Vol. 76/No. 7 February 20, 2012
February 20, 1987
When the owner of the Cuirs Hawton leathergoods factory in Haiti fired six workers in December 1986, all the workers went on strike to demand that the six be rehired. Their strike is an example of the efforts by Haitian workers to build a fighting union movement in the face of stiff opposition from U.S. and Haitian bosses.For 29 years Haiti was ruled by the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorship. More than half of all workers were unemployed and wages averaged less than $3 a day. This meant big profits for Haitian bosses and for the many foreign capitalists, most from the United States.
When a massive popular rebellion forced Duvalier to flee the country in February 1986, Haitian workers began to raise demands for higher wages and started to form unions. Factory bosses, both Haitian and U.S., responded with intimidation and arbitrary firings.
February 19, 1962
President Kennedy’s decision to plunge this country deeper into the South Vietnamese civil war can mean a blood-bath even worse than Truman’s “police action” in Korea.Kennedy’s decision to put a four-star general in charge of operations there and to accelerate the flow of troops and equipment deliberately flouts the Constitution which says only Congress can commit the country to war.
The claim that “aggression” by North Vietnam is responsible for the civil war now in its eighth year and that the U.S. has intervened to stave off a possible victory of “totalitarianism” is the cruelest kind of lie. The civil war is a popular uprising of the peasantry against the oppression of the Ngo Dinh Diem dictatorship—a dictatorship that survives only by the grace of U.S. guns and dollars.
February 20, 1937
General Motors has signed its first national agreement with an industrial union. This fact represents a real victory for the auto workers and for the forces of the Committee for Industrial Organization. The first major breach in the iron front of the open shop mass production industries has been made.Definite gains involved in the settlement were: first, establishment of the principal of national bargaining between national officers of the company and of the United Auto Workers of America. Second, recognition of the union as the sole bargaining agent in seventeen strike bound plants for a period of six months.
The sit-down strike is by inference recognized as a legitimate weapon since it is mentioned in the terms of settlement and the corporation agrees to withdraw all court action based on plant occupation and now pending against the union.
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