“Without a union, these workers would have had no legal recourse when the company eliminated the severance plan.”
Attorney Tom Meiklejohn, who helped 502 UAW members who formerly worked at Allied Signal Corp. get $17.6 million in severance and other benefits.
Source: www.uaw.org
Workers sold out
President Richard M. Nixon was in office when the landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act became law. President George W. Bush has yet to show he can be anything like a Nixon-in-China figure on workplace issues. His scuttling of national standards to combat repetitive-strain injuries was an early sellout of working Americans.
Editorial, Philadelphia
Inquirer, Sept. 2, 2002
Cut me off some
Most corporations at the bargaining table take the position that there's a limited pie, and an increase in health care costs on the one hand requires a cutback elsewhere. But as the last year has shown, enormous profits have been siphoned away to corporate CEOs and top officers that could have been put back into the work force.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education
Research at Cornell University.
Source: Boston Globe
Pension security
Retired GE Chairman Jack Welch is worth $900 million and he draws a $9 million annual pension from General Electric. It turns out that GE also pays for Welch's car and driver, his floor seats for Knicks games, VIP seating at Wimbledon, his box at the Metropolitan Opera, his boxes at Red Sox games and at Yankee games, fees to his four country clubs, satellite television at his four homes and more.
Source: The Nation magazine
The buck stops … ?
George Bush … he has an even bigger lie: He inherited a recession. President Bush has inherited a lot of things in his life, one of which was the greatest economy in a generation. He has blown the surplus; he should take responsibility for it.
Terry McAuliffe,
Democratic National Committee chairman
Source: Democratic News
Grave mistake
More than 200 New York City firefighters who served at Ground Zero are now on medical leave, and as many as 700 have exhibited respiratory problems — what is now called the World Trade Center cough. … The early blanketed assurances that government officials issued were a grave mistake. … In their rush to return New York City and Wall Street to business as usual, these shortsighted officials paved the way for a second wave of victims from the World Trade Center tragedy.
Journalist Juan Gonzalez
Source: Fallout: The Environmental Consequences
of the World Trade Center Collapse (The New Press)
