Tag: strike
Marjorie Taylor Greene

'We've Been Lied To': Margie Says Iran Strike Exposed Ruinous Rift In GOP

One of President Donald Trump's loudest supporters in Congress has become increasingly vocal in her opposition to his latest decision to conduct strikes on Iran.

CNN reported Monday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now directly warning her party that the "very big divide" could end up costing Republicans their majorities in Congress next year if the GOP becomes bogged down in another foreign war while Americans' material needs go unmet. The Georgia Republican sought to stake out common ground between herself and the president, telling CNN that both she and Trump were elected on a promise of "no more foreign wars, no more regime change."

"We’ve been lied to too many times, and I think it’s right to be skeptical," Greene said in response to a question about whether Trump's policies risked losing the support of the MAGA faithful.

"If this war were to continue, and we were to see, sadly, see American troops coming home with on flag-draped coffins, I think you would see Americans totally saying the same thing I’m saying, I hope that never happens again," Greene said, emphasizing that she still believes "President Trump has us on a path to peace."

According to Greene — who has consistently opposed sending resources to Ukraine in its war with Russia — American voters are expecting their leaders to put their concerns front and center, arguing that voters are "very much focused on their American life and their American problems." And she said that new escalations in the Middle East could prove to be a tipping point for many voters next fall.

"Republicans need to earn Americans’ votes," she said. "I don’t think we’re earning our votes in the midterm, and that’s on Congress."

Greene unleashed on the Trump administration on social media earlier on Monday, saying that as a 51 year-old American, she had "watched our country go to war in foreign lands for foreign causes on behalf of foreign interests for as long as I can remember." And she added that while she supports Israel's right to defend itself, she opposed U.S. military involvement in Israeli matters.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Pete Hegseth

Why The Hegseth Debacle Was Inevitable

President Donald Trump’s second administration hasn’t yet hit the 100-day mark, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is already being routinely described as “embattled.” On Friday, Hegseth fired three of the top aides he had brought with him to the Pentagon amid an investigation into unauthorized leaks. Sunday brought two new body blows: News that Hegseth had shared details about U.S. strikes in Yemen in a second unsecured Signal chat — this one including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer — and a scathing op-ed from a former top Pentagon spokesperson who accused Hegseth of creating “total chaos” at the department.

It’s unnerving to see the management of the world’s most powerful military described as “a run of chaos that is unmatched in the recent history of the Defense Department,” or to read reports about how the internal dysfunction is leading some officials “to wonder how the Pentagon would function in a national security crisis.” Trump, however, is standing by Hegseth — apparently the only reporting that can get high-level figures removed in this administration is that of conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.

Hegseth’s disastrous run at the Pentagon is entirely predictable, the natural result of elevating a co-host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition to sixth in the line of succession because the president liked his Fox News hits.

Hegseth lacked anything resembling the traditional qualifications to lead the Defense Department. Other recent picks have leaned on their experience at the top levels of the military, the Pentagon bureaucracy, or congressional oversight of the department, but Hegseth had none of these — he led a platoon in the Army National Guard and oversaw small right-wing veterans organizations before joining Fox as a contributor in 2014. His elevation might nonetheless be explicable if he had unique personal virtues or strong outside-the-box ideas for how to manage the Pentagon, but he’s been dogged by reports of public drunkenness, sexual assault, and financial mismanagement, while his vision for the military seems to begin and end with the notion that it had become excessively “woke.”

What Hegseth had in spades was the one attribute Trump seems to value above all others — years of expressing sycophantic public support for the president on Fox. For Trump, a Fox obsessive who stocked both of his administrations with familiar faces from the network’s green rooms, that was enough.

Trump reportedly considered Hegseth to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs in his first term but ultimately retained him as an outside adviser — one whose counsel he took in offering clemency to several accused and convicted war criminals the Fox host boosted. But for his second time in the Oval Office, Trump tapped Hegseth to run the DOD.

Asking a Fox & Friends weekend host to oversee a massive bureaucracy with millions of military and civilian employees and a budget in the hundreds of billions is obviously stupid, and Hegseth’s nomination appeared to be in jeopardy amid a series of damning reports. But Trump’s MAGA media supporters decided to lay down a marker, threatening Republican senators with primary challenges if they did not support Hegseth’s confirmation, and he ultimately squeaked through as Vice President JD Vance voted to break the Senate’s 50-50 tie.

Hegseth’s actions in office quickly vindicated his critics and forced his defenders to scramble on his behalf. March’s revelation that Hegseth had shared detailed information about imminent U.S. military strikes over a commercial messaging app led to days of strained explanations from his former Fox colleagues and others in the MAGA media.

The response has been somewhat different following Sunday’s revelation of the second such set of messages. Some on Fox have offered defenses for Hegseth, while a Media Matters review found the network’s popular panel show The Five and evening hosts Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity have ignored the story on their programs. Other MAGA media figures have blamed the report on the “deep state,” with some suggesting that Hegseth has been targeted as part of a struggle within the Trump administration over Iran policy.

The defense secretary, meanwhile, has responded to the string of damning reports by leaning into what got him the job in the first place: He has publicly lashed out at his critics and lavished praise on the president.

“They've come after me from day one, just like they've come after President Trump,” Hegseth said in a Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends. “I've gotten a fraction of what President Trump got in that first term. What he has endured is superhuman.”

Hegseth isn’t the only right-wing media star turned top Trump appointee to struggle in the administration’s early days, and we should expect more such stories in the days to come. The president has prioritized hiring people who are adept at throwing red meat to the MAGA base. While that may help them weather scandals that would doom a member of a normal political movement, it is not a skill that translates to overseeing complicated bureaucracies.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Verizon, Unions Agree To Pay Raises, New Jobs To End Strike

Verizon, Unions Agree To Pay Raises, New Jobs To End Strike

By Chuck Mikolajczak

A tentative deal between Verizon Communications Inc and leaders of striking unions includes 1,400 new jobs and pay raises topping 10 percent, the company and unions representing about 40,000 workers said on Monday, hoping to end a walkout that has lasted nearly seven weeks.

One analyst called the deal “very rich” for workers at Verizon, the No. 1 U.S. wireless provider, which reached the tentative pact with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) on Friday. Details for the new four-year contract were disclosed on Monday.

The CWA said Verizon agreed to provide a 10.9 percent raise over four years while Verizon put the increase at 10.5 percent. According to the CWA, both numbers are correct, with the union’s calculation including compounded interest as subsequent raises are determined from a new base salary.

“They needed to end the strike and they bit the bullet,” said Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. He said he thinks the deal “reinforced their commitment to basically exiting” wireline, which he called “the least profitable, most problematic part of the business”

The new contract “gives Verizon four years basically to get rid of the unit. Let it be somebody else’s problem,” Entner said.

But not all analysts saw the deal as the first steps in an eventual sale of the wireline business.

“That is an option available for Verizon,” said Jim Patterson, CEO of Patterson Advisory Group. “However, their recent investment in XO (fiber-optic business) would seem to indicate that infrastructure is becoming a more vital part of the business.”

Nearly 40,000 network technicians and customer service representatives of the company’s Fios internet, telephone and television services units walked off the job on April 13.

Striking workers will be back on the job on Wednesday, the CWA said.

Joshua B. Freeman, labor historian and CUNY professor at Queens College in New York said he would call the contract a win for the union, while noting the increasing rarity of a strike of that size and length.

“These guys not only struck and survived but actually came out of it with a pretty good contract,” he said. “These days, that is a very unusual thing, to see that kind of walkout.”

 

TENTATIVE NEW CONTRACT

The workers have been without a contract since the agreement expired in August; healthcare coverage ran out at the end of April. In 2011, Verizon workers went on strike for two weeks after negotiations deadlocked.

The latest work stoppage stretched across states including New York, Massachusetts and Virginia. Verizon brought in thousands of temporary workers.

New York-based Verizon will add 1,300 call center jobs on the East Coast, and 100 new network technician jobs, Verizon spokesman Richard Young said.

It will withdraw proposed cuts to pensions as well as reductions in accident and disability benefits. The company, however, won cost savings through changes in healthcare plans and limits on post-retirement health benefits.

If union members ratify the agreement, the new contract would run until August 2019.

Members of local unions will vote by mail, at mass membership meetings, and at walk-in balloting meetings and all results are due back to the CWA by June 17, according to Bob Master, assistant to the vice president at the CWA.

Master said, “We’re pretty confident the members will be supportive of the agreement,” citing the closeness between the leadership and its members.

A key objective in the negotiation, according to Master, was the first-time inclusion in the union of Verizon Wireless retail workers.

Verizon worker Fitzgerald Boyce, 45, said he was likely to vote in favor.

“I am extremely relieved that we have a good contract from what I am reading,” said Boyce, a field technician who lives in Brooklyn, New York. “To be able to keep our benefits and actually increase the number of union jobs is a great thing.”

Verizon and the two striking unions were in contract discussions with the help of the U.S. Department of Labor. In mid-May, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez brought the parties back to the negotiating table.

The strike, one of the largest in recent years in the United States, drew support from Democratic U.S. Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

 

SHIFT TO MOBILE

Verizon has shifted its focus in recent years to mobile video and advertising, while scaling back its Fios television and internet services. To tap new revenue, it is boosting its advertising-supported internet business and acquired AOL for $4.4 billion.

Verizon, which claims a high-quality cell network, is locked in a battle for subscribers with AT&T Inc , Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc in a saturated U.S. wireless market.

Verizon’s legacy wireline business generated about 29 percent of company revenue in 2015, down sharply since 2000, and less than 7 percent of operating income.

Verizon Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam said last week the strike could hurt second-quarter results.

Verizon shares closed up 1 percent at $50.62 on Friday. U.S. markets were closed on Monday for the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

 

Reporting by Amrutha Gayathri in Bengaluru, Daniel Trotta and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio

Photo: People demonstrate outside a Verizon wireless store during a strike in New York, U.S., April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton 

Mexican Farmworkers Strike Over Low Wages, Blocking Harvest

Mexican Farmworkers Strike Over Low Wages, Blocking Harvest

By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

SAN QUINTIN, Mexico — Veronica Zaragoza grew up in these coastal fields, picking berries and tomatoes and watching an industry being transformed.

She saw new greenhouses erected, irrigation lines spread through the fields, packing plants expanded and produce piled onto ever-larger trucks.

Everything in this fertile agricultural region 200 miles south of San Diego has changed, it seemed, except her wages. Zaragoza said she still earns 110 pesos per day, about $8 — a little more than when she started picking as a 13-year-old.

Zaragoza, now 26, joined thousands of pickers this week as they spilled onto the streets to protest low wages in a bold demonstration — the first strike by farmworkers here in decades.

Pickers not only stayed out of the fields, they stood shoulder to shoulder blocking the main highway, stalling traffic for hours and all but stopping the harvest at the height of the season.

The clash was shaping up as an early test of a newly formed alliance of produce industry groups dedicated to improving conditions for farmworkers in Mexico.

The group, the International Produce Alliance to Promote a Socially Responsible Industry, was established in February, after the Los Angeles Times documented widespread labor abuses at Mexican export farms.

Hundreds of police and army soldiers dispersed crowds with rubber bullets and tear gas in running skirmishes that have resulted in more than 200 arrests.

Zaragoza, a mother of three, was among those detained and corralled in a field surrounded by police for 17 hours before being released. By Thursday morning, she was back protesting outside a government building in San Quintin where dozens of others remained in custody.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “We just want better lives.”

The strike, which began Tuesday, has shut down schools and stores across the region and focused attention on alleged labor abuses at agribusinesses that export millions of tons of produce to the U.S. every year. Among those targeted are U.S.-based BerryMex, which grows strawberries and raspberries sold under the Driscoll label.

Farmworkers are seeking higher salaries, government benefits and overtime pay. They want agribusiness to stop sexual abuse of female pickers at the hands of field bosses.

Farmworker leaders and government and industry officials met Thursday at a nearby hotel but little progress was reported.

The arid land around San Quintin is one of Mexico’s largest export regions, stretching along 50 miles of coastal plains and valleys and employing tens of thousands of pickers, most of them indigenous people originally from southern Mexico.

Most have been here for decades and watched as agricultural fields bloomed inside state-of-the art greenhouses. Agribusinesses and businesses have invested millions of dollars in infrastructure and irrigation projects.

Some of the region’s biggest growers are politically connected, having served in the Baja California state government. They have avoided the media during the strike, but their defenders say that the wages they offer are higher than in other Mexican agricultural regions.

In a statement, BerryMex said it has been committed to “fairness, honesty and respect for all employees” since starting operations in the region in 2000.

“Our primary focus continues to be toward the well-being of our employees and we are working with local authorities to ensure the safety of our workers and the local community,” the statement said.

But produce picker Bernardo Velasco, 47, said his family lives in bleak conditions. His pueblo of dirt streets south of Colonet has no running water. He said he buys five jugs every week so his family can drink and bathe.

Families also point to other reasons for their plight. The border economy has been hard hit as the peso has declined against the dollar, forcing merchants to charge families more for such things as toilet paper and eggs. Velasco said he can’t feed and house his family on $50 per week.

“We’ve been here for years working and working for the same wage. We’ve had enough,” Velasco said.

When Velasco and others stopped a Tijuana-bound bus during the blockade Tuesday night, they took the passengers off and escorted them to a church where they spent the night. “We told them there was no need to be scared,” Velasco said. “That we only want a just salary.”

But what started as a peaceful protest turned ugly as some people began taking over government buildings and a police station in a string of coastal towns from Colonet to San Quintin. At least one store was looted.

When government forces showed up in convoys, protesters threw rocks and police fired back with tear gas and rubber bullets. Zaragoza said she saw protesters thrown to the ground and pummeled by police.

Like others, she said police were arresting everyone on the streets, even peaceful protesters such as her. On Thursday afternoon, tensions remained high. Dozens of police officers kept watch on hundreds of people gathered outside a state government building where families awaited word on their arrested relatives and the status of the negotiations.

At the hotel meeting room, Alberto Munoz, an attorney representing the growers, said any changes to work conditions would require a long legal process because contracts already exist between the agribusinesses and the unions that represent laborers.

In Mexico, many farmworkers are part of large unions that represent employees from many industries. But those union leaders are often seen as tools of business interests.

Fidel Sanchez, a spokesman for the alliance of indigenous groups representing San Quintin’s farmworkers, said the legal issues would be tough to overcome, at least in the short term.

He hoped to salvage an agreement that would let them bypass union bosses and let the pickers deal directly with their employers.

“We need our own union,” Sanchez said. “And we need a good lawyer.”

Photo: Farmworker Bernardo Velasco Vasquez, 47, stands on the Baja Trans Peninsula Highway in Colonet, Baja California, Mexico, in solidarity with fellow striking strawberry farm workers on March 19, 2015. “We’ve been here for years working for the same wage. We’ve had enough,” he said. (Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

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