Low-wage workers unite for $15 Now

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PORTLAND, Ore.—On Dec. 4, the 2nd anniversary of the first Fast Food strikes—when 200 workers walked out—the actions have increased in number to include over 190 cities in the United States alone. Moreover, workers at convenience stores have joined them. As we go to press, reports indicate that home-care workers have turned out in solidarity, and airport workers are striking in 10 cities. In some cities, workers in stores such as Dollar Tree and Big Lots are walking out with the demand of “$15 and a union.”

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry addressed the grow­ ing movement, “The Fight for $15 movement is growing, as more Americans living on the brink decide to stick to­ gether to fight for better pay and an economy that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few.”

Workers in industries beyond fast food have joined the fight because they face the same struggles, says Arun Ivatury, with the National Employment Law Project. “These are all some of the fastest-growing occupations in the country, and they’re also some of the lowest-paying, as little as $8 or $9 an hour in terms of the median wage in these occupations. These are struggles these workers are facing across these industries—they’re facing the same struggle for respect and decent schedules with ad­ vance notice and enough hours to make a decent living.” Airport worker strikes were planned in New York, Newark, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Minneapo­ lis, Oakland, Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, and Atlanta. Pro­ testing airport workers sent a letter to the CEOs of the six largest airlines, saying, “As airport workers we have pledged to stand together with people who work in home care and fast food to fight for $15 an hour.” “Like many other airport workers, I make only mini­ mum wage with no benefits,” said Abera Siyoum, a dis­ ability cart driver at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. “When I look at the fight of fast-food workers, I see my fight. We live in the same community and suffer the same problems and that’s why we’re all fighting to make a change.”

In recent months, some of the most promising orga­ nizing efforts have been taking place in Oregon. The 15 Now group started last March, with Portland (PDX) as the center of its activities. The constant activity has gained hundreds of supporters and endorsers. In the last couple of months, the strategy has been to go statewide and add additional regional representatives and more organizations to its steering committee. The first successful organizing outside the Portland area has been in southern Oregon, where 15 Now is working with Jobs With Justice and Oregon Strong Voice. New chapters are starting in six other cities.

The work of 15 Now Portland has accumulated en­ dorsements of over 20 union locals. Some endorsements are from statewide organizations, including American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon Education Association (OEA/Teach­ ers), Service Employees International Union (SEIU 503), Oregon State Association of Letter Carriers (OSALC), and Oregon School Employees Association (OSEA). Rank-and-file activists from these and other union locals will help with moving 15 Now throughout the state. Both AFSCME local 88 and Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) 483 asked 15 Now PDX to join them in their campaign for a $15 floor in their contract. This resulted in winning raises for Multnomah County workers, Seasonal Park Rangers, and workers at Home Forward (Housing Authority of Portland). Minimum-wage ballot measures The midterm elections had a low turnout average of 34 percent nationally. But even where Republican candi­ dates won election, ballot measures to raise the minimum wage also won—with percentages as high as 68 percent. None of the raises on the statewide minimum-wage bal­ lot measures were for $15 an hour and were even below Obama’s proposed $10.10. Clearly, the Democratic Party was calling the shots on the wording of these measures. However, thousands of workers will get raises in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

The Illinois ballot had only a “non-binding advisory” calling for $10, which also passed. Two cities had impor­ tant victories: Oakland, Calif., raised its minimum wage to $12.25, with rapid implementation and cost of living increases. San Francisco was the only place that $15 was on the ballot, and it passed by the most votes—76% vot­ ed yes.

Since it had become clear that San Francisco would score a victory for $15, 15 Now and Labor Notes in Port­ land started early to organize an event featuring one of the major leaders of the S.F. ballot campaign, Alysabeth Alexander, SEIU 1021 Vice President for Politics, along with Nicole Grant, representing Washington State Young Emerging Labor Leaders (YELL), who worked on the Seattle $15 campaign. The event was geared to union members and called, “Unions and the Fight for $15.” Seventy-five union members from both public and pri­ vate sector unions met to engage with these labor leaders about their struggles and the strategy for Oregon. Alexan­ der introduced herself as a rank-and-file member of SEIU 1021 who ran and was elected as a reform candidate for vice president. She encouraged everyone to work for a statewide ballot measure in Oregon.

She cautioned to not let people dismiss the San Francis­ co win by saying, “Oh, of course that is San Francisco.” She pointed out that the cities of Richmond and Berkeley, Calif., both have “left-leaning” elected officials, but their minimum wage is not close to $15.

The difference, she emphasized, is that in San Francisco they worked to build the movement for two years before it was on the ballot. As soon as the pressure of that move­ ment had moved the mayor to come out in favor of rais­ ing the minimum wage, they immediately decided to try to put the question on the ballot, so there could be no negotiating downwards.

Midterm election In Oregon Oregon was an anomaly in November’s election. We had twice the turnout of the national average because we have vote by mail and usually have controversial or inci­ sive ballot measures. In this election, driver cards for un­ documented Oregonians, GMO labeling, and legalizing marijuana were all on the ballot. As a result the Demo­ cratic governor was re-elected, and the Democrats have increased majorities in the State Senate and House. Democrats campaigned generically about raising the minimum wage, but all of the candidates refused to be specific. So with the expanding 15 Now movement being the only ones talking explicitly about the minimum wage, that is the number people are discussing.

Surprisingly, a state Senate Democrat and two state Representatives told 15 Now that they would introduce a $15 minimum wage bill. It ended up as authorizing a $15 minimum wage in 2016 for businesses with 10 employ­ ees or more, with a two-year implementation for small businesses of nine or less. No one believes that the bill will pass, but it will facilitate $15 Now’s conducting pub­ lic hearings across the state in preparation for launching a ballot measure.

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the United States.

Similarly, the five million immigrants who struck nationwide in 2006 against the racist immigration bill proposed by Republican Congressmen James Sensenbrenner and Peter King entitled, “Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act” offered a living example of the pow­ er of mass opposition and protest that raised the level of political consciousness of all. It is no co­ incidence that Obama’s executive order employs Sensenbrenner-type language—“terrorism, border protection, and immigration control.”

Obama’s fake decree was nothing less than a rul­ ing-class effort to set the stage for the next round of electoral debate, in which the “lesser evil” will be once again counterposed to the so-called greater (Above) Cleveland home-care workers and consumers join together in $15 wage campaign. On Saturday, Jan. 24—before the legislature is even in session—there will be a statewide rally at the capitol in Salem, which will be a platform for low-wage workers to talk about why they are fighting for $15 an hour. After­ wards, a statewide 15 Now gathering will take place for workers across the state.

How can we win 15 for millions?

There is no question that the movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 has been developing into an im­ portant component of working-class organizing. In just two years it has spread from a single city, Seattle, to 120 cities. There have been eight one-day strikes. In April 2015, a second global strike of low-wage workers will take place—with actions throughout South America, North America, Asia, and Europe.

Organizing in the United States so far has been uneven. In some cities, unions have managed the organizing ef­ forts in a top-down manner. In some areas, coalitions have been formed, although not yet on a very broad ba­ sis. But the movement continues to broaden and grow with each mobilization—including workers who have no union, as well as union members who are winning a $15 floor in their contracts. Union members in the public sector have especially shown their support, although no union strikes for $15 have taken place.

To win $15 for the nation’s workers, a national move­ ment must be built. Although more victories can be won in city and state ballot measures, the movement’s tactics must progress to the level of national actions. A broad sector of the working class must be involved in organiz­ ing activities, including the unemployed and workers who make more than the minimum wage. All-inclusive coalitions must be constructed in every city to encompass every possible organization, commu­ nity group, or individual that is willing to make a com­ mitment to the fight to make $15 a minimum for all work­ ers throughout the nation. An indication of the potential power of a united movement was seen in the Ferguson protests on Black Friday (Nov. 28) when an activist in New York City pointed out to the media, “There is no racial justice without economic justice.” n evil. But the massive 2014 election abstention rate of Latino workers—and indeed, the vast majority of all the oppressed and youth—was a stinging re­ buke to Obama’s across-the-board policies of aus­ terity, racism, environmental destruction, endless war, and atrocities against immigrants.

There are no capitalist “saviors.” The gap is nar­ rowing between the growing hatred of capitalism’s brutality and the still modest number of acts of re­ sistance.

The prospect of explosive events that can bring millions into the streets and into the political are­ na—making use of a new fighting labor movement, mass organizations of struggle, and independent working-class political parties—was significant­ ly advanced when tens of thousands took to the streets to express their solidarity with Ferguson’s Black community and to condemn the inherent rac­ ism of corporate America and its militarized policestate-like criminal “justice” system. n SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2014 5

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Unmasking the hype in capitalist economics T pressed, and the youth won a resounding victory he U.S. working class, the nation’s poor and op­ on Election Day 2014 when they cast their “votes” for the most popular candidate of all—“None of the Above.” Indeed, “None of the Above” won the muchhyped midterm election “contest” hands down, when 64% of eligible voters declined to participate in the orchestrated U.S. charade that poses as real politics.

The 34 percent Election Day turnout, the lowest in 72 years, registered in large part the mass dissatisfac­ tion with the policies of the twin parties of capitalism, who spent a combined and record total of $4 billion in efforts to turn out their supporters.

The stunning election returns confirmed a number of national polls indicating that Congress’ approval ratings a few months before the elections had sunk to near all-time lows, at 14 percent or less. An earlier poll put they figure at 8 percent!

The figures are consistent with a Gallop Poll find­ ing a year earlier, in which “60% of Americans say the Democratic and Republicans parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed. That is the highest Gallup has measured in the 10-year history of this question. A new low of 26% believe the two major parties ade­ quately represent Americans.”

The traditional “lesser evil” charade, in which the Democrats are portrayed as more receptive to work­ ing people than the Republicans, gave way to a mas­ sive rejection of both parties. The under-30 youth vote participation declined from 19 to 13 percent, with similar dramatic declines in the participation of Blacks and Latinos, who registered unprecedent­ edly high turnouts in 2008—a higher percentage than white voters.

This growing disillusionment with capitalist politics is in direct proportion to the concerted bipartisan at­ tacks launched against working people on every front at every level of society. Rigged figures on unemploy­ ment notwithstanding, participation in the U.S. work­ force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, stands at a record low over the past decade, register­ ing 62.7 percent in 2014. Wages during the same pe­ riod have been in steep decline. Part-time, non-union, minimum-wage, no-benefits, and sub-standard work­ ing-conditions jobs are increasingly the norm.

While the quality of life of the nation’s working masses has been driven down to new depths, the ruling rich have prospered as never before, with the rich-poor gap among the highest in earth. By every measure, government policy has been to transfer tril­ lions of dollars and vital social services of every kind from working people to the miniscule minority ruling elite—whether it be to their banks, insurance compa­ nies, corporations, military-industrial complex, or any other private for-profit institution that, in the context of the world capitalist crisis, cannot operate other than at the expense of the people.

It is not just the American ruling class that robs the working masses but the crisis-ridden ruling classes across the globe. Europe’s economy is stagnant or in decline. The same with Japan. China’s growth has significantly slowed, as have the other BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Africa and the even poorer regions all suffer the conse­ quences as the rich plunder their resources, exploit their people and bring war and devastation every­ where. There are no exceptions!

At the level of the world economy, again with no ex­ ceptions, the crises are “resolved” through the imposi­ tion of massive austerity programs implemented with abandon, as social services, health care, education, wages, and working conditions are continually erod­ ed, regardless of which capitalist party is in power.

A late November New York Times headline that reads, “Banks are Fined $4.5 Billion in Currency Inves­ tigation” is but the tip of the iceberg.” The offenders include the top U.S. banking institutions, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, who were charged with and ad­ mitted to “conspiracy to manipulate foreign currency markets. “No leaders or executives were charged with wrongdoing,” according to The Times.

Last year the same banks and several others were fined to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars for misstating the value of the mortgages and bonds they sold to the government during the 2008-9 corporate/ banking “bailouts.” The fines paled in comparison to the trillions of dollars gifted by the Federal Reserve Stan Honda / AFP/ Getty Images to “prevent” a meltdown of the U.S. financial infrastructure. Again, de­ spite the trillions stolen, no one went to prison because the government’s “regulators” and “investigators” were partners in the rip off—cut out of the same class of interchangeable private and government functionaries. Yes­ terday’s corporate bankers routinely become today’s “investigators” of wrongdoing and visa versa.

Political activists who are begin­ ning to challenge “the system” must ask, “Why is this happening today?”

What is the reason for the crisis? Does it stem from the base greed of the trillion-dollar ruling rich and their billionaire underlings, who spend hundreds of millions on Andy Warhol paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Eliz­ abeth Taylor auctioned off at Sotheby?

Can President Obama be reduced to a cheap, lying politician whose every well-publicized “progressive” utter­ ance is contradicted by his heinous deeds?

Or even a more serious question:

Are the elite few, the “one percent,” (actually less than 0.1 percent) who really rule the country, evil because they crave ever more trillions for their bank accounts? Or is there something more fundamental that goes to the root of the crisis?

A worthy article in the Business Sec­ tion of the Nov. 13 New York Times offers an unusual insight into what amounts to a debate between an ap­ parently critical writer, Jesse Eisinger, and his seem­ ingly intended prey, Peter Singer, the top officer of the $25 billion hedge fund, Elliot Management. Eisinger, a regular Times columnist, economic specialist, and Pu­ litzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who was ahead of the curve in predicting at least in part the 2008 economic meltdown, seemingly takes issue with a recent Singer letter to his hedge-fund investors.

Singer wrote: “Nobody can predict how long govern­ ment can get away with fake growth, fake money, fake jobs, fake financial stability, fake inflation numbers and fake income growth.” Singer continues: “We do not think this optimism is warranted and we think a lot of this optimism is cooked or misleading.”

To set the stage for what initially appears to be a stinging rebuttal, Eisinger refers to Singer as having an “Edvard Munch moment”—an allusion to the 19thcentury artist’s agonized or existential series of works called “The Scream,” which evoke images of looming catastrophe. Eisinger similarly rejects the notion that the “zillionaire’s spending billions on inflated real es­ tate” is a “harbinger of Zimbabwe.” The latter is a ref­ erence to Zimbabwe’s November 2008 hyperinflation rate of 79.6 billion percent at a time when the angered imperial powers cut off all credits to the Mugabe gov­ ernment to punish it for nationalizing the land of the previous white colonial settlers. Mugabe printed un­ told sums of currency to pay the nation’s bills, quickly rendering its currency worthless.

But after briefly debunking any notion that Singer might be on to something real, Eisinger writes, “There really is a lot that seems ‘fake’ about the economy and markets. The paranoia is rooted in troubling epi­ sodes.”

Eisinger’s list of troubling “episodes” is extensive. “Then came the 2008 crash,” he writes, “and a series of government-orchestrated moves that relied on the collective suspension of disbelief. Take the 2009 stress test of the country’s largest financial companies. It was a policy miracle, the crowning achievement of the rescue from the crisis. The market was still pan­ icking months after the government and the Federal Reserve had lowered interest rates to zero, engaged in extraordinary lending facilities, infused billions in equity of all the top banks, taken over the American International Group and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and allowed the two top investment banks, Goldman (continued on page 7)

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Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to tap the Federal Reserve lending window.”

Eisinger adds that, in point of fact, the whole bank­ ing and hedge-fund industry understood that any real stress test of the banks at that moment would have revealed that they were all “insolvent.”

In short, Eisinger, a reporter for ProPublica, an in­ dependent non-profit public interest newsroom that supports investigative journalism, reveals in a few sentences that the capitalist government and all of its key financial institutions bailed out the nation’s lead­ ing but bankrupt banks, insurance companies, and re­ lated private institutions. The rough total amounts to some $30 trillion dollars!

And where, we should ask, did this estimated $30 trillion come from? Was it hidden away in Fort Knox in the form of gold, as was the case before the U.S. was compelled to abandon the gold standard in 1971? In truth, today there is no correspondence between the value of gold or any other commodity, and the cur­ rency in circulation. The only approximate measure of “value” today is the U.S. dollar, the world’s official reserve currency, that is, the currency that most of the world recognizes as the basic medium of exchange or trade for all commodities.

But here a question of critical importance is posed. Can the U.S. government or Federal Reserve simply print money or issue paper bonds to meet its financial obligations—money that has no basis in value other than the “good faith and credit” of the U.S. govern­ ment? That was the case with the $30 trillion bailout!

The government literally printed the money or is­ sued bonds (promises to pay). For the sake of argu­ ment, could the U.S. simply and instantly pay off its un­ precedented national debt of $17 trillion, an amount exceeding its total GNP, by ordering its technicians to rev up the presses to print $17 trillion in cash or in government bonds? If this were the case, chaos would ensue instantly and everywhere.

But this is a subject for another article, including whether or not the unchecked printing of paper mon­ ey poses, in time, the threat of inflation levels never before seen, perhaps closer to the Zimbabwe type, or perhaps a bit less! If every nation could simply pay off its massive debts in a single day of printing money, the world would be a strange place, to say the least.

But the unprecedented 2008 financial crisis was “resolved,” so they say, when the government gifted the rich trillions of dollars in bailout funds. They pur­ chased essentially worthless bank-held mortgages at full value—i.e., at the value reported to them by the banks—not the real value. Further, by reducing inter­ est rates charged to banks for loans to zero, any and all of the top corporations and banks virtually instant­ ly appeared at the government’s trough, if for no other reason than they understand that the government’s free money could be re-invested almost anywhere at rates far greater than zero percent.

Eisinger curiously ends his “rebuke” of billionaire Singer by noting a truth that cannot be denied. He writes, “There has been a shift from making invest­ ments for the health of the company and the econo­ my toward cutting jobs and elevating share prices … No one can say how long this can go on. But it’s not sustainable. At the risk of sounding like a Singerite, doesn’t it sound just a bit—what’s the word?—fake?” Well said!

Here we get to the nub of the matter—an explana­ tion that best reveals why the ongoing and deepen­ ing world economic crisis has nothing to do with the posturing public politics of the Democrats or Repub­ licans, whether they be of the “liberal,” “conservative,” or ultra-reactionary Tea Party variety.

The capitalist system is mired in a long-term eco­ nomic crisis because of its very nature—the absolute imperative to expand and grow or die. Today’s giant corporations are in constant battles with each other on a world scale to secure markets for their compet­ ing commodities. Each technological innovation in the productive process employed by one is quickly matched or exceeded in productive capacity by the rest. What was a state-of the-art auto factory yester­ day becomes obsolete within months.

The same holds for every sphere of capitalist pro­ duction. Those who employ the best, most efficient, cost-saving technologies (as well as cheapening the cost of labor) win the game, that is, until the remain­ ing competitors are either compelled, at great ex­ pense, to introduce the next level of technology or go out of business. Wall Street’s current return to mas­ sive mergers and acquisitions is nothing less than one of capitalism’s imperatives to consolidate the power to dominate by absorbing the productive facilities of lesser competitors. Small corporations are daily eaten and digested by their larger superiors.

In the same manner, the introduction of each new technology has the effect of substituting super ma­ chines for human labor. Hence, we see the worldwide rise in unemployment and the associated worldwide decline of the manufacturing sectors in the world’s advanced capitalist nations.

The shift to low-wage poor nations is a prerequi­ site to survival. As Marx explained long ago—and his words today have come back to haunt the floundering capitalist world—the inherent “law of the tendency of the rate to profit to fall” is central to the explanation for the system’s periodic and unavoidable crises. Cap­ italists worldwide understand full well that investing in yet another round of technological innovation to beat their competitors is less and less profitable, if at all. This was the case with the world’s once largest corporation, General Motors, whose negative profit rates forced it to declare bankruptcy.

Eisinger hits the nail on the head when he proclaims an astonishing and rarely reported fact: “The larg­ est United States corporations took 91 percent of their earnings from 2003 to 2013 and plowed them into buying back their own stock or paying out divi­ dends….” This is the essence of what he means by the shift from “making investments for the health of the company and the economy toward cutting jobs and elevating share prices.”

Why invest in building relatively unprofitable facto­ ries that produce commodities that have already satu­ rated world markets and whose rate of profit is ever declining? Why hire workers to do this? This simple statistic, “91 percent,” goes a long way in explaining why today’s U.S. stock market stands at an all-time high when jobs are at an all time low—since the last Great Depression.

Historically, capitalists “plowed” some 15 percent of their earnings into speculative ventures like the stock market and banking institutions. The rest went into ever new and expanded “means of production”—that is, giant factories and new machinery to extract and process needed raw materials. These required work­ ers in the tens of millions and more.

But in today’s world of “casino capitalism,” stock market, hedge fund, and other such speculative finan­ cial ventures that play with capital are the rule, not the exception, and ever more so when the govern­ ment essentially offers free money to the corpora­ tions that do so.

For the past seven years, to supposedly save the economy from collapse, the government’s policy of “quantitative easing,” or buying near worthless bank mortgages and bonds at massively inflated prices de­ termined by the banks themselves, has poured tril­ lions of dollars into the coffers of the major banks and corporations, which, in turn pour it into the stock market, thus driving indices to historic highs that result in incredible gains—on paper, that is. The for­ tunes of the ruling class are thus “grown” massively while they produce in the real world of jobs and com­ modities, in proportion, little or nothing!

The “success” of this American “model” today has led to virtually the entire capitalist world following suit. Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic formula, dubbed “abenomics,” was patterned after the U.S.’s “miraculous recovery.” Massive Japanese Central Bank subsidies to failing corporations were combined Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Above) Wall St. protest against 2008 bank bail-out.

with massive attacks on workers, including a major sales-tax increase aimed at robbing the many to save the few.

The result? Initially, but briefly, a terrific success took place for the banking elite. But today? Japan’s second quarter growth declined 7.3 percent, followed by a 1.6 percent decline just announced for the third quarter. Similar figures have been posted for virtually all of Europe, matched by major declines in growth in nearly all of the BRICS nations. China’s growth rate has declined by close to 50 percent.

“Recession in Japan Stirs Worry in Europe” was the mid-November headline for a New York Times article that stated, “The US is about the only growth beacon in the global economy. … But it looks like the rest of the world is going to be relying on the U.S. as consum­ er of last resort.”

But is it? Another Times article few days later, Nov. 22, headlined, “Is the Economic Outlook Great or Aw­ ful?” noted several major weakness in the so-called U.S. recovery, including a major drop in the price of gas and oil stemming from both a decline in world demand and a likely domestic slowdown as well. The article notes that previously optimistic estimates in U.S. GDP growth have been reduced from 3.5 percent to 2.5 percent.

Furthermore, a Nov. 21 National Employment Law Project report, entitled, “Manufacturing Low Pay: De­ clining Wages in the Jobs That Built America’s Middle Class,” included some startling figures:

• “Nine out of ten Americans believe that a strong manufacturing base is very important to our coun­ try’s standard of living, according to a poll conducted by the consulting firm Deloitte for the Manufacturing Institute. When asked what type of facility they would support to bring jobs to their community, a manufac­ turing plant was at the top of the list.” But the report continues:

• “Manufacturing wages now rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the United States.”

• “While in the past, manufacturing workers earned a wage significantly higher than the U.S. average, by 2013 the average factory worker made 7.7 percent below the median wage for all occupations.”

• “The perception that manufacturing jobs are high­ ly paid disguises how many workers are stuck at the bottom. Today, more than 600,000 manufacturing workers make just $9.60 per hour or less. More than 1.5 million manufacturing workers—one out of every four—make $11.91 or less.”

• “Manufacturing wages are not even keeping up with inflation. Real wages for manufacturing workers declined by 4.4 percent from 2003 to 2013—almost three times faster than for workers as a whole.”

Perhaps a final comment on the economic recovery is in order. Median-adjusted income for 2013 was $2100 less than when President Obama took office in 2009 and $3600 lower than when President Bush took office in 2001.

President Obama’s $30 trillion bailout to corporate America was accompanied by devastating attacks on virtually all social programs as well as unprec­ edented attacks on the wages and quality of life of the American working class—euphemistically called “the middle class” by corporate America’s media pundits and politicians. The “new jobs” claimed by Obama are overwhelmingly low-wage—often minimum-wage— zero-benefit, part-time, and temporary. Banks and corporations routinely stuff their coffers with trillions of dollars more by utilizing rigged “laws” written by (continued on page 9, in “‘Amazons’ — One more challenge to the myth of male dominance”)

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News and views from SA Canada website: http://socialistaction.ca stressed the need to devote society’s resources to meet­ ing urgent human needs. Needs at the forefront include housing, transportation, and health solutions, as well as the conversion of energy systems to green alternatives to carbon-burning, rather than investing in wasteful, profitoriented pipeline construction. “It is increasingly clear that environmentalism and capitalism are incompatible,” said Goldberg.

The Socialist Caucus played a very prominent role at the

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2014 Activists beginning to challenge ‘the system’ must ask whether some­ thing fundamental is at the root of the crisis.

The ‘new jobs’ claimed by Obama are largely low-wage, part-time, zero- benefit, and temporary.