Vol. 76/No. 30 August 13, 2012
August 14, 1987
PLAINVIEW, Texas—Workers at the Excel meat-packing plant here voted July 30 to retain the United Food and Commercial Workers union as their bargaining representative.The North American Meat Packers Union challenged the UFCW in the election. The vote was 496 to 347.
UFCW Local 540, which represents the Plainview workers, is an amalgamated local based in Dallas, which is 400 miles from Plainview. NAMPU was formed by former members of UFCW Local P-9 who participated in the strike at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota, in 1985-1986.
The company has imposed concession contracts, cutting starting wages to $6 an hour. Excel subjects its workers to a murderous line speed resulting in a high injury rate. Many workers are routinely fired or disciplined.
August 13, 1962
While white racists in the area of Albany, Ga., meet the attempt of Negroes there to exercise their constitutional rights with legal subterfuges, mass arrests and violence, the Kennedy administration is avoiding any effective action to defend the civil rights fighters.The Albany movement began in October 1961 when SNCC workers set up voters’ registration classes and nonviolent training groups in Albany. In December over 700 persons were arrested in marches protesting the arrest of several youth who had attempted to sit integrated in the inter-state rail and bus terminals in Albany. The demonstrations were called off on the understanding that the arrested persons’ bail would be returned and the cases dropped. Racist city officials prosecuted. The sentencing of demonstrators touched off the recent mass actions.
August 14, 1937
In 1936 the great bulk of the workers in this country were hitched up to the Roosevelt bandwagon. Democratic machine politicians had to get help from the labor bureaucrats, both A. F. of L. and C. I. O., and from the gang of liberals and Popular Frontists. In a number of States they had to change the Democratic label, to keep workers’ votes in the Roosevelt column: Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota; Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation in Wisconsin; American Labor Party in New York.In 1937 the international crisis of capitalism is breaking out openly into revolution and war. In this country, the working class is surging forward in a new class militancy. At all costs the bourgeoisie and its henchmen have got to keep the workers from moving toward the revolutionary position of independent Marxist politics.
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