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Today's Stories November 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire November 3 / 4, 2007 Tariq Ali Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship Jeffrey St. Clair Splitsville Alan Farago The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class Paul Krassner He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards Rannie Amiri Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals P. Sainath Indexing Humanity, Indian Style Ayesha Ijaza Khan Pakistan in a Daze Robert Fantina Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? Seth Sandronsky The Politics of Health Care in California Ron Jacobs The Bebop of Baraka Ramzy Baroud A Case for Arab Dignity Heather Gray When Capitalists Get a Free Ride   November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

November 5, 2007 The Two-Tier Wage Format How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer) By DAVID MACARAY People are stunned and confused when they learn that big-time unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) have agreed to contracts that contain two-tier wage provisions. It was organized labor (and not the Church or the U.S. Congress or philanthropic organizations) who first demanded equal pay and equal seniority for women. Equal pay for equal work was one of labor's fundamental tenets. So, to the casual observer, the notion of a union agreeing to something so unjust is inconceivable. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a two-tier format requires new employees to earn less money than their senior co-workers. Even when doing identical jobs, even when working side by side. Because these tiered plans generally have no "sunset language" (built-in expiration dates), no amnesty periods, no mechanisms for equalizing pay, the rate discrepancies remain permanent. Through natural attrition a company can eventually end up with its entire workforce earning substantially lower wages. Worse, the two-tier format doesn't apply exclusively to wages; it can cut into the entire economic package, including benefits. Newbies are commonly locked into lower vacation time, higher medical premiums and smaller pensions. That's why the tiered format is so tempting to businesses. While the configuration has been around in one form or another for decades, it wasn't until the 1990s that it became a routine agenda item, and it wasn't until fairly recently that companies began treating it as a "deal-breaker." Arguably, the genie was let out of the bottle when companies first began adopting hiring rates (where new-hires aren't paid the full rate until they've been there a year), and when lump-sum bonuses were accepted in lieu of GWIs (General Wage Increases). To a company looking to cut costs, paying cash instead of a GWI is a sophisticated short cut to achieving it. Because overtime is computed at the (old) hourly rate, as are vacation and holiday pay, sick leave, workers comp claims, and pension formulas, the overall savings to a company can be considerable. But even with these precursors in play, how was organized labor ever persuaded to accept a provision so toxic and self-destructive as this? Typically, management comes at the union from two angles, one economic, one cultural. The economic approach bluntly warns that without the adoption of a two-tier format, cost savings will be sought elsewhere. In this context, "elsewhere" is understood to mean benefits and wages, two components of the membership's Holy Trinity (the third is seniority). And the benefit considered most vulnerable is health care. Since the early 1990s, the threat of unleashing the hounds of medical insurance has been management's most effective scare tactic. Because everyone who follows the news knows that medical costs are out of control and spiraling upward, the fear of a family budget being wiped out by exorbitant premiums and deductibles looms large. The company begins by bombarding the union with reams of grim statistics: comparisons to other facilities, other industries, other unions, other states, other countries, other eras. In a normal contract negotiation, while economics (particularly wages) are always foremost and omnipresent, they manage somehow to stay muted and unobtrusive, like background music, until crunch time. But in a two-tier wage pitch the demands are unrelenting and merciless, right from the get-go. The company recites the names of businesses that have already moved to Mississippi or Malaysia, or have shut down altogether because they couldn't compete. They mention the hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the sector; they compare GM's national strike in 1970, where over 400,000 workers walked off their jobs to GM's recent strike, where 73,000 walked out; they note that during their last hiring period, nearly 2,000 people showed up to apply for 44 hourly positions; and they mention that virtually no one in the facility ever quits to seek employment elsewhere, because they're all so well-paid. It's an assault, an avalanche of bad news. The union is told, analogously, that it can choose to swallow a bitter pill (and maybe choke on it a bit) or it can choose to undergo major surgery. The choice is yours. Do you want your medical plan to remain intact, or do you want your premiums to skyrocket? By giving the company the relief it seeks in the area of future wages, you can hang on to what you have. The choice is yours. That's the economic argument. The cultural argument is subtler and more tantalizing. Not only is the union reminded that the plan won't adversely affect anyone currently on the payroll, these future new-hires, these people who are going to be making less money than the rest of them, are portrayed as being vaguely culpable, as if their Johnny-come-lately status makes them somehow deserving of being punished. Current employees-those who've faithfully put in their years and showed their loyalty to both union and company-will continue to be rewarded for that service. Besides being grandfathered in, and having their precious medical insurance untouched, the company will offer them a hefty "signing bonus" for ratifying the contract. Because this enterprise can be seen as class warfare-once-removed (a case of the working class arranging things so as to form its own sub-class), management reassures the union that the only people who can be "hurt" by this are people who do not yet exist. They are "hypothetical" workers, part of that sea of nameless, faceless job applicants who may one day seek employment in the facility. Moreover, when these folks move from hypothetical to "actual," they are going to know exactly what's in store for them. The two-tier format will be carefully explained. If the prospect of earning as much as $16 per hour on the bottom tier (as opposed to $30 per hour on the top tier) makes economic sense to them, they'll be welcomed aboard. But if the deal offends them (if the notion of equal work being rewarded with unequal pay is something they simply can't abide), they'll be congratulated for having a well-developed sense of justice, and cautioned not to let the door hit them on the way out. And that, more or less, is how the two-tier plan is pitched. Of course, once these plans are implemented, they're an ungodly mess. The membership experiences an agonizing case of "buyer's remorse." The same members who assumed they could work comfortably with sacrificial lambs now feel pangs of conscience. They blame the company; they blame themselves; they blame the union for bringing it to a vote. And then there's that whole dynamic of the haves bickering with the have-nots; morale plummets, and union solidarity goes out the window. But as bad as it gets, it's nothing compared to later. The really bad news doesn't come until the next negotiation, after the two-tier format is firmly in place. That's when the company announces that, unfortunately, medical insurance, the one benefit that was to be left untouched, must now be drastically slashed. And when the union screams bloody murder, they're told it's business. Just business. David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and writer, was president and chief contract negotiator of the Assn. of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, Local 672, from 1989 to 2000. He can be reached at: dmacaray@earthlink.net   The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! Israel's Very Dangerous Gamble STEPHEN GREEN reports on the real motivations behind Israel's MISSILE STRIKE on SYRIA. PETER MONTAGUE on the NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE or How the Nuke Industry is using Gore's Prize and Global Warming to Plot Its Big Comeback. WILLIAM BLUM on the DEVALUING of "ANTI-SEMITE" or How to Make a Term Meaningless. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Your Ad Here

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"