Wal-Mart Drives Down Wages

And here is another good reason to boycott Wal-Mart as if one was needed. They drive down wages. In Canada. In competition with our large big box discount grocery chains. Its not just lower costs and lower prices folks, its driven by lower wages, and NO benefits.

But Wal-Mart is not the only villian in this story, they have pals in the bosses, in this case Loblaws and its big box retail outlet Superstore, and their union, UFCW.

Canada has too many grocery stores and the situation will only get worse as discounter Wal-Mart Canada Corp. and other non-union global retailers take a bigger bite of the market, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. chairman Galen Weston warns.

To take on the growing competition, Loblaw, the country's largest grocer, is racing to overhaul its systems. It is adding more general merchandise, lowering prices and rolling out more discount superstores. And the unionized company is in contract talks in a bid to gain pay concessions and level the playing field with non-unionized Wal-Mart. Loblaw profit slips on snags in overhaul

Loblaw operates at a competitive disadvantage to Wal-Mart in terms of labour costs, as the majority of Loblaw stores are unionized. The retailer has successfully negotiated to pay employees at its 80 superstores lower wages than at its traditional stores. Loblaw girds for battle

Canada's biggest supermarket chain says it wants to open more mid-sized conventional grocery stores in downtown Toronto to serve the booming condominium market. But Loblaw Cos. Ltd. said it must first strike more deals with its unions, similar to the ones it got for its Ontario superstores, to remain competitive with non-union rivals. Loblaw eyeing hungry condo dwellers

They already gained concessions from their union, the sell out UFCW. Last round of bargaining UFCW whined about Wal-Mart, whom they have tried to unionize, while accepting the Loblaw contract without taking it to the rank and file to vote on. The threat of Wal-Mart is enough to drive UFCW into concessions, not that it needs to be pushed hard.

Since the late eighties UFCW has accepted concession bargaining by Safeways, and others and as typical of this business union, despite membership opposition. In Alberta in the 1990's concession bargaining by UFCW with Safeways inspired Ralph Klein to attack public sector wages using UFCW's two tiered wage concession and wage roll back of 5% to Safeway's as an excuse, to roll back public sector wages by 5%.

While a union is better than no union, when it comes to UFCW all they care about is the union dues, as they have accepted increased part time two tiered wages, including lower wages for new employees. Why. Well they still get the union dues whether the workers are full time or part time. They are after all in the 'business' of being a union.

The imposition of bureaucratic rule has always required bureaucratic methods, including outright dishonesty. A recent example of this process is found in the attempt by leaders of the American Flintglass Workers Union, a small, relatively democratic union, to take that union into the United Food & Commercial Workers, one of the nation's most grotesquely bureaucratic unions. Merger might have made sense for this tiny union, but given the reality of the UFCW, it was clear the "Flints," as they call themselves, would lose some of their current democracy; e.g. the election of the union's ten national reps. To get it by, the pro-merger leaders called a special convention without making the terms of the merger available until the delegates arrived. Sensibly, the delegates voted the merger down by over three to one. In this case democracy prevailed over bureaucratic method.

The battle for bureaucratic unionism was won by the 1950s and the unions that emerged looked little like those that exploded on the scene in the mid-1930s. Reviewing in horror the transformation of so many unions, Sidney Lens wrote at the time (in The Crisis of American Labor) about the rise of full-time, appointed "reps" whose swelling numbers bolstered the domination of union politics by the top officials. There had always been authoritarian leaders, but for the newer industrial unions at least all of the armies of appointees were something new. This rising tide of bureaucratic business unionism brought with it the receding fortunes of the unions themselves. Four decades later, many of labor's friends and enemies alike assume that massive bureaucracy and top-down control are the natural state of the unions, possibly "the best" state.

Kim Moody Is Bureaucracy "Best" For Unions?

Also See:

Labor Notes Bookshelf - An Injury to All"Kim Moody's An Injury to All exhaustively documents the devastating effects of management's anti-union drive of the last fifteen years.

An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. - book reviews

Confessions of an orthodox militant - and contentions - response to the review of author's 'Injury to All'; includes reply of reviewer Dana Frank

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Creationism=Paganism

I don't know whether to laugh or cry....whether to agree or be outraged....that paganism would be equated with protestantism....oh wait that is the historic basis for protestantism, as it was a 'protest' movement against the Holy Mother Church and competing Holy Roman Empires. It arose in the antinominalist movements which suckled at the breast of European paganism.


Luther and his princes used the pagan peasants as canon fodder in their political religious war for economic and temporal power.

But this is rather hilarious as a headline don't ya think....luckily most pagans have a good sense of humour unlike our fundamentalist protestant counterparts....

Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Of course in one fell swoop the Vatican astronomer has dismissed his historic political rivals as heretics, again. When in reality he should admit that if science and religion can co exist it is not in the Vatican or in Catholicism but in the philosophy of the enlightenment and America's founding fathers; Deism. Even God in her wisdom would agree with that.

“Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name.... Spinoza’s French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system.... The simple fate of this Enlightenment was its decline in romanticism after being obliged to surrender to the reaction which began after the French movement.” Hobbes had shattered the theistic prejudices of Baconian materialism; Collins, Dodwell, Coward, Hartley, Priestley, similarly shattered the last theological bars that still hemmed in Locke’s sensationalism. At all events, for materialists, deism is but an easy-going way of getting rid of religion. Marx & Engels, The Holy Family

A tip o the blog to NewsTrolls

Also check out this blog on this topic and her article on the Sumerian origin of the old testament creation myth.



Go here for more Heretical fun

And see:

Intelligent Design

Creationism

Dialectical Science

Spinoza


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Softwood Redux

How did I miss this.....Hard feelings up north over softwood trade pact
I particularly liked this quote nothing like a little self aggrandizing back patting

Aboard Air Force One, en route back to Washington from the Gulf Coast, President Bush spoke with Harper, according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan. The two leaders congratulated each other on bringing the long-running dispute to an end, he said.

But a day later and a billion bucks shy this happens US files softwood appeal despite deal

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has threatened to withdraw his crucial support for the tentative Canada-U.S. softwood lumber truce after learning that the U.S. government has decided to legally challenge a Canadian victory before a NAFTA trade dispute panel.There were also indications Friday that other potential deal-breakers -- including a clause that could scuttle B.C.'s new market-based timber pricing system -- were embedded in the terms Ottawa and Washington agreed to Thursday. It could take months to flesh out the final agreement

And in case you mistakenly thought the Harpocrite was doing this for the good of Canada, or the industry well think again, he was looking to line his governments pockets. Lose a billion to the US but recoup a billion in taxes.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government stands to reap a windfall approaching $1 billion in taxes on duties being refunded to Canadian lumber producers under a controversial deal struck to end the softwood trade war with the United States.ut many lumber companies are now facing hefty federal tax bills — in some cases, as high as 35 per cent — on the duties as soon as they're refunded by Washington.Ottawa reaps windfall on wood pact

And since this now is a matter of money for his coffers, well the Softwood lumber debate in the house now becomes a Confidence Vote. Surprize, Surprize.

Because of those tax measures, the final trade deal will eventually face a confidence vote in the House of Commons. That means if opposition parties, which have criticized the framework deal, vote against the measure, it could bring down Harper's minority government and trigger a federal election.Ottawa reaps windfall on wood pact

Note to Blogging Tories the government, is the government, is the government, a rose by any other name.


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Orientalist Anarchists

Found an interesting interview with an Iranian Anarchist

and a blog by a Bangladesh Anarchist;

• Tasneem Khalil A journalist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Endorses and advocates Libertarian Socialism and Free/Open Software & Publication. Subjects of interest primarily include Culture, Humanity, Alternative Media, Propaganda and Politics.

For a different view from this part of the world check them out.

I used Orient as in Edward Saids; Orientalism.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Preface to Orientalism
Edward Said - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also see my articles:

My Favorite Muslim

The Need for Arab Anarchism

Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian

Can you be a Muslim Anarchist?

Antinominalist Anarchism

My Final Comment on the Cartoon Controversy

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Desert Iraq for Afghanistan

You tell em Jack. But wait if the American deserters come up here do ya think they will sign up for our humanitarian operations in Afghanistan? And where will our troops go when they desert from Afghanistan?

Canada should welcome US deserters, Layton says
American deserters dodging military duty in Iraq share Canadian values and should be welcomed in this country, NDP Leader Jack Layton says."It makes a lot of sense to welcome these young people, recognize that they've taken a position that's exactly the same position that Canadians took," he said yesterday. "It would be inappropriate to send them back in my view ... We're glad they've chosen our country." Layton urged the Conservative government to grant sanctuary to young soldiers, noting Canada became a safe haven for Americans seeking to avoid the Vietnam draft more than 30 years ago."We should be looking at it," he said. "These young people are courageous individuals. They've made a decision of conscience."Layton denied that it would upset ties with the U.S. if Canada suddenly became a place of refuge for those fleeing that country's unpopular war."There are tens of thousands of people and their families now all across our country who came to us in an earlier period around the Vietnam War. I don't think that disrupted relations between the two countries."His comments followed an Ottawa visit by Cindy Sheehan, who has become an outspoken anti-war campaigner after the death of her son Casey in Iraq. She used a Parliament Hill news conference yesterday to urge Canada to offer sanctuary to U.S. deserters.

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Revisionist History

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, (a lobby for business not citizens, a private association who appoints its directors does not elect them) is now blogging. Be still my beating heart, another right wing blog.

This one though engages in one of those extreme historical revinisionism, one that should send our pal Warren Kinsella into a paralax of outrage. But will it?

Anyways the CTF blog equates the Holocaust with the Cuban Revolution. Yep. All those Batista Cubans, American mafia types, CIA and ITT folks and hoteliers, the rum runners and pimps, all those nice folks were supposedly executed by Che.

In reality, pre-revolutionary Havana was a brothel and casino for US
playboys, the Mafia and a rich Cuban elite.

Well you wouldn't know it from the CTF article that just over a thousand members of the military and secret police were tried for crimes against the people and executed. Note just over 1000. Armed thugs who oppressed the people. But these twits say this;

Che's slaughter of (bound and gagged) Cubans (Che was himself an Argentine) exceeded Heinrich Himmler's prewar slaughter of Germans – to scale, that is. Nazi Germany became the modern standard for political evil even before World War II.

Clever that, pre war slaughter of Germans, no reference to Jews. Oh wait yes he does.

Political executions up to the time might have reached a couple thousand, and most of these were of renegade Nazis themselves during the indiscriminate butchery known as the "Night of the Long Knives." The famous Kristallnacht that horrified civilized opinion worldwide caused a grand total of 71 deaths. This in a nation of 70 million.

And the point is, Castro and Che are nasty. Well lets see how many Cubans died of malnutrition, starvation, police burtality under Batista and other former dictators working for the United Fruit Company? Lets compare apples and apples not rehtorical attempts to; lessen the horror and impact of the Nazi's, or compare Cuban nationalism with Nationalist Socialism in Germany.

Batista was the U.S. government's "man in Havana," even though U.S. officials knew that he was a brutal, antidemocratic, corrupt tyrant in full partnership with Mafia murderers and drug dealers. None of this mattered to Washington policymakers. What mattered was that as "our man in Havana," when Batista received orders from Washington, he obeyed.A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 1

No lets look at Latin America and the the US policy of imperialism in the region.

US Imperialism which began in the region with Monroe Doctrine and the colonization of Cuba, Nicarauga and other countries by the Confederate States as slave economies, became the basis of the sugar plantations and fruit production of the post WWII economies in the region.

How many Guatemalans have been murdered since the CIA and United Fruit company engineered the coup there in 1954, prior to the Cuban Revolution. This set the tone for the struggles of national liberation in the region. The revolutionaries knew that death was certain at the hands of the US and CIA and their front regimes.

Unfortunately, the CIA “success” in Iran, which produced the CIA’s ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, bred a CIA “success” in another part of the world, Latin America. One year after the 1953 coup in Iran, the CIA did it again, this time in Guatemala, where U.S. officials feared the communist threat even more than they did in Iran.An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Guatemala

How many Chileans died at the hands of Pinochet whose coup was organized by the US State Department and the CIA.?

How many Argentinians were 'dissapeared' under the US client regime of the Argentinian Generals?

And how many Cubans have been killed by the Cuban exile community and their links to the fascist movements in Latin America and around the world. Many of those same groups being made up of ex Nazi's and notorious Anti-Semites like the World Anti-Bolshevik League.

Many of our leaders seem to view Florida's Cuban conservatives, including the assassins and terrorists among them, as People Who Vote. - Alice Walker, introduction, The Sweet Abys

And how many CIA attempts were there on Castro from the very begining of the revolution. Enough to make anyone paranoid.

Yep what Che and Castro did was unconsionable, but understandable under the circumstances.

Hundreds of suspected Batista-era agents, policemen and soldiers were put on public trial for human rights abuses and war crimes, including murder and torture. Most of those convicted of murder were executed by firing squad, and the rest received long prison sentences. One of the most notorious examples of “revolutionary justice” being the executions of over 70 captured Batista regime soldiers, directed by Raúl Castro after capturing Santiago. Guevara was appointed supreme prosecutor in La Cabaña Fortress. This was part of a large-scale attempt by Fidel Castro to cleanse the security forces of Batista loyalists that could launch a counter-revolution. Many others were dismissed from the army and police, and some high-ranking officials in the ancien régime were exiled as military attachés.

In 1961 after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the new Cuban government also confiscated all property held by religious organizations without compensation including the Roman Catholic Church. Hundreds of members of the clergy, including a bishop, were permanently expelled from the nation, with the new Cuban government being officially atheist.

• Cuban Revolution

What the vast right wing conspiracy of the CIA and its fascist allies in the Anti-Bolshevik movement during the cold war did was far closer to the tactics and poltics of Himmler and Hitler than anyting the Che or Castro did.

A revolution implies violence, but a coup implies a regime of violence. The former is caused by the State and its military and the ruling class organizing violence against the people. The latter is the States policy in order to repress the freedom of workers, peasants and the middle class.

Yep a little reading can be a dangerous thing. And in this case the anonymous blogger at the CTF blog read one little right wing article and based his falacious argument on it. Well here is some reading for him to correct the stupidity of his article.


A tip o the blog to Calgary Grit for this.



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Spam Attack

This is rich.

Blue Security Shifted Attack, Brought Down Blogs

This is a wild tale of a denial-of-service attack, allegedly orchestrated by a big time spammer against an anti-spam security company that brought down a blogging site.

The denial-of-service attack that crashed TypePad and LiveJournal this week was caused by anti-spam company Blue Security, which pinned the target on the blog in an attempt to save its own servers, analysts said Thursday. Blue Security denied that it knew the attack would crash its blog host.

And this is richer.

Spyware pusher shut down and fined $4 million
ZDNet -\
Just released by the FTC - Sanford Wallace (nicknamed Spamford for his history of spamming) and his company Smartbot.net have been ordered to shut down operations and give up $4,089,500 of their ill-gotten gains.

FTC Orders Wallace To Pay $4 Million For Spyware Scam

Users were duped into thinking they needed software being sold by "Spam King" Sanford Wallace because he exploited an Internet Explorer vulnerability to install real spyware on their PCs.

Spam is capitalism unleashed on the internet. Which is why I keep getting those emails about increasing my penis size, nasty russian girls willing to do anything and security updating of my Chase Manhattan bank account.


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Climate Change...On Jupiter

Uh oh this will give Rona Ambrose and the Conservatives another excuse to not deal with climate change here. I can hear the right wing deniers now; "see its natural".

New storm on Jupiter hints at climate change

A storm is brewing half a billion miles away and in a rare event, astronomers get to watch it closely.

Jupiter is growing a new red spot and the Hubble Space Telescope is photographing the scene. Backyard astronomers have been following the action, too.

The global change cycle began when the last of the white oval-shaped storms formed south of the Great Red Spot in 1939. As the storms started to merge between 1998 and 2000, the mixing of heat began to slow down at that latitude and has continued slowing ever since.


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Desert Moon

Titan, the planet Saturn's most mysterious moon, now poses a fresh puzzle: mile upon mile of rippling dunes similar to the desert sand dunes of the Sahara or Arabia have been discovered on its tarry surface -- but what they're made of nobody knows. Dunes gird Saturn moon

Cassini Flies By Saturn's Moon Titan, Sees More Craters

NASA and Partners Release New Movies Of Titan

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Grandinite Scoop

Grandinite scoops the MSM with a cellphone photo and on the spot report of IBEW members holding an information picket in Calgary at the offices of CNRL who are wanting to bring in temporary workers into Fort McMurray.


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