UK

‘Heartbreaking’: Shocking decline in public satisfaction with NHS under Tories

Hannah Davenport 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward 

'The NHS isn't failing, it's being failed. What an appalling act of state vandalism’

Public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest ever level, plunging for the first time in the 41-year history of the survey to show less than a quarter of people are satisfied with the way the health service is currently running.

Compared to 2010 when 70% of the public were satisfied with the NHS, the latest survey findings lay bare what 14 years of a Tory government stripping funds and resources from the NHS has had.

Campaign group Keep Our NHS Public has called it “an appalling act of state vandalism” commenting that the NHS “isn’t failing, it’s being failed”.

NHS workers have expressed heartbreak over the shocking decline in public satisfaction for the service under the Tories while unions have called for immediate action to address the staffing crisis.

One palliative care doctor wrote on X: “14 years of Tory government understaffing, underfunding & private sector outsourcing have trashed the NHS into a travesty of the service we want to give you.

“It is heartbreaking & so disgustingly wrong.”

A NHS Medical consultant and health policy editor wrote: “The public are right to be dissatisfied with the NHS right now. It’s a shadow of its former self. Staff are completely wiped out. There isn’t enough space to treat patients. Roofs are falling down. And the govt solution is to bung their mates in AI and tech a few billion quid.”

Since 2020 satisfaction has fallen by 29%, with waiting times and staff shortages the biggest concerns, while the public was least satisfied with A&E and dentistry.

Pat Cullen, leader of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said nurses would respond to the survey with mixed emotions of both ‘sorrow’ and ‘hope’ – hope that the public shares their view that ‘enough is enough’.

Making care services and the NHS the central issue of the general election is what voters must now do, Cullen urged.

“It did not have to be this way and it did not start with the pandemic either,” the general secretary responded. “An NHS that was once a world-leader is now treating patients in corridors, doorways, and store cupboards.”

“Nurses are exhausting themselves caring for unsafe numbers of patients at a time as they are short of tens of thousands of colleagues. The status quo has become professionally intolerable for many.”

Support for the fundamental principles of the NHS remain extremely high, with 91% of people believing it should remain free of charge when people need it, and 82% said it should be funded primarily from taxation and available to everyone, regardless of income.

The UK’s largest union Unison blamed the government for patient suffering and called on ministers to hold immediate pay talks for health workers, in order to address the NHS staffing crisis.

“The NHS cannot provide the quality care people need until the staffing crisis is addressed. Patients are suffering because of government inaction,” said Unison’s head of health Helga Pile.

“Low pay and burnout are to blame for nurses, paramedics and other health workers quitting the service. When the minimum wage increases next week, the lowest paid NHS staff will only be earning one pence an hour above the legal minimum.

“It’s not surprising they’re leaving for jobs elsewhere when supermarkets are paying much better hourly rates.”

This chart by the Kings Fund highlights just how steep the depressing fall in public satisfaction with the NHS has been under the Tories, and how it compares to public sentiment since 1983

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Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

NHS nurses are effectively working for free, a new study finds

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

24 March, 2024 

‘Ministers who once seemed glad to applaud NHS staff should reflect on this terrible state of affairs.’

Nurses’ real-term wages have fallen so low, they are essentially working for free. This was the shocking finding of a new study by London Economics.

The comprehensive analysis of pay awards shows that between 2010/11 and 2023/24, a typical, experienced nurse had their pay cut in real terms by 25 percent. The cuts have been so severe since the Tories came into power that hundreds of thousands of nurses are effectively working five days a month for free. In England, 248,500 (74 percent) of the NHS’s 336,900 nurses are in pay bands 5 and 6, earning between £28k and £42k each year.

A 5 percent NHS pay rise last year was rejected in a ballot by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) but the government imposed the below-inflation award for the 2023/24 financial year anyway.

The London Economic figures come alongside damning findings from a cost-of-living survey of almost 11,000 nursing staff. The survey shows more than half – 52 percent – of nursing staff say they are likely or very likely to quit nursing in the next five years due to low pay and cost of living pressures. Over two thirds – 68 percent – admitted to rationing gas and electricity last winter.

Professor Pat Cullen, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said that analysis exposes the scale of the “government’s sustained attack on nursing.”

“Over a decade of below inflation pay offers, followed last year by the lowest award in the entire public sector, have caused hardship and forced thousands to consider quitting altogether.

“Today, nursing staff are rationing electricity and gas with financial pressures pushing four in ten into a state of mental distress. Pay has been devalued so much that they are effectively working 5 days or more for free each month. Ministers who once seemed glad to applaud NHS staff should reflect on this terrible state of affairs.”

Cullen warns that when nursing pay is deliberately undermined in this way, so too is patient care.

“There are tens of thousands of nurse vacancies across England’s NHS and yet our most experienced nurses are being forced out of the profession – just when the health service needs them most.”

In a formal submission to the NHS Pay Review Body for 2024/25, the union called for a sizeable lump sum on top of a substantial above inflation pay rise.

“Ministers must commit to a substantial pay rise for every member of nursing staff. That’s how to begin delivering pay justice for a profession so routinely undervalued. If they fall short once again, they will be exposing tens of thousands to further hardship and exacerbate an already dangerous staffing crisis,” the RCN general secretary added.

Thousands of foreign nurses are abandoning Britain to find work abroad


Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

25 March, 2024 

‘It’s no joke that nurse pay in the UK is joint bottom of 35 OECD countries.’

Around 9,000 NHS nurses are leaving the UK each year to work in other countries in search of better paid jobs.

Between 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, the number of UK-registered nurses moving overseas for jobs doubled to a record 12,000. Since before the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of nurses leaving Britain to find work elsewhere has increased fourfold.

The research, carried out by the Health Foundation, found that the majority of nurses quitting the UK are heading to the United States, Australia and New Zealand, where the nursing profession is paid much more generously. Sometimes the salary in these countries is double what UK-registered nurses receive.

The health service is hugely reliant on recruiting nurses from abroad, and the damning findings come as the NHS is already struggling to fill around 40,000 nurse vacancies.

Fears have been made that the UK is acting as a ‘stepping stone’ for many nurses. Elaine Kelly, assistant director at the Health Foundation’s research centre and co-author of the report, said that, with an acute nursing shortage and so many overseas nurses quitting Britain, the NHS needs to be “a more attractive place to work for all nurses, regardless of where they were trained,” if it is to avoid “becoming a stepping stone to careers elsewhere.”

Kelly added that the situation is especially worrying given that it costs the NHS about £10,000 to replace each foreign recruit who moves abroad.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said the rising exodus of overseas-trained nurses is because of the drop of pay in the profession since 2010.

Prof Pat Cullen, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, said the situation is “deeply worrying.”

“The recruitment of domestic nurses is collapsing, and services are gripped by workforce shortages.

“With patient needs already going unmet, the prospect of losing more of our international colleagues doesn’t bear thinking about.

“The reality is that sustained attacks on pay and poor working conditions are leaving the UK’s healthcare services unable to compete on the world stage. International nurses, like all nurses, have every right to choose to work in countries that better value their skills and expertise. It’s no joke that nurse pay in the UK is joint bottom of 35 OECD countries.”

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

 

PCS members at Heathrow vote for strike action

25th March 2024Leave a Commenton PCS members at Heathrow vote for strike action

“The members, who carry out immigration controls and passport checks, voted by 89.71% in favour of strike action and 94.35% for action short of a strike.”

By the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS)

Border Force officers at Heathrow Airport have voted to take strike action over proposed changes to rosters and their working conditions in a ballot that closed on March 22.

The members, who carry out immigration controls and passport checks, voted by 89.71% in favour of strike action and 94.35% for action short of a strike. The turnout passed the legal requirement of 50% for strike action and the additional hurdle that is imposed on staff working in Border Force that the number of individuals answering yes to the ballot question must be at least 40% of the number of individuals entitled to vote in the ballot.

The PCS members are angry at planned alterations to their shift patterns that would have a detrimental effect on all the current staff and leave nearly 250 without a job on passport control, including many with disabilities or caring responsibilities.

If they refuse to accept the new contracts, they would be forced to seek jobs elsewhere in the Home Office.

No dates have been announced for the strike, but the walkouts could begin as soon as April 8. PCS is currently challenging the government’s new Minimum Service Levels legislation in the courts. We will vigorously defend our members’ right to strike if ministers try to impose a work notice.

PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “Our hard-working members in the Border Force are being forced out by a belligerent employer.

“It’s clear from today’s ballot result how angry and determined our members are to protect their jobs.

“It’s not too late for the Home Office to do the decent thing and drop these unnecessary changes and work with the union to protect jobs and working conditions.”

UK

Halt arms sales to Israel – Zarah Sultana & 130+ Parliamentarians make humanitarian call

28th March 2024Leave a Commenton Halt arms sales to Israel – Zarah Sultana & 130+ Parliamentarians make humanitarian call

“Other countries are taking action. The most recent example of this is Canada, where last week the government announced it is halting arms sales to Israel.”

Dear Foreign Secretary and Business Secretary,

We write as cross-party parliamentarians calling on you to immediately suspend export licenses for arms transfers to Israel.

The case for this is overwhelming. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault, 70% women and children. Israeli bombing has destroyed or severely damaged up to 80% of civilian infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, schools and sanitation facilities.[1] Famine is now imminent in northern Gaza, with children already dying of hunger.[2]

The United Nations Secretary-General, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others have said that Israel has committed grave violations of international law in this assault.[3] The International Court of Justice has said that Israel’s assault is “plausibly” in breach of the Genocide Convention.

In this context, ‘business as usual’ for UK arms exports to Israel is totally unacceptable. Both domestic and international law, including Criterion 1 and 2 of the UK’s Strategic Export Licensing Criteria and Articles 6 and 7 of the international Arms Trade Treaty, require the government to prevent the transfer of military equipment where there is a clear or overriding risk that such exports might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law or international human rights law.

But UK-made weapons are being used in Gaza. For example, the government grants export licences for parts of Israeli F-16 fighter jets. According to a United Nations investigation, it was likely one of these jets – made with UK parts – that, in January, bombed British doctors at a compound in Gaza housing an emergency medical team from the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians.[4]

In previous escalations of the conflict, UK governments have admitted that UK-made arms could have been used by Israel in Gaza. In 2009, under a Labour government, the UK suspended arms licenses for equipment likely to be used in Gaza.[5] In 2014, under a Conservative-led government, the UK said it would suspend licenses if hostilities resumed in Gaza.[6]

Today, the scale of violence committed by the Israeli military is vastly more deadly, but the UK government has failed to act.

Other countries are taking action. The most recent example of this is Canada, where last week the government announced it is halting arms sales to Israel.[7] This follows United Nations experts calling for arms exports to Israel to be immediately stopped.[8]

We therefore call on you to immediately suspend export licenses for arms transfers to Israel.

Yours sincerely,

Zarah Sultana MP

OTHER SIGNATURES 

Here’s What Canada’s Vote to End Arms Sales to Israel Means for Antiwar Effort


Canada’s Parliament passed a nonbinding motion to end arms sales to Israel — but not arms purchases from Israel.

By Nora Loreto , 

TRUTHOUT

March 22, 2024

Demonstrators attend a pro-Palestinian rally outside Union Station in Toronto, Ontario, on March 16, 2024.

MERT ALPER DERVIS / ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES

This week Canada’s House of Commons passed a resolution that supported ending future arms exports to Israel. As the motion was nonbinding, activists reacted to the vote by promising to force the governing Liberal Party to respect the decision.

It wasn’t immediately clear that the Liberals would respect the decision, despite the overwhelming number of Liberal members of Parliament (MPs) who voted for it. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada would not revoke existing permits to export military goods to Israel. Immigration Minister Marc Miller warned that the motion could have negative consequences on Canada’s ability to evacuate people from Gaza. Both MPs voted in favor of the motion.

The motion was introduced by the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP), an opposition party that currently has an agreement to support the minority Liberal Party and not vote against a confidence motion that would trigger an election. The NDP’s nonbinding opposition motion called for, among other things, the recognition of Palestinian statehood and a complete ban on arms traded between Canada and Israel.

Right before the vote, however, the Liberal Party proposed several amendments, which the NDP agreed to, that significantly watered the motion down. Notably, the Liberals’ amendments removed all reference to Palestinian statehood and changed language about arms exports and imports from a broader call to suspend “all trade in military goods and technology with Israel” to a narrower directive to “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel to ensure compliance with Canada’s arms export regime.”

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As many as 80 percent of buildings in northern Gaza have been destroyed, a recent analysis found. By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT  January 2, 2024

The Liberals’ text makes the further authorization contingent on ensuring “compliance with Canada’s arms export regime” — text that many fear leaves the door to the apparent arms embargo being circumvented.

The motion passed late Monday night with the full support of the NDP, Bloc Québécois and an overwhelming majority of Liberal MPs. Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Alex Cosh, the journalist who has broken the most news related to Canada’s arms trade with Israel, called the amendment “a disgraceful capitulation.” The group Labour Against the Arms Trade posted: “It’s not clear from the Government’s response that Melanie Joly will cancel existing permits for military exports to Israel. Let us be clear: We will continue mobilizing with allies until all such permits are canceled.”

As a resolution, the decision is considered the opinion of the House of Commons under Canada’s parliamentary rules, rather than directing public policy. The government isn’t bound by the decision, even if the House of Commons, government MPs included, voted in support of it.

Indeed, when NDP leader Jagmeet Singh tweeted that the motion “forced” the Liberals to stop selling arms to Israel, his post had a context note added to it that reminded readers that resolutions don’t force any action to be taken. Even if the motion hadn’t been amended, it wouldn’t have forced any action at all.

However, the day after the vote, Joly confirmed to the Toronto Star that the government would be ending its arms shipments to Israel.

Despite the wishy-washy position of the Liberals, the vote is morally significant: The Canadian Parliament has taken a position that suggests that sending arms to Israel right now would violate Canada’s arms export policies. Therefore, a majority of Canadian MPs believe that what Israel is doing with its arms violates human rights. Before this vote, just two Liberal MPs, Julie Dzerowicz and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, publicly supported an arms embargo.

That may be little comfort, considering that since October 7, Canada has sent more arms to Israel than ever before. At a value of 28.5 million Canadian dollars, that amount exceeded any year of arms exports to Israel in the past 30 years by 2 million. Canada has also delayed the sale of night-vision goggles and armored vehicles.

Also amended out of the motion was action to stop the flow of weapons in the other direction. Where the NDP had called for a two-way arms embargo, the updated language ignores the fact that Canada also imports weapons from Israel.

That includes $43 million worth of Spike LR2 anti-tank missiles, which are made by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, a company that is owned by the state of Israel. This purchase is part of a massive procurement of weapons that Canada plans to send to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to be used in Latvia.

None of these sales would be impacted by the language in the nonbinding motion. Canada could continue to purchase military gear from Israel without anyone claiming they’re violating the text that their party voted in favor of.

But it’s possible that Monday night’s vote is a turning point. Certainly, social movement groups have been putting sustained pressure on politicians to do anything they can to try and stop Israel’s campaign against Gaza, and Canada’s exports to Israel are currently facing a legal challenge. A group of Palestinians are arguing that exporting weapons to Israel amid the ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza violates several international treaties, as well as Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act.

Considering how cagey Canadian politicians have been about allowing weapons to be sent to Israel — for example, claiming that no full weapons systems have been sent despite the fact that Canada doesn’t produce full weapons systems, or claiming that no lethal weapons have been sent even though tools that aid lethal weapons have been sent — the easier fight will be to force the government to adhere to the Liberals’ revised motion text.

Far more difficult though, will be convincing Canada to stop buying weapons from Israel, especially considering mounting pressure on NATO countries to increase their military support for Ukraine. The day after the vote, Canada announced another shipment of ammunition to Ukraine and actively participates in the coalition to expand Ukraine’s drone capacity.

Brent Patterson from Peace Brigades International questions how Canada could pass this motion while also welcoming the biggest arms manufacturers in the world to a weapons trade show in Ottawa, planned for the end of May 2024. Patterson lists some of the companies that will be present at the CANSEC 2024 arms show, including “BAE Systems, Bell Textron, Boeing, Colt, Elbit, General Dynamics, L3 Harris, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Rheinmetall,” all of which have made money off of Israel’s campaign against Gaza.

Since the war began, more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children, and some 8,000 people are missing.

Activists who want Canada to both stop importing arms from Israel and stop exporting military equipment to Israel are ultimately at the same place that they were last week, though now armed with the moral victory of Liberals supporting this motion. As it was social movement pressure that created the conditions for the Liberals to vote in favor of their amended motion, it will be social movement pressure that will force them to actually follow the will of Canadians who do not want their government supporting Israel’s genocide.

On Instagram, the group World Beyond War posted a checklist of what needs to happen for a full arms embargo to be implemented. They have checked off step one: commit to ending future arms exports to Israel. But for this to be a full arms embargo, World Beyond War says four more things need to be checked off: Canada must implement a policy that suspends arms exports to Israel, previously promised arms deals need to be cancelled, the loophole that allows weapons to pass through the United States to Israel needs to be closed, and Canada needs to stop purchasing arms from Israel.

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Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

NORA LORETO


Nora Loreto is a writer and activist based in Quebec City. She is also the president of the Canadian Freelance Union.

Hyperimperialism: US-NATO’s Dangerous and Decadent New Stage, w/ Vijay Prashad

By Vijay Prashad, Rania Khalek 

March 27, 2024

Source: BreakThrough News

What is this new era of “Hyperimperialism” for the US/NATO Empire? Where do Gaza, Ukraine, and the Cold War on China fit in? How is the decline of Global North hegemony shifting the geopolitical landscape? Are there new possibilities for emergent organizations of the Global South? How do we maintain hope as we watch an exterminationist campaign unfold in Gaza?

To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by author, historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, which recently published a dossier on “Hyperimperialism.”

 

Marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1914/09/ultra-imp.htm

Ultra-imperialism (1914) - Karl Kautsky - Marxists Internet ... 

Sep 11, 2023 ... Imperialism was particularly encouraged by the system of capital export to the agrarian zones which emerged at the same time. The growth of ...

Michael-hudson.com

https://michael-hudson.com/books/super-imperialism-the-economic-strategy-of-american-empire

Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire 

(Wrapping 1972). “THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK ON IMPERIALISM SINCE LENIN” -TERENCE McCARTHY. Michael Hudson Holt, Rinehart, Winston. Backside: Super Imperialism.

AOC, Sanders Renew Fight for Green New Deal for Public Housing

By Jessica Corbett

March 26, 2024

Source: Common Dreams

Image by Matt Johnson, Creative Commons 2.0

Backed by dozens of progressive groups and congressional Democrats, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reintroduced legislation designed to tackle both the affordable housing crisis and the climate emergency.

The New York Democrat and Vermont Independent are leading the renewed fight for the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which would invest up to $234 billion over a decade into “weatherizing, electrifying, and modernizing our public housing so that it may serve as a model of efficiency, sustainability, and resiliency for the rest of the nation.”

Ocasio-Cortez noted that “years of grassroots organizing on behalf of vulnerable Americans led to the creation of the first federal public housing units—but, for decades, the federal government has allowed our limited public housing stock to fall into disrepair.”

“Residents are dealing with mold growth, lead-based paint hazards, lack of central cooling and heating, failing water infrastructure, and numerous other safety concerns,” the congresswoman said. “It is beyond time for the federal government to take responsibility and pass legislation that offers comprehensive, public solutions.”

“The Green New Deal for Public Housing Act will allow for an increase in public housing units, create an estimated 280,000 jobs, and invest up to $23 billion a year over 10 years for highly energy-efficient developments,” she explained. “This will produce on-site renewable energy, expand workforce capacity, and focus on community development. Every American deserves to live in a safe, vibrant, and environmentally conscious community—including public housing residents. I am confident this legislation is how we make that a reality.”

The jobs estimate comes from an analysis released Thursday by the Climate and Community Project and the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative—which also found that the proposed upgrades to U.S. public housing stock would cut carbon emissions by 5.7 million metric tons, the equivalent of taking 1.26 million cars off the road each year.

“Public housing is an essential source of stable and affordable housing for 1.7 million Americans, and our research shows we are rapidly losing units to conversions, demolitions, and deterioration,” said Kira McDonald of Climate and Community Project. “This legislation would constitute decisive action to stave this loss and transform living conditions for public housing residents. In so doing, it would improve residents’ health, safety, help eliminate carbon emissions, and help build the new green industries we need to decarbonize.”

As Ocasio-Cortez’s office summarized, the bill would:Expand federal programs to provide residents with meaningful work investing in their communities, to own and operate resident businesses, to move toward financial independence, and to participate in the management of public housing;
Expand resident councils so that public housing residents have a seat at the table for important decisions regarding their homes; and
Replenish the public housing capital backlog and repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which limits the construction of new public housing developments.

The legislation would also create two grant programs for deep energy retrofits; community workforce development; upgrades to energy efficiency, building electrification, and water quality; community renewable energy generation; recycling; resiliency and sustainability; and climate adaptation and emergency disaster response.

As world leaders dragged their feet on climate action last year, declining to demand a global phaseout of planet-heating fossil fuels at the most recent United Nations climate conference, all life on Earth was forced to contend with record high temperatures. The United States alone saw 28 disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, collectively costing at least $92.9 billion.

“In these difficult times, we must move forward boldly to address the systemic and existential crises facing us today and that includes urgently combating climate change and making sure every American has a safe and decent place to call home,” Sanders said Thursday. “It is unacceptable that, on a single given night in America, over 650,000 people are homeless.”

That record number comes from an annual report released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in December. As Common Dreamsreported at the time, academics and advocates have long stressed that the formal figure only represents a faction of the people dealing with housing insecurity nationwide.

“It is unacceptable that, in the richest country in the history of the world, people are choosing between paying rent and putting food on the table,” argued Sanders. “It is unacceptable that our nation’s public housing is in a state of chronic disrepair and energy inefficiency after generations of government neglect. It is unacceptable that we have not done more to transform our energy systems, our communities, and our infrastructure away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. This legislation is a major step in the right direction, and I am proud to partner with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez in introducing it today.”

Joining the pair in backing the bill are 55 other House Democrats and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

Markey, who has spearheaded the broader battle for a Green New Deal with Ocasio-Cortez, said that “in the five years since its introduction, Green New Deal advocacy has catapulted environmental justice to the top of the national agenda, helped deliver historic victories, and charted a course for a better future.”

The Green New Deal for Public Housing Act is also endorsed by over 70 advocacy groups and labor unions, including the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, American Federation of Teachers, Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) Action, Movement for Black Lives, MoveOn, National Low Income Housing Coalition, Public Citizen, and Sunrise Movement.

“Our opponents use tactics like the Faircloth Amendment to defund our public housing. And then they point to our public housing and say, ‘Look, it’s not working.’ That’s what they do—but we’re not confused,” declared DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director of CPD Action.

“We’re in another awakening right now. People have been through too much. They are tired. We are tired. Enough is enough,” Cooper added. “We all know that it’s impossible for you to think that a government in this day and age cannot create housing for everyone.”

The Global Laws That Help Corporations Block Climate Action

Companies have long used international treaties to try to prevent Global South countries from asserting economic sovereignty. In recent decades, corporations have used such laws to stymie European governments’ attempts to tackle the climate crisis.

By Nick Dearden

March 27, 2024
Source: Jacobin


Power plant Burshtyn TES, Ukraine

However much the British government plays fast and loose with our future by treating climate change as a political football, there is a reality it can’t deny: climate action is necessary. That’s why, against all its better instincts, it announced last month that Britain would exit the most climate-wrecking treaty of all — the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).

The ECT is the product of a previous era. It was invented in the 1990s to protect Western energy interests in the countries of the former Soviet Union. At its heart is a mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS — a kind of corporate court system which allows transnational businesses and investors to sue governments for regulatory changes that damage their bottom line.

Countries have been inserting these ISDS clauses into trade and investment deals for decades now. They were dreamt up by oil barons and financiers back in the 1950s. As countries across the world broke free of imperial ties, these corporate executives worried about how their economic interests could be protected from national liberation governments, which were coming to power in the Global South.

The nationalization of Iran’s oil was a turning point. While the United States and Britain orchestrated a coup to remove Iran’s government, there was a recognition this wasn’t a sustainable way of running the world. Far better to create a series of legal obligations. Through ISDS, if a government expropriated a foreign corporation’s assets, they could bypass the local legal system and go straight to international arbitration where, with no transparency, no proper judge to weigh different interests, no right to appeal, and the weight of international law to bolster any successful claim, corporations effectively gained their own one-sided legal system.

Fast forward to the 1990s. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a wealth of new opportunities for Western business, but corporations didn’t want to take the risk of new governments coming to power that might feel differently about their operations. The ECT was designed to eliminate that risk, and lock in business-friendly regulations into the far future.

What the Western countries didn’t realize was that they too would one day become targets for these corporate courts.
West-on-West

As the 2000s dawned, corporations realized that the biggest threat they faced wasn’t from a government taking over their oil rigs. It was climate action that was seen as a growing necessity across Europe.

City lawyers worked overtime to expand the types of cases they could take under the ECT, and countries saw themselves sued repeatedly for bringing forward action to improve environmental quality and phase out the exploration of fossil fuels. German coal companies sued the Netherlands over their coal phase-out. Slovenia for banning fracking. Denmark for its windfall tax on excessive oil profits.

What’s more, corporations didn’t simply sue for the money they’d already invested in projects. They’d often been offered compensation to recompense them for these costs anyway. Instead, they would sue for many times more, basing their claims on lost future profits.

British company Rockhopper sued Italy when protesters forced the government to ban oil drilling off the country’s Adriatic coast — the area Rockhopper had hoped to explore. The compensation claimed by Rockhopper totaled about $350 million, seven times what the corporation had invested in exploration. The company then announced it was investing in a new project off the Falkland Islands. The lesson here was that the ECT doesn’t simply shift the cost of climate action from the private to the public sector — it actively keeps the fossil fuel economy going.

Many of these cases look like attempts to punish governments for making decisions in response to protests and campaigns against unpopular mining projects. Elsewhere in the world, ISDS cases have been brought specifically on the basis that governments have not done enough to suppress protest movements in the interests of foreign capital. Little wonder then that these protest movements turned their attention to the problem of the ECT as an impediment to popular sovereignty.

Politicians of all persuasions have seemed genuinely surprised about the existence of the ECT, and horrified at the way in which it impinges upon their sovereignty so fundamentally. From the left-wing government in Spain to the right-wing government in Poland, protests convinced politicians to move toward exit from the energy pact.

By 2023, nine countries including Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands all announced they were off. For many of these countries, the ECT was now a clear and present danger to the imperative of gearing their economy to a point where it could deal with the climate transition, adding legal obstacles and extortionate costs to that already difficult process.

They still faced a problem though. The ECT has a deeply undemocratic twenty-year sunset clause, which means that even if a country left today, cases could still be brought for the next two decades. Furious diplomatic activity began in the EU to find ways of abrogating this clause, with governments hitting on the solution that if they all left together, in a coordinated manner, they could sign a deal that at least prevents cases being brought against each other, limiting their exposure.
The British Particularity

Outside the EU, Britain saw things differently. Still wedded to an outdated view that “the market knows best,” and that we can overcome our severe economic difficulties by embarking on endless trade talks — most of which have come to naught — the British government dragged its feet. Perhaps it even hoped to attract more fossil fuel investment by being the last bastion of investor protection in Europe.

Rishi Sunak is clearly trying to whip up a culture war with his dangerous drive to “max out” North Sea fossil fuel reserves. However much he rails against the incoming tide, though, he can’t stop it. Reality is catching up.

Since Joe Biden became US president, there is a recognition that climate change necessitates a change in attitude toward the economy. A race is now on between the big power blocs, using government money and power to build the industries of tomorrow.

Here, Britain is well behind the curve. While a part of the business community — most importantly fossil fuel corporations and part of the financial sector — back the ECT, another section realizes that the British government’s laissez-faire approach is leaving them chronically uncompetitive.

As EU countries started leaving the ECT, the realization that Britain would face proportionally higher obstacles to a green transition started to worry manufacturing unions, parts of the business community, and even a few Tory MPs. This started to create pressure within government, and, over the last year, the line has changed from full-throated support to — finally, last month — an acceptance that the costs of remaining were just too high.

None of this undermines the role that campaigning has played in getting us to this point. At the broadest level, only significant campaigning by the climate movement over decades has forced the massive change in which climate action is seen now as a necessity. The people defeated the rule of “market knows best” economics — though of course we have a long way to go to reach the economic change we need.

More specifically, only because of campaigning across Europe was the problem of the ECT raised to the point that politicians began thinking about withdrawal. And in most countries, it was campaigning that forced them to the exit. That applies to Britain too, where the divisions over ECT were forced open by campaigners over four years, with the climate movement — from Green Alliance to Extinction Rebellion (XR) — joining in the critique of the system.
Next Steps

Of course, last month’s announcement is only a first step, removing one structural impediment to the climate transition. It’s significant nonetheless. The UK’s withdrawal may well herald the end of the ECT as a whole. It’s now widely viewed as a dead man walking and will only be mourned by those profiting from the destruction of our planet. In turn, this means that one small but significant element of our neocolonial, market-knows-best economy has been dismantled.

Those who have suffered most from the ISDS system live in the Global South. In numerous trade deals, ISDS is being used to bully and extract from countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Honduras and Colombia are currently facing eye-watering claims for doing no more than trying to protect the interests of their citizens from rapacious capital.

A recent development is corporations using ISDS to secure access to the critical minerals they need for the green transition and getting them on the terms they demand. While these metals might indeed be necessary for green industry, we cannot build a future economy on the poverty and exploitation of those who’ve done least to cause climate change in the first place. It should be for those countries to decide how their own resources can be used to bolster their development.

The good news is that countries from Pakistan to South Africa to Bolivia are, like the UK, also pulling out of treaties which subject them to this treatment. Most recently, the left-wing government of Honduras gave notice it would withdraw from the World Bank’s own corporate court system, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ICSID. The victory over the ECT will help them point the hypocrisy in a global economy that increasingly allows the Global North to embark on economic planning — albeit still woefully insufficient — but demands the rule of the market for everyone else.

More than anything, it’s now clear that the debate on climate change has shifted decisively to a point where there is at least space to argue for radical economic transformation. Last week’s victory is a definite step forward.

Russia: Moscow Terror Attack Met With Repression, Racism

By Frederico Fuentes

March 27, 2024

Source: Green Left



At least 139 people have been confirmed dead, with many more injured or still unaccounted for, following the horrific terrorist attack carried out at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22. But Russian leftists are warning that the government’s response is “more frightening than the terrorist attack itself”.

Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) claimed responsibility for one of the worst terror attacks in modern day Russia. Shortly after the attack, the local affiliate of the global ISIS terror network posted footage on its website of the brutal actions taken by the terrorists .

ISIS-K was formed in 2015 and is active in historic “Khorasan” — which covers parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and other Central Asian countries. Its reasons for wanting to attack Russia are many: from Russia’s brutal wars against the predominantly Muslim population of Chechnya, through to its support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic regimes in Afghanistan and Iran, all of which ISIS considers as key rivals.

Several weeks before the attack, Western intelligence agencies warned that a terror attack by Islamic militants on Russian soil was imminent. According to Russian state media outlet RIA, in March alone, Russia’s security service thwarted four ISIS-K plots, including an attempted attack on a Moscow synagogue on March 7.

Deflecting blame

Despite this, it took Russian President Vladimir Putin three days to refer to the four suspects arrested on the day of the attack as “radical Islamists”. He made no reference to ISIS-K in his remarks; instead, hinting that Ukraine and the West were behind the attack.

“The question that arises is who benefits from this?” Putin said. “This atrocity may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 by the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime.”

FSB head Alexander Bortnikov backed Putin’s claims on March 26, adding: “We think the act was prepared by the radical Islamists, but of course, the Western special services have aided.”

Following Ukraine’s February 2014 Maidan rebellion, which saw millions take to the streets to topple pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, Russia began arming separatist rebels in Ukraine’s Donbas region and invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Putin justified his action then as a response to what he deemed was a pro-Western coup in Kyiv. When Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he again claimed that a coup regime had “taken Ukraine hostage” and was using the country against Russia.

Ukraine has strenuously denied any involvement with the terror attack. In response, President Volodymyr Zelensky called Putin “scum” for seeking to link his country to the attack and noted it was Putin who had sent “hundreds of thousands of [Russian] terrorists” to Ukraine since February 2022.

Fighting terror with terror

Meanwhile, Russian leftists believe Putin will seek to use the terror attack to strengthen his own regime of terror, both in Ukraine and at home.

In a statement published on its Telegram channel, Russian group Nowar said: “Whoever organised the massacre in Crocus, its consequences will inevitably be terrorist.” They note that the tragedy will no doubt be used to justify “sending hundreds of thousands of newly mobilised soldiers to the meat grinder” in Ukraine.

Leftist website Posle (After) agreed, writing in an editorial: “The Russian state, as always, will try to profit from this situation … There is no doubt that the terrorist attack will be used to justify further crackdowns, the adoption of new repressive laws, the escalation of violence in Ukraine and, possibly, a new wave of mobilisation…”

“This is why the state’s reaction can be more frightening than the terrorist attack itself…”

Government spokespeople have lost no time in calling for the use of terror to fight “terrorists”, with several calling for the return of the death penalty.

Stating that it is not enough to simply target terrorists themselves, former president and current deputy chair of the National Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev said: “no trials or investigations will help if force is not countered with force, and deaths with executions of terrorists and a crackdown on their families.”

But, as Nowar notes, in Putin’s Russia, “it is not so much mujahideen and militants who are imprisoned under terrorist articles but rather professors and students”. They point to the examples of sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky and mathematician Azat Miftakhov, two leftists who are currently facing years in prison on trumped-up charges related to “terrorism”.

Posle also highlighted how, “symptomatically, the day before the attack, the Russian financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring added the non-existent ‘international LGBT public movement’ to its list of ‘terrorists and extremists’.”

Stoking racism

Using the fact that those arrested were originally from Tajikistan, Russian authorities have also seized the opportunity to stoke racism against Muslims and migrants, with State Duma deputy Mikhail Sheremet proposing a ban on all migrants until the war in Ukraine is over.

Not to be outdone, fellow deputy Vladislav Davankov — who ran against Putin as a supposed “anti-war” candidate in the recent elections — has proposed going further and deporting any foreigners who commit an offence.

An article published by Rabkor (Workers Correspondent), the leftist media platform that Kagarlitsky edited until his jailing, noted that “all of this is called racism — instead of analysing the causes of terrorism, we are asked to believe that the only reason is their nationality…

“Under this logic, the police check documents in the subway. Under this logic, neo-Nazis carry out attacks (there have been 263 of them over the past six months). Under this logic, yesterday [March 23] there were raids against migrants in Moscow, Volgograd and Tula…”

With Russia providing migrants with little more than “slave-like conditions … beatings, humiliation and threats of expulsion … today, millions of migrants in Russia live in genuine ghettos, amid dirt, humiliation and information isolation — ideal conditions for preachers of terrorism who recruit suicide bombers”.

Mirror-image of West

Putin’s response has been no different to that taken by Western governments after similar terrorist attacks, notes Russian socialist Mikhail Lobanov.

“We have seen over the past 25 years that after each such tragedy, the Kremlin does not provide answers, but only launches a new attack on peaceful Russian society.

“Unfortunately, this is not a purely domestic reality. Like Putin, the authorities of various countries around the world, under the slogan of endless war against terrorism, have for several decades been pursuing a policy that only strengthens the preconditions leading to the emergence and reproduction of terrorist groups.”

Lobanov notes how repression at home, war abroad and unjust economic policies “that condemn a huge part of humanity to live in unbearable circumstances” have created “the perfect conditions for the growth and reproduction of hatred and horrific terrorist practices”.

“A real solution to this problem requires going much further and deeper than demanding that the perpetrators and organisers be found and punished.”


Frederico Fuentes is the editor of Bolivia Rising and co-author, with Marta Harnecker, of MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento político que surge de los movimientos sociales. He is a member of Australia's Socialist Alliance and is based in Venezuela.

Ron Carey’s Lessons in US Labor Movement Reform

By Steve Early, Rand Wilson 

March 26, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Image by Ofer Inbar, Creative Commons 2.0

Books about union presidents are usually penned by professional writers — either academic historians, labor journalists, or paid flacks. Past accounts of the life and work of labor organization chiefs like John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, or Cesar Chavez have run the gamut from hagiographic to constructively critical. Few have had a biographer whose view of their leadership role is rooted in firsthand experience as a blue-collar worker in the same industry and union.

Ken Reiman’s personal connection to the subject matter of Ron Carey and the Teamsters resulted from his long career as a UPS driver and activist in the local union that Carey led before becoming president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) in the 1990s. Reiman’s insights into the workplace culture and organizational politics of IBT Local 804 in Queens, New York, before, during, and after Carey’s presidency provide a rank-and-file perspective on the challenges of institutional change in organized labor over the past fifty years.

Carey’s story, as told by Reiman, contains many important lessons for younger union activists, whether they are Teamsters or involved in other unions. Organized labor today is in a state of very positive ferment. A reform movement in the United Auto Workers (UAW), modeled after Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), has had similar success winning direct election of top officers and using that system to oust old-guard officials.

By late 2023, newly elected UAW leaders were conducting a major strike against US automakers, after building a membership-based contract campaign of the sort never employed by the previous leadership during national bargaining. Earlier in the year, new leadership in the Teamsters, elected in 2022 with TDU backing, engaged many of the union’s 330,000 members at UPS in a national contract fight that drew on the experience of the UPS strike in 1997, led by Ron Carey.

In California, in 2023, workers in the state university system staged the largest higher education walkout ever and union members at Kaiser Permanente conducted the biggest health care industry strike in US labor history. Actors and writers participated in an overlapping work stoppage in Hollywood that involved more than 170,000 workers. Meanwhile, thousands of Southern California hotel workers also struck for a new contract.

Workers at Starbucks have conducted what now appears to be a successful first contract campaign, after engaging in nationally coordinated protest activity and mini-strikes in particular workplaces. The landscape of labor organizing in Amazon warehouses and distribution centers is replete with similar shop-floor skirmishing between labor and management, including worker-led strikes over local issues in many locations with no formal bargaining rights or union recognition.

This dynamic mix of union democracy and reform struggles, at the local and national level, and heightened workplace militancy in many different sectors was, of course, the context for Ron Carey’s own late twentieth-century career as a union dissident. He became the first democratically elected president of what was, not long ago, the nation’s most corrupt and racketeer-dominated union.

Each phase of Carey’s rise and fall, as recounted in Putting Members First, is worthy of close study by those seeking to follow in his footsteps as a shop-floor militant, an opposition candidate for local union office, and a coalition builder with other reformers. Last, and most impressive, was Carey’s role as a national labor leader faced with the daunting challenge of transforming a dysfunctional organization in the face of employer hostility and the internal resistance of union officials protecting their own perks, political power, and personal fiefdoms.

Below are some of the critical components of union revitalization, as recounted in this biography, that have continuing relevance to present-day reform struggles:
1 Ousting local union incumbents.

Like many disgruntled members before and since, Carey first got involved in union politics because officials of Local 804 in the late 1950s were so unresponsive to worker complaints and concerns. He ran for shop steward, beating a fellow driver who “didn’t want to rock the boat.” Rocking the boat became Carey’s “MO” for the rest of his career.

But he understood the limitations of being a “lone ranger.” Reiman’s account of how Carey assembled a team of like-minded coworkers to take on the union establishment is a good primer for anyone trying to do that at the local union level today.

It took Carey a decade, and several election defeats running for lesser offices, before he became 804 president on a platform of cleaning up the local, enforcing the contract, and improving pensions. As he did twenty-four years later in the “Marble Palace,” the Teamsters’ headquarters in Washington, Carey cut his own salary to show that he was serious about putting union resources to work for the membership.
2 Using direct action on the job.

The year Ron Carey became a Teamster steward, Local 804 had twenty wildcat strikes; not long afterwards UPS drivers in New York City struck for six weeks, over the objections of local and national union officials. Throughout his three decades in the local, Carey tapped into, rather than trying to suppress, rank-and-file unrest that took the form of job actions, whether legal or not.

When Carey became president in 1968, after campaigning for a year as part of an opposition slate, his first challenge was striking UPS again. This time, 804 members walked out for more than two months to win a first-ever “twenty-five-and-out” pension provision (allowing workers to retire with a pension after twenty-five years on the job) with UPS, effectively using contract rejection votes at mass meetings to win a better final offer from management.
3 Challenging bureaucratic control of bargaining.

As Reiman reports, Carey quickly developed a reputation for honesty, transparency, and independence from the corrupt regional and national power structure of the IBT. But, in the Teamsters then, and in many other unions today, islands of militancy have trouble surviving in a sea of business unionism.

Putting Members First shows how dissident locals like Carey’s 804 must overcome attempts by the union hierarchy to undermine picket-line solidarity among workers bargaining with the same employer, but in different locals or national unions. Carey’s methods of thwarting management’s “divide-and-conquer” schemes, aided and abetted by top union officials, are worthy of emulation.
4 Networking with like-minded reformers.

In the 1980s, the IBT began negotiating more issues with UPS at the company-wide level — via a tightly controlled national bargaining committee — which reduced the scope and impact of local or regional bargaining. To counter this threat, Carey and Local 804 began to ally with UPS dissidents around the country, including those long active in TDU and equally opposed to a then provision of the IBT constitution that required a two-thirds vote, rather than a simple majority, to reject any tentative agreement with an employer.

Jousting with the International Union over imposition of unpopular UPS contracts — voted down by a majority of those covered by them — helped build the movement for democratizing the Teamsters by linking bad bargaining outcomes to denial of membership rights.
5 Winning and using one member, one vote.

Most US union members have no direct say about their national union officers and executive board members. The latter are elected by smaller groups of local union delegates at national conventions that tend to be leadership controlled, particularly when incumbents are up for reelection. These delegate bodies are resistant to changing national union constitutions to allow the more democratic method used in the American Postal Workers Union, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the NewsGuild–Communications Workers of America, and a few others.

The only major breakthroughs in direct voting on top officers have occurred after corruption scandals and resulting judicial intervention involving the IBT, UAW, and the Laborers’ International Union of North America. Without a rank-and-file reform movement — of the type which backed Carey during his two Teamsters presidential campaigns, or which developed recently in the UAW — it remains hard for opposition candidates to win any union-wide election. The lesson of this book is to be ready for that political opening when and if it occurs, while fighting for “one member, one vote” in the meantime.
6 Tackling internal restructuring.

When Carey and other members of his reform slate took over Teamsters headquarters in 1992, the Marble Palace was not just a monument to past Teamster extravagance. It was full of poorly performing departments, with overpaid and/or incompetent staffers hostile to the goals of the new administration. Foes of reform also controlled all the Teamster joint councils, area conferences, and the boards of the many health, welfare, and pension benefit funds. These powerful officials wanted Carey and his team to fall on their faces.

Working with TDU activists around the country and a minority of reform-minded local officers, Carey put seventy-five troubled locals under trusteeship, cut waste, stepped up Teamster organizing, hired aggressive new staff, and empowered members. As Reiman documents, the elimination of the “area conferences” was a major restructuring victory — and a blueprint worth following, as needed, in other unions saddled with unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and staff featherbedding.
7 Staying close to the members.

To his credit, Carey never felt comfortable in his new inside-the-Beltway world (where a sycophantic culture of political hustling and overpaid “consulting” would, in the end, contribute to his undoing). He liked hanging out with working Teamsters in Queens, not politicians or other high-ranking union officials in Washington. He was a workhorse not a show horse, a hands-on handler of IBT members’ daily problems, large and small.

Carey’s organizational accomplishments, as Reiman shows, were always rooted in a strong personal connection with the membership that many elected and appointed officials seem to lose as they ascend through the ranks of their respective union bureaucracies.
8 Taking on employers, with new allies.

Carey’s finest hour came in 1997 when the presence of someone at the top of the union who sincerely believed in the power of the rank and file made it possible for 185,000 UPS workers to win the biggest nationwide strike in the last thirty years. The UPS contract campaign employed membership education and mobilization, labor-community coalition building, and outreach to UPS customers and the general public via the media that the union had never utilized before.

Two years before, the Teamsters under Carey had cast 1.4 million votes in the AFL-CIO’s first contested election in one hundred years, thereby helping to secure the victory of a new leadership more helpful in labor-management showdowns like the UPS strike. The IBT joined the labor-community coalition Jobs With Justice, embraced single-payer health care reform, and campaigned against free trade. The union ditched its traditional ties to conservative Republicans, while maintaining some — albeit not enough — distance from Democrats who disappointed or betrayed labor.
9 Anticipating a counterrevolution.

When union reformers win, they still face pushback from entrenched internal foes. Carey’s crackdown on crooks and leadership perks alienated large sections of the Teamster officialdom. Still-powerful bureaucrats who had split their support between two “Old Guard” candidates in 1991 bankrolled a unified $4 million challenge, fronted by James Hoffa, five years later. The wealthy Detroit labor lawyer masqueraded successfully as a populist critic of a “New Teamster” establishment that was spendthrift, incompetent, and run by “outsiders.”

As Reiman recounts, the Carey campaign fundraising misconduct in 1996 was a self-inflicted blow to the moral authority and public reputation of his administration. It was the result of corner-cutting and top-down campaigning that was very different from the bottom-up approach that propelled Carey to victory five years before.

The moral of this story: if you’re going to take on union corruption and corporate America at the same time, don’t let opportunistic “outsiders” hitch their wagon to your team. Their greed, bad judgment, and lack of any connection to union reform will lead to grifting of a new sort.

While the tragedy of Ron Carey’s criminal prosecution and eventual banning from the union makes for painful reading, Ken Reiman’s book reminds us that the Teamster reform movement survived “Donorgate” in the mid-1990s and upheld his legacy of opposition to Teamster old-guard politics and policies. The work of Carey and many like-minded supporters four decades ago raised the bar and set the stage for Teamster reformers to reclaim their national headquarters nearly twenty-five years later.

One result of that most recent national-level reform slate victory was the 2022–23 UPS contract campaign, which drew on the lessons, experiences, and, in many cases, the leadership of 1997 strike veterans. In much media coverage and analysis of last year’s grassroots contract campaign and its results, Carey’s name, memory, and past strike role were often invoked.

To TDU members and the many other Teamsters whose votes made him the first directly elected national union president, Carey remains a heroic, not just tragic, figure. In a union where to this day, many local officers are wary of TDU, the pugnacious ex-Marine and former UPS driver from Queens was a unique ally in a vibrant reform movement that has now spanned five decades.

During that period, we had the privilege of working with Ron in different capacities and seeing him in action, behind the scenes and in public, during several critical junctures in the union’s modern history.

Reiman has brought Ron’s story to a new generation of labor activists faced with the unfinished task of revitalizing and reforming the US labor movement. The book will help ensure that Carey’s singular role will be remembered — and rightfully honored — long after his critics and detractors have been forgotten.



Steve Early has worked as a journalist, lawyer, labor organizer, or union representative since 1972. For nearly three decades, Early was a Boston-based national staff member of the Communications Workers of America who assisted organizing, bargaining and strikes in both the private and public sector. Early's free-lance writing about labor relations and workplace issues has appeared in The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, The Progressive, and many other publications. Early's latest book is called Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs (Duke University Press, 2022). He is also the author of Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of An American City (Beacon Press, 2018); Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press, 2013); The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? (Haymarket Books, 2011); and Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home (Monthly Review Press, 2009). Early is a member of the NewsGuild/CWA, the Richmond Progressive Alliance (in his new home town, Richmond, CA.) East Bay DSA, Solidarity, and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He is a current or past editorial advisory board member of New Labor Forum, Working USA, Labor Notes, and Social Policy. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com and via steveearly.org or ourvetsbook.com.