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Outdoor Workers Must Join Fight for Heat Protection

Louisiana farmworkers protest conditions at Bimbo’s Best Produce. Amite, LA in 2008.

By Nath Clarke

As summer creeps closer and temperatures start to rise, workers across the South are subjected to sweltering heat. With Trump and other politicians refusing to take action in the face of global warming, the problem will likely only get worse: because of a steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures will continue to rise, and so will heat-related injuries.

The Farmworkers Association of Florida (FAF), a grassroots organization fighting for the rights of farmworkers and rural communities, has been one of the only groups to agitate around this issue in Florida. The organization, founded by and made up of mostly Black and Brown farmworkers, collaborated on several studies highlighting the heat-related health risks faced by farmworkers, construction workers, and other outdoor workers.

A report from Public Citizen, the Farmworker Association of Florida and an Emory University researcher found that in every single Florida county, temperatures exceeded the Center for Disease Control’s safe limit for heavy labor for at least 71% of days between May 1 and September 30. That’s 71% of days where outdoor workers were risking their lives on the job. Chronic exposure to such conditions increases the risk of dehydration, muscle cramps, headaches, nausea, and acute kidney injury.

The FAF told the Workers Voice they’d continue to agitate around this issue until the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issues a rule protecting workers from dangerous heat. Through petitions, advocacy, and workplace organizing, the FAF has already started conversations all over the South around workers’ safety in the face of heat stress; but the bosses and other members of the ruling class are already fearing for their profits and pushing back. If we truly want federal rules on heat stress to change, a massive movement of workers will need to support any such initiative.

All workers in southern states should support such an initiative. Louisiana has the highest rate of heat-related emergency department visits out of all the states in the Southeast. We don’t need studies to tell us what our lives show us: our bosses would gladly poison us with toxic chemicals, work us to physical exhaustion, or subject us to dangerous heat and dehydration, in the name of profit. Just as workers in Florida are rising up, workers in Louisiana must get organized to make sure our working conditions are safe.

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Sunrise New Orleans Brings Climate Strike to City Hall

Dec. 6: Jesse Perkins, a resident of Gordon Plaza, addresses students participating in a Climate Strike organized by Sunrise New Orleans. Students demanded that the city fully fund the relocation of all residents of Gordon Plaza, a housing development built on toxic soil.

By Nath Clarke

On December 6, 2019, 200 people gathered at City Hall for a Climate Strike organized by Sunrise New Orleans. They demanded that Mayor Latoya Cantrell and the City Council:

  1. Champion the Green New Deal
  2. Fully fund the relocation of Gordon Plaza residents
  3. Stop the construction of the fracked gas plant in New Orleans East
  4. Commit to 100% renewable energy

Students of all ages spoke on the urgency of organizing in the face of the current climate crisis. Reverend Gregory Manning, a pastor at the Broadmoor Community Church, talked about environmental racism—and how people of color often are on the front lines of the fight against coastal erosion. Jesse Perkins (pictured at right), a resident of Gordon Plaza who’s been leading their fight for fully funded relocation spoke as well. Gordon Plaza is a Black, working-class neighborhood in the Upper Ninth Ward built on a Superfund site. For over 30 years, the residents have been organizing for the right to live on soil that won’t kill them.

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General Strike Shuts Down France

Millions of workers in France have been on strike to protest the anti-worker policies of the Macron government. Sign reads “Let’s Revolt!”

Workers Tell Capitalist Government, “Don’t Mess With Us!”

By Nath Clarke

Current French President Emmanuel Macron, who puts the interests of bankers and big business above the people, announced plans to gut Social Security, affecting millions of people across the country. The Yellow Vest movement and many unions have been struggling against his policies (cuts to public spending, increased taxes for the poor, and tax cuts for the super-rich) for over a year. Working French people are not done fighting back against cuts to Social Security, public hospitals, and aid for poor families.

After the government announced plans to reform retirements, several of the most powerful unions offered an ultimatum on December 15th: scrap this law or feel the rage of the people. Since December 3rd, the teachers’ union, the train workers’ union, the bus drivers’ union, the hospital workers’ union, the truckers’, the EMTs’, the airport workers’, the refinery workers’, the firefighters’—and even the lawyers’— unions have issued a call to strike.

The rage of the people is a force to be reckoned with: in Paris, public transportation has come to a halt; only every third train is running across the rest of France; entire refineries have been shut down as their workers walk out. Although the government and corporate media are claiming these unions are just lazy or that these reforms will not affect restaurant workers, cashiers, and other workers in the private sector, nobody is fooled.

Nico, a trucker from the Corbières in Southern France, said that although the strikes have made getting around difficult, he understands that these folks are fighting for everyone. Macron’s reforms will mean that Social Security is a fixed rate. In a country where inflation is constantly on the rise, this will affect all workers, particularly women and folks who earn inconsistent salaries throughout their career.

Edouard, a landscaper who has been going to Yellow Vest protests since last year, told the Workers Voice:

“The government is trying to change the entire system so that different careers get access to different monthly sums based on their supposed societal value. Meanwhile, senators and other politicians will keep their own separate social security system—which receives 1.4 billion euros of funding every year. Cops will also maintain a more beneficial retirement, as France has slowly devolved into a police state under a state of emergency; cops are maiming protesters every week in order to maintain order, while nurses, teachers, servers, and countless other workers are left to starve…This reform is just an attempt to make more money off a system that works perfectly fine… except that it doesn’t generate enough profits for the super rich.”

At the protest on Thursday the 17th, hundreds of thousands of working class folks chanted: “This is democracy,” “Less money for the bankers, more money for the people,” and “Macron, we won’t slow down ’til we stop this reform.” The French government is nothing without the working people whose labor produces all the wealth. It’s the people’s money, and when we unite and fight, we always win.

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Louisiana Cities Are Being Taken Over by Banks

Eight Louisiana municipalities have been put under the control of a “fiscal administrator.” As many as fifteen others are being considered for take over.

By Joseph Rosen and Nath Clarke

Across rural Louisiana, villages and towns have seen their elected governments replaced with the dictatorship of a “fiscal administrator” appointed by a committee run by Attorney General Jeff Landry. Without the input of any of the towns’ residents, these “administrators” are authorized to lay off public workers, raise fees, and make cuts to education, utilities, and other public services—all in order to make payments on the debts incurred by past municipal governments.

The Fiscal Review Committee is made up of multi-millionaire Attorney General Jeff Landry, Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera who has spent years trying to cut Medicaid funding, and State Treasurer John Schroder who is bought off by the Louisiana Association of Business & Industry, a group of ultra-rich CEOs and corporate bosses.

Every year, the Fiscal Review Committee declares towns, villages, and cities “financially unstable”—which can mean anything from the failure of a city government to pay back bank loans to a failure to provide an audit. Eight towns are currently under the rule of a fiscal administrator; as many as fifteen are being eyed by Purpera.

Clayton, Louisiana has been under the thumb of a fiscal administrator since 2017. Because their water system is not “profitable enough,” the Fiscal Review Committee is suggesting they increase the monthly water rate by $10. In a town where 40% of residents live below the poverty line, an extra $10 monthly expense can send a family down the path of ruin. Elsewhere, the committee has proposed cuts to public hospitals which have often been left to ruin for years already, cuts to public schools, and water shutoffs for entire villages. In Clarence, Louisiana, the Fiscal Review Committee recommended increasing traffic fines and fees in a village where fines and forfeitures already comprise more than half of the village budget.

Under the capitalist mode of production, the infrastructure that supports a community of workers is left to rot as soon as capitalists find another place to get their profits from. This applies to cities like Detroit and Flint whose workers produced billions of dollars of wealth for the owners of auto manufacturing plants just as it’s true for Bogalusa, once home to the most productive sawmill in the world. The workers of these cities now live under “emergency managers” where even the elected members of the capitalist government do not have a say over the direct appointees of the banks. Their “fiscal administrators” demand that the working and oppressed residents not only fend for themselves but pick up the tab for the debts incurred by their previous capitalist rulers. Add to this the cost of living with the environmental ravages left by capitalist exploitation.

Workers around the world are standing up to free themselves from the stranglehold of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund that demand that workers sacrifice their pensions, their jobs, their land and their security so that their capitalist governments can keep an open line of credit with the imperialist banks.

Just as workers across the world from Haiti to Chile have stood up to the dictatorship of the banks, so must Louisiana workers rise to defend their right to a life of dignity. Louisiana workers, demand your freedom: Cancel the debts! Fire the fiscal administrators!