Vol. 75/No. 29      August 8, 2011

The concessions include Steelworkers giving back up to $3.50 an hour in wages and benefits and granting a reduction of job classifications from 33 to nine. Such job combinations would mean the loss of thousands of jobs. The company is also trying to expand the work carried out in the mills by nonunion workers.

There are 44,000 workers covered by the contract due to expire August 1. Only 21,000 of them are currently working.

Mobilizing solidarity for the Steelworkers will be important since the outcome of the confrontation will have broad ramifications not only in the steel industry but throughout basic industry.  
 
August 7 & 14, 1961
A million Cubans—more than one-seventh of the entire population of the island—assembled in Havana July 26 to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the attempt to take the Moncada fortress at Santiago. The fervor of the enormous crowd that heard Fidel Castro’s address was reported to be the highest yet since the downfall of Batista and the beginning of the profound changes that have put Cuba on the road to socialism.

One of Cuba’s worst social evils, the permanent unemployment of approximately one-third of the labor force has been greatly ameliorated.

The major change was made possible by ending capitalist control over hiring and firing, by the introduction of a big program of public works, including ambitious projects to industrialize Cuba and mechanize its agriculture.  
 
November 28, 1936
A new field for profit-making in the coming war will be the production of disease germs, says an article in “Contact,” an aviation news weekly. Already a plant has been constructed in the United States for the manufacture of bombs that will be loaded with disease germs.

“Self-infecting powder, consisting of exploded gas and ground silicon dioxide, is impregnated with germs and a food paste, capable of keeping them alive 60 to 80 hours under the severest conditions. This is blown out behind the planes through the exhaust and makes its own minute cut and infection, filtering through the clothing and breathed in with the dust.

“There will be more profit in growing germs than in making shells. Most germ culture will sell for over $300 a pound. The cost of production is less than $6 a pound.”  
 
 
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