Pittsburgh GMB

This is the news page for our Pittsburgh General Membership Branch. To get an overview about our contact info, news and events, please visit our home page.

Stained Uniforms

Posted Tor, 03/30/2006 - 2:52pm by x344543
Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.
 
By David Zirin, DAVID ZIRIN is the author of "What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States." - Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2006.
 
WILL Major League Baseball be more resistant to change than apartheid South Africa?"

That's the question posed by Dennis Brutus, a former leading fighter against apartheid who is a founding member of the Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance. The group is pressuring the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team to lead a major league campaign to improve the working conditions of those who stitch and sew uniforms and caps.

New Mexico Labor Needs a General Strike Against Poverty

Posted Man, 10/03/2005 - 2:28pm by x344543

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 28, 2005

SUBJECT: Advance copy of op-ed piece to local NM press

TITLE: NM Labor Needs a General Strike Against Poverty.

Dear Editor,

Recently a statewide labor leader said that "New Mexico should increase its state minimum wage to $7.15 an hour to help reduce poverty and benefit working families struggling in low-wage jobs."  But while New Mexico's mis-organized labor unions insult the working class with a fantasy campaign to legislate a $2/hr increase to the minimum wage, real-life economics dictate that today's minimum wage should be at least $12.

While the "Left" in New Mexico whip up another superficial political fix to deep seated socio-economic, cultural, and racial issues of poverty (re: the new minimum wage campaign), there is little evidence that much will be done to address and overcome the structural reasons for New Mexico's embarrassing poverty rate.

In a state and nation of great wealth, the existence of poverty is a crime against humanity.  It reflects our material and moral priorities, not to mention the inability of our so-called "progressive" social institutions to wage a real "war on poverty."

The True Cost of Coal

Posted Ons, 06/29/2005 - 12:28am by x344543

By Geoffrey Frost - Industrial Worker, June 2005. 

Several Wobblies in Pittsburgh and in Appalachia are working to support Mountain Justice Summer. Mountain Justice Summer is a campaign to stop Mountaintop Removal (MTR) mining, an environmentally devastating mining practice.

Mountaintop removal is what it sounds like: coal companies blast off the tops of mountains to get at thin seams of coal that are hauled off to fire the power plants. MTR is how the power companies provide "cheap" energy to the rest of the United States. Of course, it doesn't really come cheap. Mountaintop removal is the neoliberal vision fulfilled: a handful of poorly paid, non-union workers destroying one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth to fuel power plants that spew out yet more pollution upon the usually poor working-class communities around them, all the while stoking the furnace of global warming that causes the deaths of thousands upon thousands of working people each year and is only growing worse.

This is the cheap energy that dooms our children to asthma, mercury poisoning, and perhaps no future at all. This is the "cheap" energy demanded by our government.s financiers to fuel their uninhibited accumulation of wealth at the expense of all else.

Pittsburgh Pirates Sweat through ALL STAR 2005

Posted Søn, 06/26/2005 - 9:05pm by x344543

No Sweatshops Bucco! Takes the Night Train to Ft Wayne at the end of July

By Kenneth Miller

Members of the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance are pleased to announce the content of a 2-hour meeting with the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club on April 11, 2005. Michelle Gaffey, Celeste Taylor and Kenneth Miller represented PASCA. The Pittsburgh Pirates, significantly, brought their Director of Merchandising -- Joe B., the person who knows the most about licensing agreements and promotional items, to the table. We discussed the urgent need to identify exactly who the workers that make Pirate gear are and what their rights are. We presented the testimony of workers who make Gildan Activewear in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Haiti. We presented the testimony of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity that visited Pittsburgh on October 16, 2004. The Pittsburgh Pirates agreed to do many things in advance of a follow up meeting but have so far refused to meet with us again.

Individuals and organizations can be a part of PASCA bargaining by contacting the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club, demand a report from the April 11 meeting with PASCA and join us at the table when we meet again. Stop by TMC for sets of the 4th Edition Major League Sweatshop Baseball Cards, educate yourself and others about the struggle of workers in the Global Apparel Industry. A SweatFree Baseball Campaign website is graciously hosted by the Industrial Workers of the World.  You can learn about our strategies and Major League Sweatshop Education at http://www.iww.org/unions/iu410/mlb

Some of the activities of the Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance are unique in the anti sweatshop movement. Our success requires that we bring in knowledge and information from many different sources. Members of this Pittsburgh community have been very generous by helping to make this possible.