Labor Day 2003: Nothing to Celebrate, by Mark Weisbrot
If ever there was a Labor Day for American workers to celebrate, this sure isn't the one. It's now thirty years since the end of the "golden era" for American labor, which by most accounting ended in 1973. Over the past thirty years the productivity of the people whose brain and muscle create the wealth of the world's richest nation has grown by 66 percent. But the wage of the typical employee - the median wage - has grown by only 7 percent.
This one statistic says more than the volumes of hype and tripe that will fill the papers and the air waves on Labor Day. It encapsulates the most massive redistribution of income in American history, from the poor, from workers, from former middle classes - to the rich and the super-rich. As billionaire Warren Buffett said to ABC's Ted Koppel last month, "If it's class warfare, my class is winning."
What these numbers mean is that while American labor has continued producing more goods and services, the vast majority of employees have barely shared at all in the fruits of their increasing productivity. Compare these past 30 years with the first half of the post World War II era (1946-1973), when the typical wage grew by nearly 80 percent, or about in line with productivity growth.
At the lower rungs of the economic ladder, the results of this "regime change" are even more pronounced. Ten million minimum wage workers - 71 percent of whom are not teenagers - now earn about 23 percent less, in terms of real purchasing power, than they did in 1967.
In the arena of non-wage income the story has become even more grim. Pension plans with a guaranteed benefit have become a thing of the past, and in the last few years millions of employees lost an enormous amount of their retirement savings in the stock market. Rising health care costs, along with shifting more of the cost to employees, are taking another bite out of most workers' living standards.
These changes are the result of deliberate policy decisions that have reduced the bargaining power of most workers, whether unionized or not.
One such change has occurred at the Federal Reserve, which in normal times is able to determine the national unemployment rate through its control over interest rates. When unemployment gets "too low," the Fed raises interest rates in order to slow the economy and wage growth by throwing people out of work. For most of the last quarter century, unemployment of less than 6 percent (and sometimes even more) was considered "too low."
The Fed temporarily eased up on this policy in the second half of the 1990s, and unemployment dropped drastically to 4 percent by 2000, without any upsurge in the much-feared inflation rate. America's workers saw their best wage gains - about 2 percent annually for four years - in decades. The gains reached down, in a break from recent decades, to lower and middle-income workers; and unemployment among African American teenagers dropped from 36 to 24 percent.
But what the Fed giveth, the Fed taketh away. The financial markets are already anticipating that the Fed will raise interest rates early next year, even though unemployment is projected to be at 6.2 percent. In other words, when the economy recovers, the Fed has no intention of allowing a repeat of that brief spate of near-full employment.
In addition to the Fed's decisions, other intentional policy and institutional changes have contributed to American labor's 30-year nightmare. President Ronald Reagan fired 12,000 striking air traffic controllers soon after taking office in 1981, beginning an assault on organized labor that has built a bridge to the 19th century. And what is commonly called "globalization" has been a deliberate process of crafting trade and commercial agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization that increasingly throw American labor into competition with workers making as little as 25 cents an hour in places like China.
Contrary to the views of most journalists and economists, these changes are not inevitable or irreversible, nor are they a result of advances in technology or communications. This is about economic and political power, and the vast majority of American labor has little of either. Until that changes, this country will continue its slide towards the economic inequality and insecurity of our much poorer neighbors, and there will be little to celebrate on Labor Day.
Mark Weisbrot is co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC: http://www.cepr.net
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services - August 28, 2003:
http://www.kri.com
Please continue.
THE GRINCH THAT STOLE LABOR DAY, by Greg Palast
Friday, 29 August, 2003
In celebration of the working person's holiday, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has announced the Bush Administration's plan to end the 60-year-old law which requires employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime.
I'm sure you already knew that - if you happened to have run across page 15,576 of the Federal Register.
According to the Register, where the Bush Administration likes to place it's little gifts to major campaign donors, 2.7 million workers will lose their overtime pay - for a "benefit" of $1.53 billion. I put "benefit" in quotes because, in the official cost-benefit analysis issued by Bush's Labor Department, the amount employers will now be able to slice out of workers' pockets is tallied on the plus side of the rules change.
Nevertheless, workers getting their pay snipped shouldn't complain, because they will all be receiving promotions. These employees will be re-classified as managers exempt from the law. The change is promoted by the National Council of Chain Restaurants. You've met these 'managers' - they're the ones in the beanies and aprons whose management decisions are, "Hold the lettuce on that."
My favorite of Chao's little amendments would re-classify as "exempt professionals" anyone who learned their skill in the military. In other words, thousands of veterans will now lose overtime pay. I just can't understand why Bush didn't announce that one when he landed on the aircraft carrier.
CHOICE NUMBER FOUR: BREAK THE LAW
Now I should say that, according to Chao's press office, the changes will actually extend overtime benefits to 1.3 million burger flippin' managers. How does that square with the billion dollar "benefit" to business owners? Simple: The Chao hounds at the Labor Department suggest that employers CUT WAGES so that, with the new "overtime" pay, the employees won't actually take home a dime more.
I can hear the moaners and bleeding hearts saying, this sounds like the Labor Department is telling Big Business how to evade the law. Yep, that's what the Department is doing. Right there on page 15,576 of the Federal Register it says,
"Affected employers would have four choices concerning potential payroll costs: . (4) converting salaried employees' basis of pay to an hourly rate that result in virtually no changes to the total compensation paid those workers."
And in case some employer is dense as a president and doesn't get the hint, Madame Chao repeats, ".The fourth choice above results in virtually no (or only a minimal) increase in labor costs."
For decades, the courts have thrown the book at cheapskate bosses who chisel workers out of legal overtime by cutting base pay this way . but now they'll have a new defense: Bush made me do it.
But then, there won't be any cases against employers, because Chao is the labor cop that is supposed to stop paycheck theft. She's well qualified for the job. Her resume reads, "Married to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky." I called her press office to ask if she qualifies for overtime, but they'd left the office early.
And good news for our sporting President. Word from the White House is he'll be golfing on the Labor Day weekend. Under Chao's rules, he need not worry if he wants to replay that hole. "Exempt professionals" who cannot earn overtime - once defined as doctors, lawyers and those with specialized college degrees - will now include anyone who provides skilled advice . like caddies ("You might try the other end of the club, Mr. President").
THE ACORN FALLS ONLY SO FAR
Finally, on this Labor Day weekend, it's time this nation took a cold look at the issue of hard-core unemployment. Neo-conservatives have warned us about families that pass on joblessness from generation to generation.
Take, for example, the sad case of the Bush family. When Poppy Bush was president, unemployment hit a generational high of over 9 million Americans. Bill Clinton, through education and hard work, put more than 3 million of those citizens back on the job.
Now Bush Junior, repeating his family pattern of joblessness, has presided over the return of unemployment for 9 million Americans.
This was not unexpected, sociologists warn us. Hard core unemployment, through failed schooling and a don't-care attitude, takes on a nearly genetic character. The acorn falls only so far from the tree. Especially when the nut falls on its head.
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller:
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
available at; http://www.gregpalast.com/store.htm
Please continue.
Happy Labor Day -- Now, Get a Job! (A letter from Michael Moore)
Friday, August 29, 2003
Greetings Friends,
For his part, George W. Bush will spend Labor Day doing what he does best – not really working. Instead of protecting the country (I’ll have much more to say on that in the coming weeks) or addressing the nation’s floundering economy, he’ll be raising money for his re-election campaign in Ohio.
Bush is on pace to raise almost $200 million in time for the Republican primaries where his only competition will be his own dismal record. In Minnesota this past Tuesday, Bush raised $1.4 million by giving a 24-minute speech. That’s about $60,000 for each minute of “work.” By contrast, the weekly salary of the average American worker is a staggering $616.
As Ron Eibensteiner, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, left the event in St. Paul, he was met by hundreds of demonstrators. Being the dignified, freedom-loving, compassionate conservative we all wish we could be, Eibensteiner leaned over a police barricade toward the protestors and yelled, “GET A JOB!”
It was a positive, uplifting message to America. The Minnesota Republican Party isn’t going to do anything to turn the economy around, and Bush hasn’t done anything in almost three years in office. The best any of them can do is yell at people.
In the past year, 700,000 people were added to the list of unemployed. The number of people out of work for half a year or more is up 28%. Thanks to “Welfare to Work” (and Bill Clinton), July of 2003 saw 43.8% of the unemployed lose their state support even though they still could not find a job—a record high. Since Bush took over the country, roughly 2.5 million jobs have simply evaporated.
Bush and the Republicans are going to need every cent of that $200,000,000 to campaign against an increasingly angry nation of temps and burger flippers! In fact, he might need more, which is one good way to explain the Republican’s recent attempt to paint Bush as an "underdog".
“Democrats and their allies,” Bush’s campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote to super-rich Republicans, “will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him.” Obviously Bush and his team have a problem with math that extends beyond the $400 billion deficit we’ll have by the end of this year (and the projected $6 trillion deficit we will have amassed ten years from now under Bush’s guidance). If you look at the campaign fundraising so far, you see that Bush has already raised $35 million. The closest Democratic candidate, John Kerry, doesn’t even have half that. Does the Bush campaign know something we don’t about where the Democrats are hiding all that money?
And who has been giving Bush all this money in a time of prolonged economic downturn? Why, the companies that trade in money, of course! Of the top twenty contributor’s to the Bush campaign, twelve are finance companies. With more than a year to go until the election, his top contributor, Merrill Lynch, has already given $282,250. Doesn’t it seem just a little strange that the companies which SHOULD be suffering the most in Bush’s destroyed economy, would not only want to keep Junior around, but then get together and pump millions into his reelection campaign?
As for the Bush protestors in Minnesota, and the unemployed across the country, and the millions who only make minimum wage, and the 40 million who don’t have health insurance: if you can’t rake in $60,000 a minute — or if you can’t even manage the $616 weekly American average—there’s only one thing left for you to do this Labor Day: GET A JOB!
Find a temp agency. Go to Wal-Mart. Join the Army (Lord knows we’ll be in Iraq for a while, and that’ll be one handsome, steady paycheck).
Or apply for work at the Minnesota Republican Party’s office. Here’s their email address: info@mngop.com . Send them your resume and a nice letter telling them you’ve decided to take their advice to “GET A JOB”—and you’re coming to work for them!
But whatever you do, you really must quit your whining.
You are scaring the “President”.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com
Please continue.
Giant CEO Earnings Dwarf Workers' Pay
Vital Signs Fact of the Week #13
from Worldwatch
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
In 2001, the average annual pay of U.S. CEOs topped $11 million—some 350 times as much as the U.S. factory worker, who earned on average $31,260.
Growing pay discrepancies in the United States emerge largely from a compensation system skewed in favor of the CEO, most notably the common practice of offering stock options (giving CEOs the right to buy company stock in the future at a price set today). This system has effectively put CEOs at odds with workers, and placed jobs in jeopardy because they have encouraged executives to take excessive risks that inflate stock values and to use accounting methods that overstate company earnings.
Source:
Gap in CEO-Worker Pay Widens, Vital Signs 2003, pp. 90-91.
http://www.worldwatch.org/brain/media/pdf/pubs/vs/2003_paygap.pdf
Worldwatch Links:
Take action: Vital Signs 2003, What You Can Do
http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2003/05/23/
Additional Resources:
Institute for Policy Studies: CEO/Worker Pay Gap Study:
www.ips-dc.org/projects/execexcess2001.htm
Please also see:
Maybe 8,000 US Wounded In Bush's Iraq War - Report
US Troops - Wounded, Weary And Disappeared
By Bill Berkowitz
Tom Paine.com
8-29-03
http://www.rense.com/general40/report.htm
Civilian War Deaths in Iraq:
http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2855
Canada takes leading role in Afghan occupation:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/can-a30.shtml
Background Information:
Official History: U.S. Dept. of Labor;
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm
Official Statistics: U.S. Census Bureau;
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-ff12.html
Please also see;
Labour Start:
http://www.labourstart.org/
U.S. Trade Unions: History:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtu.htm
The Haymarket Affair
http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/haymarket.html
Gifts to the U.N.:
http://www.un.org/events/peace_day99/gifts.htm
If ever there was a Labor Day for American workers to celebrate, this sure isn't the one. It's now thirty years since the end of the "golden era" for American labor, which by most accounting ended in 1973. Over the past thirty years the productivity of the people whose brain and muscle create the wealth of the world's richest nation has grown by 66 percent. But the wage of the typical employee - the median wage - has grown by only 7 percent.
This one statistic says more than the volumes of hype and tripe that will fill the papers and the air waves on Labor Day. It encapsulates the most massive redistribution of income in American history, from the poor, from workers, from former middle classes - to the rich and the super-rich. As billionaire Warren Buffett said to ABC's Ted Koppel last month, "If it's class warfare, my class is winning."
What these numbers mean is that while American labor has continued producing more goods and services, the vast majority of employees have barely shared at all in the fruits of their increasing productivity. Compare these past 30 years with the first half of the post World War II era (1946-1973), when the typical wage grew by nearly 80 percent, or about in line with productivity growth.
At the lower rungs of the economic ladder, the results of this "regime change" are even more pronounced. Ten million minimum wage workers - 71 percent of whom are not teenagers - now earn about 23 percent less, in terms of real purchasing power, than they did in 1967.
In the arena of non-wage income the story has become even more grim. Pension plans with a guaranteed benefit have become a thing of the past, and in the last few years millions of employees lost an enormous amount of their retirement savings in the stock market. Rising health care costs, along with shifting more of the cost to employees, are taking another bite out of most workers' living standards.
These changes are the result of deliberate policy decisions that have reduced the bargaining power of most workers, whether unionized or not.
One such change has occurred at the Federal Reserve, which in normal times is able to determine the national unemployment rate through its control over interest rates. When unemployment gets "too low," the Fed raises interest rates in order to slow the economy and wage growth by throwing people out of work. For most of the last quarter century, unemployment of less than 6 percent (and sometimes even more) was considered "too low."
The Fed temporarily eased up on this policy in the second half of the 1990s, and unemployment dropped drastically to 4 percent by 2000, without any upsurge in the much-feared inflation rate. America's workers saw their best wage gains - about 2 percent annually for four years - in decades. The gains reached down, in a break from recent decades, to lower and middle-income workers; and unemployment among African American teenagers dropped from 36 to 24 percent.
But what the Fed giveth, the Fed taketh away. The financial markets are already anticipating that the Fed will raise interest rates early next year, even though unemployment is projected to be at 6.2 percent. In other words, when the economy recovers, the Fed has no intention of allowing a repeat of that brief spate of near-full employment.
In addition to the Fed's decisions, other intentional policy and institutional changes have contributed to American labor's 30-year nightmare. President Ronald Reagan fired 12,000 striking air traffic controllers soon after taking office in 1981, beginning an assault on organized labor that has built a bridge to the 19th century. And what is commonly called "globalization" has been a deliberate process of crafting trade and commercial agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization that increasingly throw American labor into competition with workers making as little as 25 cents an hour in places like China.
Contrary to the views of most journalists and economists, these changes are not inevitable or irreversible, nor are they a result of advances in technology or communications. This is about economic and political power, and the vast majority of American labor has little of either. Until that changes, this country will continue its slide towards the economic inequality and insecurity of our much poorer neighbors, and there will be little to celebrate on Labor Day.
Mark Weisbrot is co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC: http://www.cepr.net
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services - August 28, 2003:
http://www.kri.com
Please continue.
THE GRINCH THAT STOLE LABOR DAY, by Greg Palast
Friday, 29 August, 2003
In celebration of the working person's holiday, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has announced the Bush Administration's plan to end the 60-year-old law which requires employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime.
I'm sure you already knew that - if you happened to have run across page 15,576 of the Federal Register.
According to the Register, where the Bush Administration likes to place it's little gifts to major campaign donors, 2.7 million workers will lose their overtime pay - for a "benefit" of $1.53 billion. I put "benefit" in quotes because, in the official cost-benefit analysis issued by Bush's Labor Department, the amount employers will now be able to slice out of workers' pockets is tallied on the plus side of the rules change.
Nevertheless, workers getting their pay snipped shouldn't complain, because they will all be receiving promotions. These employees will be re-classified as managers exempt from the law. The change is promoted by the National Council of Chain Restaurants. You've met these 'managers' - they're the ones in the beanies and aprons whose management decisions are, "Hold the lettuce on that."
My favorite of Chao's little amendments would re-classify as "exempt professionals" anyone who learned their skill in the military. In other words, thousands of veterans will now lose overtime pay. I just can't understand why Bush didn't announce that one when he landed on the aircraft carrier.
CHOICE NUMBER FOUR: BREAK THE LAW
Now I should say that, according to Chao's press office, the changes will actually extend overtime benefits to 1.3 million burger flippin' managers. How does that square with the billion dollar "benefit" to business owners? Simple: The Chao hounds at the Labor Department suggest that employers CUT WAGES so that, with the new "overtime" pay, the employees won't actually take home a dime more.
I can hear the moaners and bleeding hearts saying, this sounds like the Labor Department is telling Big Business how to evade the law. Yep, that's what the Department is doing. Right there on page 15,576 of the Federal Register it says,
"Affected employers would have four choices concerning potential payroll costs: . (4) converting salaried employees' basis of pay to an hourly rate that result in virtually no changes to the total compensation paid those workers."
And in case some employer is dense as a president and doesn't get the hint, Madame Chao repeats, ".The fourth choice above results in virtually no (or only a minimal) increase in labor costs."
For decades, the courts have thrown the book at cheapskate bosses who chisel workers out of legal overtime by cutting base pay this way . but now they'll have a new defense: Bush made me do it.
But then, there won't be any cases against employers, because Chao is the labor cop that is supposed to stop paycheck theft. She's well qualified for the job. Her resume reads, "Married to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky." I called her press office to ask if she qualifies for overtime, but they'd left the office early.
And good news for our sporting President. Word from the White House is he'll be golfing on the Labor Day weekend. Under Chao's rules, he need not worry if he wants to replay that hole. "Exempt professionals" who cannot earn overtime - once defined as doctors, lawyers and those with specialized college degrees - will now include anyone who provides skilled advice . like caddies ("You might try the other end of the club, Mr. President").
THE ACORN FALLS ONLY SO FAR
Finally, on this Labor Day weekend, it's time this nation took a cold look at the issue of hard-core unemployment. Neo-conservatives have warned us about families that pass on joblessness from generation to generation.
Take, for example, the sad case of the Bush family. When Poppy Bush was president, unemployment hit a generational high of over 9 million Americans. Bill Clinton, through education and hard work, put more than 3 million of those citizens back on the job.
Now Bush Junior, repeating his family pattern of joblessness, has presided over the return of unemployment for 9 million Americans.
This was not unexpected, sociologists warn us. Hard core unemployment, through failed schooling and a don't-care attitude, takes on a nearly genetic character. The acorn falls only so far from the tree. Especially when the nut falls on its head.
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller:
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
available at; http://www.gregpalast.com/store.htm
Please continue.
Happy Labor Day -- Now, Get a Job! (A letter from Michael Moore)
Friday, August 29, 2003
Greetings Friends,
For his part, George W. Bush will spend Labor Day doing what he does best – not really working. Instead of protecting the country (I’ll have much more to say on that in the coming weeks) or addressing the nation’s floundering economy, he’ll be raising money for his re-election campaign in Ohio.
Bush is on pace to raise almost $200 million in time for the Republican primaries where his only competition will be his own dismal record. In Minnesota this past Tuesday, Bush raised $1.4 million by giving a 24-minute speech. That’s about $60,000 for each minute of “work.” By contrast, the weekly salary of the average American worker is a staggering $616.
As Ron Eibensteiner, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, left the event in St. Paul, he was met by hundreds of demonstrators. Being the dignified, freedom-loving, compassionate conservative we all wish we could be, Eibensteiner leaned over a police barricade toward the protestors and yelled, “GET A JOB!”
It was a positive, uplifting message to America. The Minnesota Republican Party isn’t going to do anything to turn the economy around, and Bush hasn’t done anything in almost three years in office. The best any of them can do is yell at people.
In the past year, 700,000 people were added to the list of unemployed. The number of people out of work for half a year or more is up 28%. Thanks to “Welfare to Work” (and Bill Clinton), July of 2003 saw 43.8% of the unemployed lose their state support even though they still could not find a job—a record high. Since Bush took over the country, roughly 2.5 million jobs have simply evaporated.
Bush and the Republicans are going to need every cent of that $200,000,000 to campaign against an increasingly angry nation of temps and burger flippers! In fact, he might need more, which is one good way to explain the Republican’s recent attempt to paint Bush as an "underdog".
“Democrats and their allies,” Bush’s campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote to super-rich Republicans, “will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him.” Obviously Bush and his team have a problem with math that extends beyond the $400 billion deficit we’ll have by the end of this year (and the projected $6 trillion deficit we will have amassed ten years from now under Bush’s guidance). If you look at the campaign fundraising so far, you see that Bush has already raised $35 million. The closest Democratic candidate, John Kerry, doesn’t even have half that. Does the Bush campaign know something we don’t about where the Democrats are hiding all that money?
And who has been giving Bush all this money in a time of prolonged economic downturn? Why, the companies that trade in money, of course! Of the top twenty contributor’s to the Bush campaign, twelve are finance companies. With more than a year to go until the election, his top contributor, Merrill Lynch, has already given $282,250. Doesn’t it seem just a little strange that the companies which SHOULD be suffering the most in Bush’s destroyed economy, would not only want to keep Junior around, but then get together and pump millions into his reelection campaign?
As for the Bush protestors in Minnesota, and the unemployed across the country, and the millions who only make minimum wage, and the 40 million who don’t have health insurance: if you can’t rake in $60,000 a minute — or if you can’t even manage the $616 weekly American average—there’s only one thing left for you to do this Labor Day: GET A JOB!
Find a temp agency. Go to Wal-Mart. Join the Army (Lord knows we’ll be in Iraq for a while, and that’ll be one handsome, steady paycheck).
Or apply for work at the Minnesota Republican Party’s office. Here’s their email address: info@mngop.com . Send them your resume and a nice letter telling them you’ve decided to take their advice to “GET A JOB”—and you’re coming to work for them!
But whatever you do, you really must quit your whining.
You are scaring the “President”.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com
Please continue.
Giant CEO Earnings Dwarf Workers' Pay
Vital Signs Fact of the Week #13
from Worldwatch
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
In 2001, the average annual pay of U.S. CEOs topped $11 million—some 350 times as much as the U.S. factory worker, who earned on average $31,260.
Growing pay discrepancies in the United States emerge largely from a compensation system skewed in favor of the CEO, most notably the common practice of offering stock options (giving CEOs the right to buy company stock in the future at a price set today). This system has effectively put CEOs at odds with workers, and placed jobs in jeopardy because they have encouraged executives to take excessive risks that inflate stock values and to use accounting methods that overstate company earnings.
Source:
Gap in CEO-Worker Pay Widens, Vital Signs 2003, pp. 90-91.
http://www.worldwatch.org/brain/media/pdf/pubs/vs/2003_paygap.pdf
Worldwatch Links:
Take action: Vital Signs 2003, What You Can Do
http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2003/05/23/
Additional Resources:
Institute for Policy Studies: CEO/Worker Pay Gap Study:
www.ips-dc.org/projects/execexcess2001.htm
Please also see:
Maybe 8,000 US Wounded In Bush's Iraq War - Report
US Troops - Wounded, Weary And Disappeared
By Bill Berkowitz
Tom Paine.com
8-29-03
http://www.rense.com/general40/report.htm
Civilian War Deaths in Iraq:
http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2855
Canada takes leading role in Afghan occupation:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/can-a30.shtml
Background Information:
Official History: U.S. Dept. of Labor;
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm
Official Statistics: U.S. Census Bureau;
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-ff12.html
Please also see;
Labour Start:
http://www.labourstart.org/
U.S. Trade Unions: History:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtu.htm
The Haymarket Affair
http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/haymarket.html
Gifts to the U.N.:
http://www.un.org/events/peace_day99/gifts.htm