www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, January-February 2004No to job abusesMemphis, Tenn.--On Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, 250 to 300 labor union activists and their supporters rallied outside the federal building, and then in the First United Methodist Church. We were one of more than 90 events in 38 states. Our cry was "Worker Rights are Human Rights.” The need to turn the slogan into reality became clear when warehouse workers from Fred’s, nurses at the Med, and printing workers from Quebecor World talked about their conditions of life and labor. There were union leaders there from Brazil and Britain to show international solidarity. The uniquely backwards and racist conditions that workers in the South endure was brought home by Vernon Robson, a Graphical Paper and Media Union member from Britain who stayed with local Quebecor workers. He referred to how Quebecor management had set up a coffin in the factory and threatened workers they would put their relatives in it, if workers didn’t stop agitating for safe working conditions. One of the sanitation workers from the 1968 strike in Memphis spoke about what conditions were like when Martin Luther King, Jr., came to help them in their organizing drive. His moving words gave a tremendous lift to the ongoing drive in the Mid-South to transform the so-called "right to work” states into places where workers are treated with human dignity and earn a living wage. --Terry Moon |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
