Bush quietly signs corporate tax-cut bill

With no fanfare, President Bush Friday signed the most sweeping rewrite of corporate tax law in nearly two decades, showering $136 billion in new tax breaks on businesses, farmers and other groups.

Intended to end a bitter trade war with Europe, the election-year measure was described by supporters as critically necessary to aid beleaguered manufacturers who have suffered 2.7 million lost jobs over the past four years.

But opponents charged that the tax package had grown into a massive giveaway that will add to the complexity of the tax system and end up rewarding multinational companies that move jobs overseas.

There was no ceremony for the bill-signing. White House press secretary Scott McClellan announced it on Air Force One as Bush flew to a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania. Bush mentioned the new tax law at the beginning of a health care event in Canton, Ohio.


http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6307293/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/bush-quietly-signs-corporate-tax-cut-bill/

The first strike fatalities were two New York tailors, killed in 1850 by police dispersing a crowd of strikers.



Some died in famous incidents, such as the 1913 Ludlow Massacre, when National Guardsmen attacked a tent colony of striking Colorado miners

1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when ten supporters of a steel strike were killed by Chicago police

Approximately 35,000 workers a year were killed annually in work-related accidents from 1880 to 1900. Injured workers totaled another 536,000

To "keep the peace" and break the strike, state militia units from Philadelphia were ordered to Pittsburgh. (Militia units from Pittsburgh were deemed unreliable because they sympathized with the strikers.) On July 21, six hundred troops arrived from Philadelphia. Led by Superintendent Robert Pitcairn of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a posse of constables with arrest warrants for the strike leaders, they found themselves confronted by crowds of men, women and children. The crowds, loudly protesting the troops' presence and expressing support for the strikers, sought to prevent military action. The militiamen responded with a bayonet charge that resulted in injuries and provoked a hail of rocks from some sections of those assembled. The troops then opened fire on the unarmed men, women, and children, scattering them - and leaving at least twenty dead (including one woman and three small children) and twenty-nine wounded.

http://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/notable_labor_strikes_of_the_gil.htm

Lawsuits were filed in the United States in 2001 and 2006 by the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, several of its members who were falsely imprisoned and the survivors of Isidro Gil and Adolfo de Jesus Munera, two of its murdered officers. The lawsuits charged Coca-Cola bottlers "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders." The lawsuits and campaign were developed to force Coca-Cola to once and for all end further bloodshed, compensate victims and provide safe working conditions.

Coca-Cola, which is virulently anti-union, claims that any allegations that its bottlers in Colombia are involved in the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, torture, and murder of union leaders are false. Yet the company has fought every effort to have an independent investigation into these allegations while at the same time has misled the public and its own shareholders with a long string of lies and bogus investigations.

On February 25, 2010, another human rights abuse lawsuit against Coca-Cola was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York and later moved to federal district court. "This case involves a campaign of violence - including rape, murder, and attempted murder - against trade unionists and their families at the behest of the management of Coca-Cola bottling and processing plants in Guatemala."

http://killercoke.org/

The captains of industry did not lead the transformation to social progress; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shore not only itself but the whole society.”

Dr. Martin Luther King

http://www.local3.com/?q=node/5088

Fifty years ago last week, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech to a crowd of 250,000 which stretched from the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. King's speech immortalized the "March", but the day might not have been such a success without the help of organized labor.

On this Labor Day, despite the more nefarious popular public perception that would come later, it's worth highlighting the positive impact labor unions had on the Civil Rights movement and on that August day in 1963.

"The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" was organized by A. Philip Randolph, a member of the ALF-CIO Executive Council. Randolph, who was 74 at the time, had a long union history having organized elevator operators in New York City, dockworkers in Tidewater, Virginia, and having served as president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

Randolph was no stranger to Washington, he had successfully petitioned Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to end discrimination in defense employment during the war and later to end segregation of America's armed forces. Randolph had suggested a march on Washington before, but had been talked out of it.

http://www.dailyprogress.com/starexponent/opinion/columnists/labor-unions-played-key-role-in-success-of-washington-march/article_a93982a4-13ad-11e3-b1e8-0019bb30f31a.html