 alone, the U.S. was battered by Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael, floods displaced more than a million people in Kerala, India and Typhoon Mangkhut destroyed more than 10,000 homes in the Philippines and China, to name just a few examples.

These catastrophes destroy the environment and its inhabitants, but the effects of these losses are experienced unevenly depending on how a society is organized. Under capitalism, we workers and oppressed take the brunt of the hit. In capitalist society we see incarcerated workers in California fighting deadly wildfires for less than $2 a day. We see North Carolina’s state government refuse to evacuate prisoners in the midst of Hurricane Florence (a category 4 at the time). Over and over we see the cruelty of capitalism.

Low income communities are affected as city boards refuse to update their infrastructure to deal with the worsening effects of climate change. New Orleans residents are still feeling the costs of the August 2017 floods. The Sewerage and Water Board’s failure to do their job caused many damages to homes and cars.

These are not unique cases. As the environment worsens, so do our working conditions, our wages and our ability to afford stable living situations that can withstand the drastic changes to our climate. The destruction of the environment and its irreversible effects are an inevitable consequence of imperialism, materialism, and militarism. Capitalism’s persistent and eager need to consume, colonize and destroy in the name of money will only continue to devastate and ravage the world we live in, all for the pleasure of the bourgeoisie. 

We cannot take a passive approach to climate change. Laws take years to enact, and the 2014 IPCC assessment claims that even if global emissions were to stop within the next 24 hours, damages are already locked in for centuries. Those at the top won’t give up their greed. Our only option is to organize and make revolution.

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Racist Capitalist Owners of State and City Legislators Deny New Orleans Home Rule

WE NEED TO RESTORE POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

As a worker in capitalist New Orleans you have a right to pay taxes, labor for the bosses’ profit, and create a booming tourist economy by your work. You can vote for candidates who are bought by big business and who will continue to make things worse.

But when we want a higher minimum wage, equal pay for women, reproductive freedom, jobs not jail, sick pay, rent control and the right to decide what to do with $200 million in tourist taxes we are told, “Oh, no! You have no voice, no vote, no say!” These critical issues in our lives are taken over by the state legislature. Our city officials could stand up to them but they have failed to take up the battle. New Orleans, a tourist jewel with major economic clout, ought to be able to stand up for itself. When we voted to raise the minimum wage, Baton Rouge said no. Our city government shrugged and just said oh well. They could have called us out to an enormous rally to put our foot down.

Even some good-hearted liberals tell us oh well, we can’t do anything, it’s just the way it is. But that is a lie. Appeals to morals or children’s needs fall on deaf ears. Unjust laws are made to be broken. We need to mobilize our power. That’s history, that’s always been the way that change finally comes about.

RICH ARE ARROGANT AND FEEL THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO ROB US

WE NEED TO FREE OUR MINDS TO GET OUR RIGHTS

Racist segregation laws (Jim Crow) were not defeated by good, moral arguments. They were defeated by mass, sustained civil disobedience and action. Only then did the laws change. The laws were passed by right wing legislators and courts who expected Jim Crow laws to be eternal. It was only because they were afraid of our power that they eventually changed the laws. A Trump type government in France just had to back down on their attack on the workers in the face of massive, militant workers’ street actions.

While city officials brag about New Orleans’ post – Katrina recovery with its new high-tech industries and its influx of majority white professionals taking the best jobs, and its luxury condos, the working class of New Orleans is left behind. They want the food and the music and they want us to be their servants. As neighborhoods fall to the rich, as rents soar, as utilities, cable and food prices go up, our wages do not. New Orleans has the second largest income inequality between Black and white in the U.S.

WHAT’S GOOD FOR NEW ORLEANS WORKERS IS GOOD FOR ALL LOUISIANA WORKERS

If New Orleans workers win, all workers in Louisiana win. A rising tide lifts all boats. If we win higher pay and other issues, workers across the state would benefit and it would aid their struggle for the same things.

We can get there by recognizing that the class interests of the workers and the capitalist rulers are opposed. We can get there by joining the struggle to organize the sleeping giant – the working class and oppressed.