US AND PANAMA

Working class justice

Panama has labor laws that in theory make union representation easier, but the practices here are disgraceful

ERIC JACKSON

PANAMA. The double standard is the bane of working people everywhere. On the afternoon that these words were written, weighty issues faced working people in Panama, the United States and most of the rest of the world, but nowhere did the old double standard glare more than in a prominent Detroit company.

Although the VP of this enterprise gets more attention for his job with another company, I refer to the Detroit Lions, who were crushed at home to bring their season record to 0-15. No team has gone winless for a whole season since the National Football League adopted the 16-game schedule, and the Lions finish their season against the Green Bay Packers.

In a world without double standards, owners as well as athletes and coaches would be subject to release or demotion for poor performance. The Lions are a case in point. I say there will be no justice in this world until Lions owner William Clay Ford and Lions vice president Bill Ford are demoted. They should be put in charge of the Eastern Michigan University football program. And no moonlighting for Bill --- they should make him quit his job running the Ford Motor Company too.

Is there hope for the working man? Sure there is, and for the working woman too. Barack Obama could not have chosen a more pro-labor Secretary of Labor than Hilda Solis. Labor has been winning representation elections since the presidential voting.

In the first US sit-down strike in a long time, employees at a Chicago window factory whom a bank tried to put out on the street without the legally required prior notice and severance pay got backing from Obama and won their demands.

A battle is looming in Congress over the Employee Free Choice Act. This legislation would ban most of the tricks that corporations use to deny union representation when most of their employees have signed union cards. Surely it would be the start of an organizing drive that would swell the ranks of organized labor and affect the balance of political power in the United States.

Management can see this too, so there will be a confrontation that will test whether Obama can get things done without 60 votes in the Senate.

Panama has labor laws that in theory make representation easier, but here we have an anti-labor PRD in power and an even more anti-labor opposition. The practices here are disgraceful --- company unions purporting to represent workers, cops shooting labor activists, real unions being replaced by racketeers on the basis of false documents, workers who properly petition for a union being denied certification for frivolous reasons and so on.

If you read the history of Panamanian organized labor, you find foreign influences among its roots --- Spanish anarchists, communists and the AFL-CIO from the USA and people from the West Indian labor movements that later led the Caribbean countries to independence. Now we have a labor movement with a Panamanian identity.

However, if there is a labor upsurge in the United States, it would be hard to imagine Panama not feeling the effects. Neither labor nor management live in isolation here at The Crossroads of the World.

Publicidad