Today's Stories

August 28-30, 2009

Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

August 27, 2009

Doug and Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five

Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers

Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel

Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap

Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option

Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent

Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers

David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)

Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries

August 26, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout

Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke

Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women

Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First

Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane

Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans

Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque

Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy

Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools

Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line

August 25, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed

Martine Bulard
China's Wild West

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity

Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

Weekend Edition
August 28-30, 2009

Picketing SK Hand Tools

On Strike for Health Care Justice

By LEE SUSTAR

An unfair labor practices strike at Chicago-based SK Hand Tools has highlighted the widespread attack on health care benefits and wages as employers try to take advantage of the recession.

About 75 workers at SK walked out August 25, about three months after the company--which makes the popular Craftsman brand tools for Sears--cut off their Blue Cross/Blue Shield health coverage.

"I've worked here 23 years, and I've always had that plan," said striker Norma Trinidad. "Unilaterally, without any notice, they cut off our health insurance. What he did was 100 percent wrong."

Many workers found out about the cutoff only when they sought medical care. "People walked into Walgreens to get their prescriptions filled and were told that they owe $300 or $400, when ordinarily it was $40 or $50," Trinidad said.

Driving this union-busting agenda are Claude Fuger, president and CEO of SK Hand Tools, and Cliff Rusnak, the company's vice president and board chairman. The two men took over the 88-year-old company in 2005, purchasing it from Facom, the French multinational. Since then, they've been out to cut labor costs--and now they seem intent on breaking the union for good.

The workers' union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 743, has sought to overturn the health care cutoff by appealing to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to rule the cutoff an unfair labor practice. The board is scheduled to hold a hearing on the matter September 2. But with no health care, workers concluded that they had no alternative but to walk out now.

"We have been working without a contract since February 28, and working without health insurance for the last four months," said striker Emilio Lunar, a shop steward. "Our pension is going to be in default at the end of this month. So it's a stressful situation for every worker here. They don't know the next thing [the owner] is going be cutting."

Already, health care costs have put a number of workers deeply in debt. Wages range from $11 to $19 an hour, but most people make around $12 or $14. So even routine medical expenses for prescription drugs can quickly add up.

"We have one guy whose wife has diabetes, and who needs a special pump," Trinidad said. "He had to go online, hunting, trying to find temporary health insurance. We have people with high blood pressure and other medical conditions also."

One worker, John Oprzedek, had a kidney transplant a year ago. "The medication is very expensive each month--almost $4,000," he said. "I must go to the doctor every month to check my blood and urine. I've been working here 13 years, and we always have had insurance."

Another worker, Dejan Gavatsky, finds himself $20,000 in debt--so far--for emergency hernia surgery that he underwent six weeks ago. Gavatsky, who emigrated to the U.S. from Macedonia about four years ago, thought he had found a good job at SK, where he made about $30,000 to $35,000 per year at first. But this year, he's been on layoffs for the equivalent of nearly three months. Before the strike, he was on track to make only about $15,000, he said.

"Every day, there are more bills coming in, and I want to pay them to keep my credit rating," he said. His household has income from his wife, who works as a housekeeper, but it's not nearly enough to make a dent in the medical bill.

Gavatsky and his wife don't have children. But other workers relied on their insurance through SK to cover their kids. One of them, Terry Spiwak, a 23-year veteran worker, finds himself of the hook for $13,000 to cover the cost of a new pacemaker for his 15-year-old son.

The workers joked that owner Fuger, originally from France, won't have those problems. "If he gets sick, he can just go to the doctor in France for free," Trinidad said.

In addition to the cutoff of their health insurance, the workers are also facing demands for a temporary $4 per hour wage cut and a permanent 20 percent wage cut to get the company through the recession, workers on the picket line said. Management had earlier sought to reopen the contract to obtain a 50 percent wage cut, but workers refused.

"It seems like he [Claude Fuger] wants us to work for minimum wage with no benefits," Emilio Lunar said. But that's another battle: The current walkout is limited to an unfair labor practice--cancellation of health care.

* * *

Given the suffering that workers have already endured and the harshness of management's demands, one might expect the SK Hand Tools picket lines to be grim.

Not so. At the factory on Chicago's Southwest Side, a dozen or so workers keep up spirited pickets along 47th Street, where trucks and cars speeding past routinely sound their horns. A local pizza restaurant fed picketers, and visitors from other unions drop by with coffee and snacks.

In the loading docks in back, a picketer reports that unionized truck drivers from UPS and other companies are refusing to cross picket lines. The picture at the SK warehouse in nearby McCook, a Chicago suburb, is similar. "We've had a lot of solidarity--a lot," said Emilio Lunar.

It's easy to see why people identify with the SK Hand Tools workers. They're a microcosm of working-class Chicago. "We've got everybody," Norma Trinidad said. "Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Polish, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Italian, whites, African American, Arabs and more." Many have worked in the plant for at least a decade.

Another factor in the fighting spirit in this strike is the dramatic change in the workers' union, the 13,000-member Teamsters Local 743. After a long and difficult battle against a corrupt union leadership--several members of which are now in prison-- a reform slate led by Richard Berg took over last year.

Berg, now the local's president, has encouraged Local 743 members to make connections with other labor unions and community struggles. Several workers from SK Hand Tools, including shop steward Lunar, went to the rallies in support of the Republic Windows & Doors occupation last December.

Now SK Hand Tools workers find themselves on labor's front lines. Like Republic Windows, the company directly involved is relatively small, but major corporate power looms behind.

In the case of Republic Windows, it was Bank of America that became the target for its refusal to fund severance pay for workers. At SK Hand Tools, workers plan to draw attention to the company's main customer, Sears, with an action at its corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates outside Chicago.

And the issue involved--defending health care benefits--is a crucial question for tens of millions of workers. As the New York Times noted earlier this year, "Surveys suggest that rising premiums have prompted more than half of small businesses to reduce benefits, raise deductibles or require workers to shoulder a larger share of an ever more expensive pie."

It's going to be a tough fight. To put pressure on Sears and the SK Hand Tools management, the strikers urgently need our support.

Lee Sustar is the labor editor of Socialist Worker, where this article originally appeared.

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