Union leaders say the employers will try to end overtime pay for Sundays and night work next if they get these concessions. "It is not our idea that employees should be available for work seven days a week," said Walter Rister, vice president of the metalworkers union, IG Metall.
Paris: more deportations ahead
French interior minister Jean-Louis Debre declared
August 23 that the government will jack up deportations of
undocumented workers and could expel up to 20,000 each year.
The announcement came after a border cop shot and killed an
8-year-old boy August 20. The child was in a convoy of
Bosnian refugees.
Some 43 people from Zaire and 51 Romanians were deported on charter flights in July as anti-immigrant attacks from the government continue. The fascist National Front, which won 15 percent of the vote during presidential elections in the spring, pledged to deport 3 million immigrant workers as part of its campaign.
Gov't tied to Spain death squad
Spanish prime minister Felipe González knew about death
squads that killed 27 people allegedly connected with the
Basque separatist movement in the 1980s. This accusation was
made by Ricardo García Damborenea, former general secretary
of González's Socialist Party in the Basque region. He and
González discussed strategy of the groups "not once, but
several times," said García Damborenea, who himself
admitted to involvement in a 1983 kidnapping by the death
squads.
The judge in charge of investigating the death squads termed the charge "credible." Media reports say that González, who denied the accusation, had decided he will not seek reelection.
Russian army demands pay
Moscow's austerity budget, imposed in an agreement with
the International Monetary Fund last spring, has resulted in
pay delays for workers, troops and pensioners. Russian Maj.
Gen. Alexander Artemov said the army had unpaid bills of
more than $160 million and had received only enough money to
pay for soldiers' breakfasts. "A hungry army is no army at
all," he told the Russian daily Trud.
Meanwhile, trade union leaders in the province of Sakhalin said August 23 that coal miners would strike if back wages are not paid within the next 10 days. The miners say they have not been paid since April. The head of the national pension fund said pensions payments are delayed six weeks because the government's debt to the pension fund exceeds $813 million.
Banking crisis in Russia
Russia's central bank pumped $360 million into the
currency market August 24-25 to avert a severe banking
crisis, according to acting central bank chairwoman Tatyana
Paramonova. Several of Russia's 3,000 banks stopped lending
to one another, following media reports that some fairly
large banks may be on the verge of collapse.
Paramonova pointed out that nearly 100 mostly small banks were on the edge of bankruptcy. Interest rates offered by larger banks shot up to as much as 500 percent, from 120 percent earlier in the week. While Paramonova and first deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais tried to downplay the banking crisis, Denis Kisiliev, head of the investment company North-East Alliance, remarked, "We already have a banking crisis - the interbank market collapsed."
Auto sales slump in Mexico
Mexico's vehicle market has been devastated by the
county's financial crisis, according to the Mexican Auto
Dealers Association. Overall sales through July were down 61
percent from a year ago and the 11,991 cars and trucks sold
in July alone dropped 75 percent from the 47,998 vehicles
sold in July last year. Eighteen Mexican Chrysler dealers
traveled to Detroit to demand a meeting with the company's
chief executive officer, Robert Eaton. The dealers, who have
been sitting in the lobby of the company headquarters,
complained about being forced to pay the costs of financing
their unsold vehicles.
Cyanide spilled in Guyana rivers
Omai Gold Mines Ltd. said more than 800 million gallons
of cyanide-laced water gushed into two major rivers when a
retaining wall broke August 20. It was the second spill in
three months at the mine, located in Guyana's jungle. The
company estimated up to 2,000 pounds of the deadly poison
went into the Omai River, a tributary of the Essequibo, the
largest river in Guyana.
Guyana president Cheddi Jagan declared the area an environmental disaster and asked for international aid. Rupert Roopnarine, opposition Working People's Alliance member of parliament, called for an investigation with "a view to prosecutions" and for "closure of this ill-conceived fiasco." The gold mine, which employs about 900 workers, is jointly owned by U.S. and Canadian-based companies. The Guyana government holds a 5 percent stake in the enterprise.
Thug cop sentenced in Haiti
Gerard Gustave, former member of the Haitian
paramilitary group FRAPH, was given a life sentence August
25 for his part in the murder of Antoine Izmery. The wealthy
businessman and campaign fund-raiser for Haitian president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was dragged out of a church in 1993
and shot in the head by paramilitary thugs known as
attaches.
The CIA-backed FRAPH was responsible for the slaughter of 4,000 supporters of Aristide during the military regime that ruled from September 1991 to October 1994. FRAPH founder Emmanuel Constant attended deportation hearings August 25 in Baltimore. Constant fled to the United States in December to avoid murder charges.
Job cuts hit Blacks hardest
The U.S. labor department reported that between January
and July, 144,000 government jobs and 142,00 jobs in the
service sector held by Blacks were eliminated. The
unemployment rate for Blacks increased to 11.1 percent in
July, while the unemployment rate for whites stayed at 4.8
percent during the same period.
Edmund Phelps, professor of economics at Columbia University, asserts that it wouldn't be unusual to see the unemployment rate for Black workers increase twice as fast as the rate for whites during an economic downturn.
Chain gang breaking rocks
The Limestone Correctional Facility in Alabama will
shackle together 160 inmates in leg irons to break limestone
with sledgehammers, according to prison commissioner Ron
Jones. Armed guards will supervise the prisoners, who will
wear white uniforms with the words "Chain Gang" inscribed on
them. Chain gangs were reintroduced in Alabama in May after
being abolished in the 1960's during the struggle of Blacks
to defeat the Jim Crow system of segregation in the South.
Some inmates have filed lawsuits against Jones and Alabama Gov. Fob James, saying the chain gangs violate their civil rights and the leg irons make them feel like animals. The prisoners are also concerned about having to break rocks in temperatures that had climbed up to 100 degrees for six consecutive days.
- MAURICE WILLIAMS