BY MICHAEL PENNOCK
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - "Down in Iowa at the beginning of the week, we spoke to 60 different small UPS shippers. We found 59 of them thought the union's position was reasonable and they wished us luck." This was one example Jon Senum used to describe the support the UPS strike was winning to 50 people attending a Militant Labor Forum here August 15. Senum is a part-time loader at the Minneapolis distribution center and a member of Teamsters Local 638.

He also referred to local support rallies. Held in Minneapolis and neighboring Eagan, each drew between 400 and 500 strikers and supporters, including politicians, nonstriking Teamsters, other unionists, and young people.

At each rally there were a dozen or so youth participating in Union Summer activities sponsored by the AFL-CIO. There were also young people who had been to the l4th World Festival of Youth held in Havana, Cuba, in July. Many of these people also attended the Militant Labor Forum.

Also speaking was Doug Jenness, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of St. Paul, and a member of the United Steelworkers of America. He participated in the Minneapolis rally with a number of his coworkers.

Jenness described the Teamster strike as among "the most significant, and the most popular, labor battles of the past 20 or more years. It is significant because it stands to reverse the decades of two-tier wages, downsizing, temporary and part-time jobs, wage cuts and wage freezes, lost pensions, and deterioration of health safety on the job. The Teamsters are fighting to raise wages, protect pensions and job safety, and increase the number and proportion of full- time jobs in the work force at UPS.

"This strike is popular," continued Jenness, "because tens of millions of workers in this country have experienced the same kinds of declines in working conditions over the years as have the UPS workers. And they see that this strike has a very good chance of turning this around for a very large number of workers, and influencing other workers ability to do the same."

During the discussion, a worker mentioned UPS's claim that pensions would dramatically increase if UPS won its demand to have a single employer, rather than the current multiemployer, pension plan.

Senum said the Teamster strikers support the current plan because it protects the pensions of retirees who worked for companies that are out of business due to increased competition after trucking was deregulated in 1978. "Besides," he said, "we can't rely on Social Security alone. Not only is it inadequate, but if our Teamster pension plan was run the way Social Security is, the pension managers would all be in jail! The Federal government raids the Social Security surplus to pay the deficits caused by huge military budgets and the like."

Jenness pointed out that "all pension plans are exposed to the weaknesses of the capitalist system. When, sooner or later, a large economic crash occurs, the pension, which is really just a promise to pay, will go up in smoke." He called for a dramatic increase in the Social Security system, which must be made to cover all workers with adequate old-age security.

BY MEGAN ARNEY

NEWARK, New Jersey - More than 100 people attended the ninth annual Hiroshima Day Observance at the Metropolitan Baptist Church here. The August 7 event was sponsored by the New Jersey Hiroshima Remembrance Committee, New Jersey Peace Action, Womens International League for Peace and Freedom, and others. Ramsey Clark and Congressman Donald Payne were the featured speakers.

Bob Miller, a member of the United Auto Workers and the Socialist Workers candidate for governor in New Jersey, had a campaign table at the event. In addition, Miller set up a display of over 20 reproductions of photos from the Hiroshima Memorial Museum and other materials he obtained while attending conferences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995, commemorating 50 years since the atomic bombings.

Interviewed for a cable TV program, Miller explained, "The fight against nuclear weapons is important today. The threat of a nuclear war is greater now than the past decades as the United States government and other imperialist powers expand NATO, with the aim of going to war against Russia and restoring capitalism there. Washington has thousands of nuclear weapons, is the only government that has used them, and must be disarmed."

Miller also pointed out that over 30,000 Koreans, many of them forced laborers, were among the 200,000 annihilated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

Participants at the meeting bought eight copies of the Militant and $70 worth of Pathfinder literature.

Miller also spoke on a cable television show August 4 in support of the UPS strikers and addressed the thousands who demonstrated August 16 in Brooklyn against the torture of a Haitian man by police there.

Two of Miller's opponents, Gov. Christine Whitman, who is seeking reelection, and James McGreevy, came to the Ford assembly plant in Edison August 18 to drive the first 1998 model Ford Ranger off the line. The Home News & Journal, a central New Jersey daily, reported, "Among the crowd of more than 1,000 workers watching the festivities was Robert Miller, an assembly-line worker and the gubernatorial candidate of the Socialist Workers Party.... He also challenged Whitman's claims in her speech about the strength of the economy. `If it was so wonderful, there wouldn't be a situation where 180,000 UPS workers are fighting for basic dignity.'"

Miller said coworkers snapped up 12 copies of the Militant that day and another worker bought Pombo: a Man of Che's `Guerrilla.' After work, he visited the Teamster picket line in Edison, where he sold two copies of the Militant and the Pathfinder title The Eastern Airlines Strike. The next day, two coworkers decided to renew their subscriptions to the Militant.

BY HOLLY HARKNESS

DETROIT - "The Socialist Workers campaign demands that the Wayne County prosecutor's office retry the killer cop, Walter Budzyn, for the murder of Malice Green," Rosa Garmendia, the Socialist Workers candidate for Mayor of Detroit, said in response to the Michigan Supreme Court decision overturning his second degree murder conviction. Budzyn and his partner, Larry Nevers, were convicted of second degree murder charges by separate juries and sent to prison in October 1993.

The two cops were found guilty of using heavy flashlights to beat Green to death on Nov. 5, 1992. Green, an unemployed steelworker who was Black, was assaulted after he dropped an acquaintance off in front of what the police labeled a "drug house." The attack was witnessed by residents of the neighborhood, many of whom had experienced cop harassment. Coming not long after the acquittal of the Los Angeles police who beat Rodney King, the Green killing became a big issue in Detroit.

The court ruling let Nevers' conviction stand because there was overwhelming evidence. He will remain in federal prison serving a 12-25-year sentence, but Budzyn was released the very next day, after serving only four years of his 8-18-year sentence.

The court ordered a new trial for Budzyn claiming the jury was influenced by three factors outside the trial. First, they viewed the film Malcolm X during a break in the trial, which includes footage of cops beating Rodney King. Secondly, the jury reportedly discussed the special steps that the Detroit cops were taking in case the cops were freed and there might be a riot. The third supposed error was that someone said that both cops had been members of "STRESS," an infamous police task force that targeted Blacks in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The STRESS unit killed 20 people, 17 of whom were Black. It was disbanded after massive public protest. But only Nevers had been a member.

After a two-week delay, with Budzyn walking the streets, and a widespread debate in plants, shopping centers, and in the press over the decision, the Wayne County prosecutor announced that he would seek a new trial, charging the ex- cop with second degree murder.

Meanwhile, Garmendia and Socialist Workers candidates for city council Willie Reid and John Sarge have won spots on the September 9 ballot.

Their supporters gathered more than 2,400 signatures at the candidates work sites, at factory gates, and in working- class neighborhoods to place them on the ballot. Among the signers were dozens of locked out Detroit newspaper workers. The candidates and their supporters have been active in backing the newspaper workers' fight to regain their jobs, as well as walking the picket lines with Teamsters at UPS.

Garmendia is a meatpacker at Thorn Apple Valley and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Reid, a machine operator at American Axle, and Sarge, an auto assembly worker at Ford, are both members of United Auto Workers.  
 
 
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