April 3, 2000
CHICAGO — The AFL-CIO women’s conference here drew 4,000 women. The conference was stamped by women who are in the middle of union battles. The large turnout registers the deepening resistance of working people to the employers’ continuing grinding offensive on working conditions, wages, and safety on the job. Statistics released by the conference organizers show two-thirds of all new union members in the United States are women.
Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers union spoke on the continuing fight of farm workers to organize and defend their rights. Several invited international guests and immigrant workers spoke at the main plenary sessions.
Workshops included organizing drives, sexual harassment, welfare reform, and gays in the workplace. Many conference participants were concerned about health and safety on the job.
April 4, 1975
With its positions collapsing in one province after another, and Saigon itself facing the possibility of attack, the Thieu dictatorship and its backers in Washington have been dealt a staggering defeat.
The capitalist landlord regime in Saigon offers nothing to the great mass of Vietnamese except brutal repression and continued exploitation. The aspirations of the workers and peasants are for reunification of Vietnam, free from imperialist domination, the distribution of the land to those who work it, and the economic development of the country for the benefit of all, which can only be achieved through a socialized economy.
In the face of Washington’s continuing efforts to halt this process, the American people must let their voices be heard:
Not one more cent for the dictators in Saigon and Phnom Penh!
U.S. out of Southeast Asia now!
April 3, 1950
President Truman’s “Welfare State” is displaying in ever more acute form one of the chief symptoms of diseased capitalism — mass unemployment. One of the gravest features of the present unemployment is the number of workers who are being cast off into permanent disemployment and who have used up all their unemployment compensation allowances.
It is time to mobilize organized labor for a full-scale drive for the 30-hour week at 40-hours pay. It is time to force the government to initiate large-scale public works on socially beneficial projects — housing, hospitals, schools, etc. — to give jobs to the unemployed at union pay. It is time for a demand for unemployment insurance equal to union wages for the duration of joblessness.
This is the program that is needed and which the American capitalist “Welfare State” must be forced to provide.