In case you missed it ...

Most of us have regularly met with co-workers at a bar, coffee shop or union hall. Most of us have visited our co-workers’ houses at one time or another. Yet a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board allows employers to ban off-duty fraternizing among co-workers, in a move many blue-collar groups say violates the First Amendment.

On June 7, the Board ruled that Guardmark’s fraternization rule was lawful. The Board majority argued that workers would likely interpret the fraternization rule as merely a ban on dating, and not a prohibition of the association among co-workers protected by Section 7. The dissenting member of the Board noted that “the primary meaning of the term ‘fraternize…[is] to associate in a brotherly manner’…and that kind of association is the essence of workplace solidarity.”

“Big Brother nixes Happy Hour,” American Rights at Work, July 27, 2005.
www.americanrightsatwork.org/workersrights/eye7_2005.cfm

Company cites poor U.S. education in move

Officials of the Toyota car company announced plans to open up their new North American plant in Ontario, Canada last month, citing “the quality of Ontario’s work force,” according to the New York Times.

Southern states like Alabama had offered Toyota financial incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the article said, but Toyota officials were reportedly concerned about the workers’ lack of education. The president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association claimed that the educational level in the southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.

The results are ironic for Alabama’s governor. Two years ago, voters defeated his proposal to boost the state’s rock-bottom taxes on the upper class, in order to improve the state’s poor education system. Opponents of the tax hike convinced voters that it would cost the state jobs.

Canada’s other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.

“Toyota, Moving Northward,” New York Times, July 25, 2005.

Security, corruption hampers Iraq rebuilding

Efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health systems in Iraq are being shortchanged by the high cost of security and the generous financial awards to contractors, according to reports released last week. Working for the federal government or U.S. corporations is so dangerous in Iraq that security guards are being paid as much as $400,000 a year.

Security costs up to 36 percent of the budget of some projects, the Government Accountability Office reported, causing authorities to scale back or abandon projects. As a result, for example, the U.S. government has spent $5.7 billion on restoring electricity in Iraq, but power generation is at lower levels than before the government’s invasion. Crude oil production has also dropped in the past two years, despite more than $5 billion in U.S. funding.

“It’s quite clear that we’ve got massive amounts of taxpayer money funneled into Iraq, with very little oversight and a substantial amount of waste and abuse,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND).

The Pentagon estimates there are 60 private security firms with as many as 25,000 employees in Iraq, some of whom make $33,000 a month. According to the GAO, U.S. troops have fired on these corporate soldiers “so frequently that incident reports are not always filed.”

In related news, former Bush aide Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said he has uncovered millions of dollars missing from corporate fraud in Iraq. Bowen, a campaign manager for Bush’s gubernatorial race, has become one of the most prominent and credible critics of the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq.

“Security Costs Slow Iraq Reconstruction.,” Washington Post, July 29, 2005.
“Investigator says millions of dollars of US money missing in Iraq,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 28, 2005.

30% of troops get mental problems

Thirty percent of U.S. troops surveyed have developed stress-related mental health problems within three to four months after coming home from the Iraq war, the Army’s surgeon general said Thursday.

The survey of 1,000 troops found problems including anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley and other military medical officials. A smaller number of troops, often with more severe symptoms, were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a serious mental illness, according to a report in the Associated Press.

The 30 percent figure is in contrast to the 3 percent to 5 percent diagnosed with a significant mental health issues immediately after they leave the war theater, according to Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a military psychiatrist on Kiley’s staff.

One hundred and forty thousand Americans have been sent by the federal government to fight in Iraq. War-related mental problems can lead to problems with spouses and children, substance abuse and just day-to-day life, they said.

"Iraq affecting mental health of troops," Associated Press, July 29, 2005.

U.S. has plan to nuke Iran if another 9-11

The Pentagon is drawing up plans to launch nuclear weapons at Iran in the event of another terrorist attack like that of Sept. 11, 2001, were to happen again on American soil—whether Iran was the cause of the attack or not.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s office asked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to draw up a contingency plan for another 9-11-type terrorist attack on the United States, according to an article in the American Conservative magazine. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.

“As in the case of Iraq,” the article said, “the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”

“Pentagon’s plan to nuke Iran,” American Conservative, August 2005.