Category Archives: Wage Slavery

Today at the Editors glance: Weather: Cooler. Partly cloudy with a 50 percent chance of showers. Highs in the upper 60s.Monday Night: Partly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of showers. Lows in the mid 50s.

In Court: Circuit Judge Terence Perkinss docket is wall to wall today, with arraignments, pleas, sentencings and various motions, starting at 8:30 and not ending before 4 p.m. But high-profile cases do not appear to be on the docket.

Flagler Reads Together: Movie Matinee, Hariet, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW. Its about the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic freedom fighter whose escape from slavery transformed her into one of Americas greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history. Free admission.

The Bunnell City Commission meets in workshop at 6:30 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, to discuss salaries. From the memo to commissioners: Inflation, labor shortages, the increased minimum wage rate and local competition is causing challenges for the city. As was presented in the Commission Advance on January 28, 2022, this situation is not unique to Bunnell and all employers are having to adjust policies, procedures and compensation in order to recruit and retain qualified staff in a highly competitive market. The city is currently experiencing extremely high employee turnover rates (30%+ in the last 12 months) and the inability to fill some vacancies. The administration is proposing an across the board increase, immediately, of $1 an hour.

The Bunnell City Commission meets at 7 p.m. at Bunnell City Hall, at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Commissioners are expected to confirm their new police chief, Dave Brannon, a former captain and commander with the Volusia County Sheriffs Office, and bid farewell to their interim, Brannon Snead. See: New Bunnell Police Chief Dave Brannon Steps In as Interim Snead Offers Valentine of Firsts to City.

Six Appeal Vocal Band at the Flagler Auditorium, 5500 State Road 100, Palm Coast, 7 p.m. Six Appeal has been described as a vocal ensemble, a comedy group and a rock band, all in one complete show. Forgoing instruments, this dynamic acapella group based across the country uses only their voices to perform decades of music from classic oldies to current chart toppers. With voca dexterity and adventurous songs selection, the groups explores all genres with a wide-reaching repertoire that will surprise and captivate audiences regardless of the setting. Book tickets here.

Notably: Who on earth is Milton Caniff? He was the creator of the comic strips Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon, and was born on this day in 1907. There are no hints that he shared Montaignes philosophy. Montaigne, the sceptic and epicurean, the tolerant deist, the writer of boundless curiosity and learning, as Julian Barnes described him (in Nothing To Be Frightened Of, Barness meditation on death) was born on this day in 1533. Today in 1983 was the broadcast of the final M*A*S*H, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen. No need to work today. Watch it in full below.

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The whole [colonial] enterprise that began in the fifteenth century is now coming to an end; an entire continent will soon be rid of its first inhabitants, and this part of the globe will truly be able to proclaim itself a New World. So many cities razed, so many nations exterminated, so many peoples cut down by the sword, and the richest and most beautiful part of the world overthrown for the sake of pearls and pepper! Mechanical victories.

Montaigne hailing the conquest of America by Western Civilization, cited from Pierre Clastres, in Chronicle of the Guyaki Indians.

The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.

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The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, February 28, 2022 - FlaglerLive.com

Editors Note: This guest editorial was published early Thursday in the independent, online publication Ukrainian Pravda (Ukrainian Truth) in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I am Ukrainian!

On Feb. 24, at 5 a.m. Kyiv time, we woke up to a new Ukraine and a new world.

A world that was imposed on us. A world that lives not by laws, but by the concepts of thugs with nuclear weapons.

The territory of Ukraine is clearly visible on the map of this world.

It is a map of the missile strikes that Russia has carried out from Lugansk to Ivano-Frankivsk, from Sumy to Kharkiv, from Kherson to Kolomyia, from Kryvyi Rih to Lutsk.

Today we are united by love and hatred love of freedom and hatred of Putins Russia together with its dictator, obedient majority and spiritual crosses.

Our only fault is that we want to be masters of our own house to find a way, to make mistakes, to correct mistakes, to build a future without regard to the phobias and complexes of our northern neighbor.

For eight years now, Ukraine has been in the club of countries that have felt the fraternal embrace of Russia.

By 5 a.m. on Feb. 24, this embrace was awkwardly disguised as hybridism and ikhtamnet (they are not there).

By now, the masks have been thrown off.

Evil has shown its unconcealed grin of peace. Only those who have completely lost the ability to see and analyze can talk about not everything is so clear-cut today.

What to do when missiles fall on our cities?

Recall British Prime Minister Winston Churchills speech on May 3, 1940, after Britain entered World War II.

You will ask me, what is our political course? I answer: to wage war at sea, on land and in the air, with all the power and strength that God gives us; to wage war against a terrible tyranny that surpasses any human crime. This is our course.

What, you may ask, is our goal? I can answer in one word: victory, victory at any cost, victory in spite of all horror, victory no matter how long and difficult the road may be; because without victory there will be no life.

At 5 a.m. on Feb. 24, along with the first Russian missiles falling on Ukrainian territory, the era of post-truth ended for the world.

Along with its hybrid worries, understatements and non-binding phrases.

Today everything is clear. It is a time of utmost simplicity and honesty.

Freedom will never become slavery.

The war unleashed by Russia is a crime against humanity and humanity, even if it is called a thousand times special operation, denazification and peace enforcement.

Dictatorship and democracy have nothing in common.

And if the world does not realize this even now well, so much the worse for the world.

On June 26, 1963, in front of the Schneberg Town Hall in West Berlin, then U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave a speech that went down in history as I am Berliner.

Kennedy flew in to be with the people of that city, who have been cut off from the world since Putins spiritual advisors erected the Berlin Wall.

May the speechwriters of the American president forgive us. We will replace just a few words in this text.

Here is a snippet of this speech, written seemingly today and specifically for us.

For 2,000 years a winged phrase has been I am a citizen of Rome. Today, in the free world, it should sound like this: I am Ukrainian.

There are many people in the world who really dont understand, or say they dont understand, what is the biggest problem between the free world and Russia.

Let them come to Kyiv.

There are those who say Putins Russia is the idea of the future.

Let them come to Kyiv.

And there are those who say that both in Europe and anywhere else we can cooperate with Russia.

Let them come to Kyiv.

And there are even those who say that yes, Putins Russia is an evil system, but this doesnt prevent us from cooperating with it in economy.

Let them come to Kyiv.

All free people, no matter where they live, are citizens of Ukraine.

Therefore, as a free man I proudly declare: I am Ukrainian!

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Guest editorial | Dictatorship and democracy have nothing in common - TribDem.com

Dancer Prescylia Mae, of Houston, performs during a dedication ceremony for the massive mural Absolute Equality' in downtown Galveston, Texas, June 19, 2021. The dedication of the mural, which chronicles the history and legacy of Black people in the United States, was part of Juneteenth celebrations. | Stuart Villanueva / The Galveston County Daily News via AP

Black History has the power to uncover the truth and expose the lies about the key contributions Black people have made to winning democratic rights for all. This is especially true of the Civil War and Reconstruction. That was a crucial time in American history that has been falsified, as W.E.B. DuBois said. In his 1935 groundbreaking book, Black Reconstruction, DuBois sets the record straight. The North had to call in the black men to save the Union, abolish slavery, and establish democracy.

Juneteenth: The First General Strike

On Juneteenth 1863, when Lincoln announced his decision to issue the EmancipationProclamation, he was only recognizing the facts on the ground. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved people had already freed themselves and run away, depriving the slaveowners of their workforce. Of those who remained on the plantations, the owners complained that many were refusing to work. DuBois called it the first General Strike.

Over 180,000 of the self-freed men joined the Union Army. Their families often joined the men and worked for the Union Army. That turned the tide of the Civil War that the North had been losing.

The question could be asked, Why was the North losing the Civil War although they had superior resources and over three times the population? That was partly due to the ongoing, almost permanent military nature of the Southern states, already mobilized to keep 3.5 million people enslaved. Also, the morale of the poor white farmers and workers who were drafted into the Union Army was not always high.

It was true that working people were strongly anti-slavery. Whole union locals had dissolved to volunteer for the Union Army at the start of the war. But the rich never enlisted. For $300, they could buy their way out of serving. That was not an option for workers, many of whom made less than $500 a year. Meanwhile, the war was enriching the bankers, the new monopoly capitalists, and the expanding railroad companies. Growing inequality was undermining Union morale.

Black soldiers turn the tide

The massive influx of dedicated Black freedom fighters, who joined the Union Army in regiment-size contingents, led to a resounding victory. The Civil War could not have been won without them. Still, in the early days of the Civil War, the Union Army had the shameful policy of returning escaped, enslaved people to their masters! But General Frmont, in the border state of Missouri, recruited officers who rejected this outrageous practice.

Generals Joseph Weydemeyer, Franz Sigel, and August Willichimmigrant German Communists and friends of Karl Marxemancipated the enslaved wherever they marched. Lincoln disapproved and reassigned Frmont elsewhere. But the die had already been cast. The decision had been made by the hundreds of thousands of Black people escaping the plantations to fight for freedom.

The Union victory unleashed the creative energies of 3.5 million freed men, women, and children, who rushed into the newly opened political arena. Freedmen joined already-free Black people to organize state conventions. Attendance at Black political events was so massive that employers complained nobody worked on meeting days. What was at stake included ownership of the plantations that had been confiscated from the rebel owners, and political rightsespecially the right to vote. What kind of new South would Reconstruction create?

The tragic assassination of Lincoln was a huge setback. Pro-slavery Andrew Johnson became president. He pardoned 7,000 Confederate leaders and allowed Southern state legislatures that enacted Black Codes to force Freedmen and women back to plantations. But Johnson was stopped in his tracks. The veto-proof Radical Republican majority of Congress rose up and impeached him. Johnson was saved from removal by just one Senate vote.

With Congress in charge, real Reconstruction began, and new state legislatures were elected with substantial Black composition. Black men won the right to vote in state elections and run for office well before the 15th Amendment established that right nationally.

Reconstruction and new democratic rights

A lasting achievement of Reconstruction was the creation of a public school system in the South. As Eric Foner said in a recent interview with Chicagos PBS network WTTW: At the end of the Civil War, even while the wars still going on in some areas, and then immediately after, theres this explosion of energy in Black communities to create schools. Northern aid societies come down to help create schools. The Freedmens Bureau puts money into creating schools. But most of the schools that spring up are actually created by Blacks themselves.

Other lasting achievements were the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. They laid the basis for the democratic rights that we are working to defend and extend today. The 13th Amendment, for abolition of slavery throughout the U.S., passed in 1865. The 14th Amendment, for birthright citizenship and equal rights under the law, passed in 1866. By 1869, the 15th Amendment passed Congress, extending the freedmens right to vote nationally. That amendment did not include womens suffrage, although Black leaders had fought for voting rights for all, women as well as men.

For the first time ever, in both North and South, significant numbers of Black men were elected or appointed to public office. Over 4,000 Black men became public officials, counting federal, state, and local public offices. That was a most important achievement, but it could not outlast the return of political power to ex-Confederate plantation owners. The crucial issue of survival of democratic rights was tied to land reform. Who should own the plantations that were either abandoned or confiscated from Confederate traitors?

Reconstruction, an Unfinished Revolution

There was a successful land reform model that could have established a huge economic base for democracy in the South. Gen. Shermans Special Field Order 15 gave 14,000 Black families in South Carolina 40 acres each along the Charleston rice coast and the Sea Islands. Sherman also offered to lend mules.

Instead, most of the confiscated plantations were returned to the former slaveowners who had fought to destroy the Union. That left most freedmen and freed women with no way to make a living except to go back to the plantation under semi-serf conditions. In that basic economic and political sense, the Reconstruction Revolution remained unfinished.

Withdrawal of the Union Army from the South in 1877 ended Reconstruction and returned full power to the former slaveowners and their Ku Klux Klan. Then salt was added to these mortal wounds to the body of Democracy. The very same Union Army regiments that had protected Reconstruction were withdrawn to smash the National Railroad Strike of 1877 and to fight genocidal wars against Native Americans.

Meanwhile, vast economic and political changes had been taking place in the North and West. Banks and corporate monopolies began to dominate the economy. By May 10, 1869, railroads crossed the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They were subsidized with huge land grants of Native American land. Having already forced Native Americans off their lands east of the Mississippi, the U.S. was waging genocidal wars to seize Native American lands in the West. In the cities and towns, wage workers were rising up and joining unions to cut the 12-hour work days and to fight for an 8-hour day.

The growing dominance of monopoly capital and imperialist changes in the North, and the failure to complete Reconstruction in the South, set our country on its present dangerous path. Its a path of racism and oppression at home and eternal war and imperialism abroad. Many have called the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s, the Second Reconstruction. It is time for a Third Reconstruction to finish the Reconstruction Revolution left unfinished in 1877.

Thousands of heroes

Black Reconstruction brought forward thousands of heroes. To begin with, the thousands of Black public officials were all heroes. They served despite frequent terrorist attacks that also targeted their families. There were many more thousands of heroes whose names we dont know.

Fortunately, a whole corps of historians, Black and white, are now doing research in the spirit of W.E.B. DuBois. They are bringing more heroes names to light, such as Sergeant Fred Brown and State Legislator Abraham Calloway. Joseph T. Glatthar has written about Brown in Forged in Battle, the Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. The Regiment Commander had been alerted to a plot to destroy the 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry when they relocated by train. The commander ordered Brown to take four privates, ride on the engine, and shoot the engineer if anything went wrong.

On a trestle bridge, 100 feet above the water, someone pulled a pin, uncoupling the engine. The engine sped on, leaving the regiment trapped aboard the cars, up in the air. Just then, volleys of musket fire poured into the cars. It was night time, so the soldiers could not see to return effective fire. Nor could they abandon the cars. It seemed hopeless.

Just then they heard the engine backing up, returning. When the two sections were reconnected, the commander noticed that Sgt. Brown had his pistol cocked, snug against the back of the engineers head. Evidently, Brown had threatened to blow the mans brains out unless he backed up his engine immediately. Browns quick thinking had saved the whole regiment.

Abraham Calloway

Born enslaved in 1837, Abraham Galloway escaped to freedom when only 20-years-old. But he returned to North Carolina to rescue his mother, and again to help the North win the Civil War. Only 26, Galloway and his men held a gun to the head of the Union Army recruiter until they won the promise they needed. The recruiter promised equal pay for the new Black recruits, schools for their children, jobs for women, and provisions for their families.

Above all, was the demand that the Union Army would force the Confederacy to treat captured soldiers as prisoners of war and not re-enslave or execute them. Within six days, Galloway returned with 6,000 recruits, enough for a brigade.

The very next year, Galloway led a delegation of self-freed men to present President Lincoln with a petition calling on him to finish the noble work you have begun, and grant to your petitioners that greatest of privileges, when the State is reconstructed, to exercise the right of suffrage.

One of only 13 Black delegates among the 120 men elected to the State Constitutional Convention, Galloway declared, I came here to help the poor white man, as well as the colored man, and to do justice to all men.

Elected twice to the State Senate, Galloway voted to ratify the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U. S. Constitution. He introduced a bill to limit the workday to ten hours. Galloway also sponsored bills for womens suffrage and against domestic violence. But these bills did not pass. Galloway was especially eloquent on the subject of public education: They hunger for the forbidden fruit of knowledge with a zest of appetite which imparts marvelous powers of acquisition.

Abraham Galloway died, cause unknown, at 33. He had just escaped two assassination attempts. Although he died broke, 7,000 people came to his funeral in Wilmington, N.C. His unrelenting fight for freedom, just as the even less known bravery of Sgt. Brown, continues to inspire us today.

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The Power of Black History People's World - People's World

BY TOPE TEMOKUN

In my article titled ASUU: What is the interest of the nation, published in the Guardian Newspaper of Sunday, August 19, 2013, written in response to one Doctor Olusanya, in his piece, entitled: ASUU: Beyond Aluta Continua, published Tuesday, September 22, 2009, in the opinion page of the Guardian newspaper, I have reviewed this topic of ASUU-federal government faceoff and even today my position still remains the same, because the crisis has not changed both in form and in content. It is just a simple crisis of acute shortage of honour or total lack of honour in the system.

The starting point to address this issue is to ask what are the specific demands of ASUU before commencing this strike. ASUU has demanded and has done for decades now that the universities be given autonomy. By autonomy, ASUU asks the government to let the universities generate regulatory policies, internally, to deal with particular peculiar and specific problems confronting each university. The government retorts, saying, if we give you autonomy, then we will also give you financial autonomy meaning that each university will be left alone, that is, abandoned to generate funds internally for its sustenance.

The government has not specified how the universities will generate multi-millions needed to keep the university going. ASUU has demanded, among other things, for wage uplift befitting of their efforts and patriotic services but there still exists in this land some Nigerians who believe that even if a professor, considered to have climbed to the pinnacle of a career in academia, earns less than half a million as a monthly wage which is less than half a local government councilors monthly take-home and a graduate assistant earns less than N100,000 equivalent, or far less in some cases, when compared to the take-home of an illiterate political errand boy in the name of PA to a state parliamentarian yet those in this school of thought have posited that ASUUs demands are unrealistic. Other demands such as the renegotiation of conditions of service, injection of revitalisation funds, payment of earned academic allowances, implementation of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) have all just become unrealistic. What is then realistic?

The question I want to ask anybody who belongs to this school of thought is which of ASUUs demands is unrealistic? Is it their demand for better funding of the universities, which means voting sufficient funds into the universities to tackle its internal challenges, like fallen facilities and inadequacies of infrastructures for modern meaningful learning and abate incessant interruption caused by students and workers protest, so that Nigerian children can go to school and come back home with robust knowledge and refined outlook and not just with a paper certificate which merely certifies the emptiness of their return? Or is it be ASUUs demand for autonomy that can afford each university, based on its own peculiar problems and challenges, to structure out internal policies to tame domestic problems?

Perhaps what is unrealistic is ASUUs demand to have wages upgraded such that a professor can at least be placed on equivalent earning with a local government councilor or at least close? Or could it be that facilities such as new well-equipped expansive classrooms be built to replace the old crestfallen classrooms built in the 60s and 70s for 30 students which now take in 450 students where 70% of the learners have to either sit on each others laps or on the bare floor or sit out and jot through the windows? Or is it the simple demand of ASUU that the federal government should honour its agreement reached now and then with ASUU which the government had hissed and spat on after signing and has started flouting and abandoning before it is even signed because the governments agenda year in year out is to keep ASUU silent and down; the reason for always signing agreements upon agreements which the governments knew they wont honour which then has to make the lectures return to the trenches after a long endless waiting?

It is intellectually embarrassing, under a government, where the entire political class, in both the legislative and the executive arms of government, swim in greed, graft, and avarice, with scandalous salaries and allowances for this kind of noxious reasoning of calling simple public interest, demands that critical attention be given to our public education unrealistic and asking ASUU to explore other option than strike, to be coming from anybody who lays claim to passing through any form of school wall, be it kindergarten, nursery school, primary school, secondary school or any higher institution.

Some have prescribed, in learned circles, new consciousness and new styles for ASUU, without recommending new consciousness and new styles for the government. This is intellectually dubious and one-sidedly cowardly. Year after year, we are back there and this time what is it about: Nigerian lecturers have demanded full implementation of this or that agreement signed with the government and a memorandum of understanding they had with neither of the parties under duress with the successive governments of this country on various issues ranging from university autonomy to funding, and lecturers remuneration. The government has now said it wants a renegotiation as some parts of the agreements reached with the union were not implementable. What manner of a new consciousness, if I may ask, must ASUU then nurture to stand up squarely to an unserious and unfaithful government that wont honour the agreement? I ask this question because it is necessary for us as citizens to be mentally faithful to ourselves, even in the face of personal moral crisis, because not being faithful to oneself will amount to intellectual infidelity, which consists not in believing, or in disbelieving, but in professing to believe that which one cannot, by all logical inference, reasonably believe in.

The minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige, has said too that the strike is illegal because ASUU did not give the federal government the minimum 14 days strike notice prescribed by the law, prior to the strike. This is a reckless and careless statement from an unfair-minded public office holder that is not only shameless but it is as insensitive as it is provocative. The question that begs for an answer is whether the government gave ASUU any notice before unilaterally reneging on its agreement signed with ASUU? Why would notice suddenly take the place of good faith?Why are we unblessed with a government that puts its hand on paper to deceitfully end lectures strike and dubiously come round later to say that the agreement it signed is not implementable and yet some people in this country will see nothing morally and publicly wrong about this but will wish ASUU be hanged for calling for more restoration of sanity and minimal moral standard to the system.

This battle to save the educational sector is not a battle between the ASUU and the government but a battle between the people and the government because a people whose knowledge industry is drained of life and existence is a people on the departure lounge to extinction. For those of us who think a strike is not the option and that it is old-fashioned and must be jettisoned when the government has not considered signing an agreement it would not honour as old-fashioned and has refused to jettison its deliberate deceit and insensitivity, it is slavery of the mind. To these citizens, Harriet Tubman said of them that: I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

For ASUU, compatriots, it is once bitten, twice shy! Hopefully, the storm shall be over someday, if we dont give up.

Temokun, a lawyer & human rights activist, writes from Lagos

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ASUU and its strike: Once bitten, twice shy! - TheCable

The Socialist Movement of Workers (MST) and the Union of Cane Workers (UTC) denounced that the increase in the minimum wage for workers in the sugar industry, announced by the government, will not benefit the majority of workers because they receive payments piecework by production and do not enjoy a formal employment relationship with a salary.

Most sugarcane workers, herdsmen, carters, and other functions within sugar agricultural work do not earn a salary per day but rather piecework payments, around 200 pesos per ton of cane cut. They do not benefit from the salary increase decreed by the government, they declared in a statement.

The representatives of these organizations demand that the payment per ton of cane cut be increased to at least RD$580, and have maintained a fight against semi-slavery, precariousness, and super-exploitation, for decent wages, freedom of association, pensions, access to health, housing dignity, and an eight-hour working day because currently in the sectorthe workdays run up to 14 hours.

According to the declaration of these organizations, the working class does not have representatives in the dialogues of businessmen, government, and union bureaucrats.

The union bureaucrats of the CNUS, CASC, and CNTD also represent business interests. That is why Abinader rewarded his leaders with privilege pensions of 75 thousand pesos. The CNUS, which in the past supported the PLD governments and Gonzalo Castillos candidacy, now fervently supports Abinader and even invited him to be a speaker at its Congress in December last year, they stated.

Increase

Last Tuesday, the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader, and the Minister of Labor, Luis Miguel de Camps, announced an unprecedented salary increase of 101.8% for agricultural workers and 97% for administrative workers in the sugar sector, retroactive to January 2022.

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Organizations denounce majority of workers in sugar sector will not benefit from salary increase - Dominican Today

As the economy recovers from a global pandemic, many business owners are pointing to labor shortages caused by the Great Resignation as a source of frustration.

The term refers to the more than 33 million U.S. workers who have quit their jobs since the spring of 2021, largely due to low wages and burnout. The restaurant and service industry is experiencing one of the largest shockwaves to its workforce, adding just 108,000 jobs in January 2022, and remains 900,000 jobs short of where it was prior to the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But restaurant workers and their allies are offering a different perspective: This is not a Great Resignation, but rather a Great Rejection of low-wage work.

On Valentines Day, 2022, One Fair Wage a national coalition organized around the movement to increase wages for service workers announced it is embarking on a $25 million campaign to remove the subminimum tipped wage in 25 states by 2026, marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

Typically Valentines Day is the highest-grossing day in the restaurant industry, but this year the restaurant industry is struggling, said Saru Jayamaran, President of One Fair Wage, during a virtual event. Not because of Covid-19 and the decline of business and sales, but because this is the worst staffing crisis in the history of this industry in the U.S. [] One million workers have left the industry, and of those who remain, 54 percent say they are leaving, and 80 percent say that the only thing that would make them stay or come back is a full, livable wage with tips on top.

According to Jayamaran, the breaking point came when pandemic conditions required restaurant workers to do so much more for so much less enforcing masks and Covid-19 vaccination requirements on the same people for whom they rely on for tips.

In 43 states and on the federal level, tipped workers are paid as little as $2.13 per hour in direct wages, with tips making up the balance of the federal minimum wage, which remains stagnant at $7.25 per hour. Ending the subminimum wage for tipped workers, recent analysis from the Center for American Progress suggests, would help alleviate poverty, sustainably grow the economy, and advance gender, racial, disability, and economic justice.

Ending the subminimum wage would also abolish a shameful relic of slavery. Tipping became prevalent in the United States after the Civil War, when restaurants and railway companies embraced the practice because it meant they didnt have to pay wages to recently freed slaves. The racial biases that created the practice of tipping are still prevalent in the industry today.

Although Black workers represent the majority of the tipped service industry, they are also the ones making the least. A survey by One Fair Wage found that prior to the pandemic, Black tipped workers income, including tips, was already substantially lower than their white counterparts earnings, with 60 percent of them reporting earning less than $15 per hour, compared to 43 percent of white workers. Since the pandemic, 88 percent of Black tipped workers, compared to just 68 percent of all workers surveyed, have seen their tips plunge by half or more.

Ending the subminimum wage would not just benefit workers, but employers as well.

Its not rocket science, said Russell Jackson, a supporter of One Fair Wage and the head chef and owner of Reverence NYC in Harlem. For us, we pay a living wage, we have a fair tip share, and we think about how we treat our staff. [] What we need is legislation with teeth that will help us to be consistent across the board.

Progress has already been made in Washington, D.C., where organizers recently gathered enough signatures to place an initiative to phase out the tipped wage back on the ballot. Similar legislation is making its way through the state houses in Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts, among others. If they are successful, they will join the seven states that have already eliminated the subminimum wage for tipped workers.

On the federal level, the House passed legislation in 2021 that would eliminate the subminimum wage and boost the federal minimum to $15 by 2025, but that bill has stalled in the Senate.

Its time for statesand the policymakers who represent themto follow the lead of millions of workers refusing to work for poverty wages and thousands of independent restaurants raising wages to recruit staff, and permanently raise wages and end subminimum wages once and for all, said Jayaraman. This is the only future for the service sector and the economy overall: wages must go up or there will be no future.

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Campaign Seeks to Abolish the Subminimum Wage in 25 States by 2026 - Truthout

Exploited and abused for generations by white colonial powers and manipulative economic structures, there is a growing feeling of solidarity within parts of the African continent, as exemplified by the #NoMore movement. Covid vaccine inequality and environmental injustice, together with recent events in Ethiopia have galvanized people.

Ideas of African unity and rage against former imperial forces are nothing new; the chain of suppression and exploitation of African nations is long, running from slavery and colonialism (including colonial extraction) to wealth and climate inequality, racial capitalism and now Covid vaccine apartheid.

Despite the fact that many would say Africa was united long before Europe family to tribe, tribe to nation, nation to continent, with 54 countries spread over a vast area establishing a defined Union of Africa seems unlikely, if not impossible. Standing in solidarity, rejecting western intervention, challenging the exploitative status quo and reductive notions of development based on a defunct western model is not; indeed, if African nations are to prosper and create vibrant economies allowing its burgeoning young population to fulfil their enormous potential, they must.

Poverty amidst abundance of resources

Blessed with rich environments and vast natural resources, Sub-Saharan Africa should certainly not be poor. But for huge numbers of people across the continent grinding poverty and hardship are the norm.

According to the World Bank report Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa, while those living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) has fallen in the last twenty years, the number of poor people [living on $5 a day or less]has increased from 278 million in 1990 to over 413 million Over 80% of those living in stifling poverty are found in rural areas where education and health care are scarce.

Natural resources dominate many African economies and, along with agriculture, are central to the livelihoods of the poor rural majority. African natural resources that are owned by multi-national mining companies, dug out of the ground by grossly underpaid local workers, are exported for production in goods that are sold in the rich developed nations. This has been the role of Sub-Saharan Africa for generations, and is fundamental to the prosperity of advanced countries: they need the raw materials and they need them to be dirt cheap.

The handful of conglomerates that dominate, collude in enabling monopoly buying structures. Contracts agreed at national levels are administered by middle-men, often corrupt, in the pockets of the corporation; the local workforce have little choice but to accept whatever terms of employment are offered; poverty entraps and silences rebellion.

It is a crippling model of suppression and exploitation; a form of wage slavery that holds not just the workers in its suffocating grip, but the nation and continent. It is one of the main reasons African nations that are overly dependent on raw materials, whether cotton or oil, coffee, diamonds or Cobalt, are poor. Poverty is political, the result of short-term political and economic decisions taken in The West by duplicitous corporate-controlled governments.

The other reasons that ensure Africa remains poor and dependent are historical and economic: Colonization, which persists as economic and cultural imperialism, together with a certain mind-set of superiority/inferiority. A mind-set that maintains consciously or unconsciously that some people (black, brown) are worth less than others and, as Covid vaccine inequities demonstrate, can be sacrificed. The economic structures, global institutions and economic ideologies championed by abusive self-centered governments and promoted in the business schools around the world are all designed to ensure Africa remains poor: Imperialism never ended, it just changed form.

When colonial powers withdrew from the global south they needed new ways of maintaining the enslavement of Africa and Africans. Three interrelated weapons where used to create dependency: Aid, debt and the toxic Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the overarching umbrella of control.

In the 1980s SAPs where introduced; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) gave highly conditional loan packages to African nations in order to aid their development; in fact the loans/SAPs, which destroyed African economies and agriculture, were simply forms of debt entrapment. Once a country is indebted it becomes easy to control. SAPs hollowed out national economies and incorporated Africa into the global political economic system, dominated by the US. Its economic warfare: the rich countries set up these unaccountable institutions and systems to control the poor nations.

The IMF, WB, World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), were given enormous political influence/control of African governments and economies. Funding for public services (e.g. education and health care) was slashed to repay loans; countries were forced to liberalize their economies, and privatize, selling off key areas like utilities to western or western-backed companies.

In his book Confessions Of An Economic Hitman, John Perkins designates this process of economic terrorism as Predatory Capitalism: he describes how in an earlier period, during the 1950s the IMF, CIA and US State Department set up a faceless bank to lend money to African countries that were producing raw materials; any national President that refused the loan was at risk of being handed over to the Jackals, as Perkins describes the CIA thugs that accompanied him.

At independence, many African countries were self-sufficient in food production and were in fact net exporters of food; SAPs and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, changed all that. Countries were forced to withdraw State subsidies to agriculture (while farmers in Europe and the US receive huge subsidies); farmers suffered, food prices increased, food insecurity was created, dependency on aid and Western benefactors ensured and with it control by the US and her puppets, of Africa, its direction and development, or, as these paranoid selfish states would have it, its non-development.

Development as Westernisation

Within the narrow socio-economic paradigm that dominates global affairs, development and perpetual economic growth are regarded as all important. Dominated by quarterly national GDP figures, it is a reductive model designed by donor nations to serve not the people of Africa or Asia, but western corporations and the unjust, defunct Ideology of Greed, so beloved.

The very idea of development, has become synonymous with Westernization, including the way of life, the values, behavior and attitudes of the rich, successful nations of The West: a hollow, deeply materialistic way of life rooted in division, selfishness and conformity that has poisoned and vandalized the natural environment, created unhealthy, unequal societies of anxious suppressed human beings.

In order to develop economists maintain Africa must industrialise and manufacture no country has ever developed without manufacturing. All this is true, and some African nations, like Ethiopia, which has a vibrant leather industry, are beginning to do just this. But this is only true within the suffocating boundaries of the existing model of extreme capitalism based on unsustainable consumerism.

There must be another way; perhaps as we sit at this transitional time, not just for Africa, but for the world as a whole, the opportunity presents itself to re-design the socio-economic structures, reimagine civilization, and in so doing save the planet. And perhaps Africa, unburdened, energised and dynamic can play a leading role; working with the West, but rejecting the model of conformity and exploitation, the conditionality of support.

The existing development paradigm sits within the overarching political-economic system, a system of global monopolies, centralized control, massive inequality, grinding poverty, financial insecurity and stress. Not only should this model of development be rejected by Africa, and it would be were it not for the Noose of Debt, and the fact that it is presented as the one and only show in town, but the poisonous spring from which it flows Market Fundamentalism as some call it must also be radically dismantled.

It may appear impossible to challenge, but there are alternatives to the current unjust political-economic system. And as the environmental and social impact of the Neo-Liberal experiment becomes more apparent, as well as the economic pain of the majority, more and more people around the world, especially within Africa, where the environmental emergency has inspired powerful movements of activism, recognize the urgent need to reject this way of organizing life and are demanding change.

Western powers (dried-up imperial forces) do not want Africa and Africans to flourish and become strong, this is clear to all. Africas destiny must rest in the hands of Africans, in particular young Africans (the median age in Africa is around 20, Europe is a greying 43, US a complacent 39), who are increasingly standing up, organizing, particularly in regard to the environment, and calling for change.

But what should that change look like? Not a shadow of Western nations, but a creative evolving movement of development in which the people have a voice; social and environmental responsibility are championed and lasting human happiness sit at its core. Unity is essential, African unity is essential; together, not necessarily under some defined structure, but coordinated cooperation and support through the medium of the African Union and civil society.

The first and most basic step towards establishing a less brutal, more just system would be the equitable distribution of the resources of the world the water, land and food; the machinery needed to build infrastructure; the skills, knowledge and expertise.

The world is one: We are brothers and sisters of one humanity. And if we are collectively, within Africa and the world, to establish An Alternative Way, this basic fact needs to form the foundation and provide the touchstone of new systems and modes of living. Only then will we begin to build a global society in which the values of unity, compassion, tolerance and sharing, which are found in tribal societies all over Africa, may flourish.

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The keep Africa poor and dependent project - NationofChange

Nesrine Malik (Scared to be woke? Its time for progressives to take a stand in the culture wars, 21 February) sets out the bemusing battlefield surrounding the concept of being woke and how it has been weaponised by the right wing of Conservative repression. Part of the issue is clearly the way different groups and factions define the meaning of woke. She correctly deduces that Labour needs to own it.

We have already been pointed in the necessary direction by a man speaking in the saddest of situations. Dave Merritt, the father of the young lawyer Jack Merritt, who was killed in the London Bridge terror attack in 2019, gave a moving speech after his sons inquest. He described how proud his son would have been to be called woke. He defined its meaning very simply as the opposite of ignorant.Ric CareySouthsea, Hampshire

Nesrine Malik expresses the problem brilliantly. But Im so angry I couldnt read her piece all in one go. Angry because its impossible to imagine anyone on Labours current frontbench saying anything a tenth as powerful, and angry that I, and many thousands of other members, were gulled into believing that Keir Starmer had a fairly radical and progressive agenda. He must have known perfectly well that he would never get elected if we knew then that he would align himself so completely, whether through conviction or tactics, with Labours right wing.Richard BarnesWindermere, Cumbria

The weaknesses of the west are not the result of a painful woke psychodrama, as the Tory party chairman Oliver Dowden claims (Report, 14 February). His slur is simply another distraction for those who are angry that the high-skilled, high-wage jobs promised by the neoliberals never materialised. We are among the largest economies in the world, yet 30% of children live in poverty and we have food banks. Years of austerity are now being followed by a catastrophic cost-of-living crisis. None of that was caused by woke ideas.

Instead, the west has been divided by politicians playing fast and loose with democracy, undermining the validity of elections, refusing to take responsibility for their actions and widening the divisions between people through racist tropes. Politicians have weakened European institutions, either by undermining Nato (as Donald Trump did) or Europe itself (as the populists have done).

The woke are not undermining the west. They are seeking to ensure that all are represented and have a place in society.

Decolonising the curriculum is about telling a more complete picture, ensuring that everyone sees themselves reflected in a classroom and that we do not hide from the past. Spoiler alert: the empire was brutal, cruel and exploitative. It involved slavery, murder and the stealing of land and resources from other people. Perhaps understanding the past and ensuring all are represented will bring greater unity rather than the divisions Dowden claims.Prof Andrew MoranSaffron Walden, Essex

Reading Marina Hyde (You cant erase history. But if you lived on Prince Andrew Way, you might have a go, 18 February), I was reminded to check whether my Tory MP had answered my fourth request to explain what woke means (apart from not being asleep). Again, no explanation. I assume that even Tory central office doesnt know.Rosemary GillSalisbury, Wiltshire

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The Gangs All Back

After two-plus years of globetrotting shows, short films, video games and social media hijinks, the rebellion against fashion week appears to be over. The Milan Fashion Week schedule is packed, with Fendi, Prada, Versace and other mainstays joined by Bottega Veneta, Gucci and a handful of other holdouts that used the pandemics disruption to experiment with alternative forms to the conventional fashion show. Even Armani, which cancelled its January mens and couture week shows during the Omicron surge, is returning to Milan this week.

On paper, then, the schedule is back to its former glory. Will the reception be different though? The pandemic accelerated the transition of fashion week from an industry event to a consumer-facing one. Brands care even more about how a show pops on social media than they did before. The shows that produce a viral moment by casting movie stars as models or conceiving a particularly inventive set are the most successful, sometimes independent of the quality of the clothes themselves. As Diesels Glenn Martens put it to BoFs Tim Blanks last summer, the point of physical shows is to bring a bit of fashion drama.

The Bottom Line: In New York and London, the narrative at fashion week tends to involve plenty of handwringing about the industrys future. Not so in Milan, where the biggest brands are riding a collective hot streak. The most-anticipated shows are all about building momentum for another year of record sales, whether its Martens first Diesel show at Milan Fashion Week, Guccis next reinvention, the next chapter in Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons partnership or Matthieu Blazys debut at Bottega.

Farfetchs Future

Luxury sales are booming, but unfortunately for Farfetch, too many shoppers are opting to buy their Bottega bags and Saint Laurent boots in person. The marketplaces third-quarter results missed expectations, and the company needs a big holiday to prove it has retained all those new customers who started shopping online during the pandemic. Investors are sceptical: Farfetch shares are down more than 50 percent this year, and are closing in on lows not seen since spring 2020. Shopifys recent earnings miss is ominous for other e-commerce platforms, though Mytheresas solid results this past week offer some hope luxury may be at least partially exempt from wider shopping trends.

The Bottom Line: Farfetch is never one to sit still and let itself be buffeted by market forces. It said in January it was acquiring Violet Grey, a deal meant to kickstart a major push into the beauty category. But the real question is over the status of talks with Richemont to take a stake in Net-a-Porter, which would mark a fundamental shift in the luxury e-commerce landscape.

Responsible Supply Chains

While the pandemic shone a spotlight on bad labour practices in fashions supply chain, two years on not much has changed. Thereve been reports of record wage theft, worsening working conditions and mounting risks of modern slavery. At the same time, governments are playing a bigger role in policing supply chains, whether its the US ban on importing goods from Chinas Xinjiang region or pending legislation in New York, putting a greater spotlight on fashion brands manufacturing practices. What fashion can do about those issues will be in focus this week at the OECDs annual forum on responsible supply chains. The digital event will bring together members of government, business, trade unions and civil society to share learnings and discuss best practices.

The Bottom Line: Regulators are demanding big brands take more responsibility for labour rights abuses in their supply chain and the topic of due diligence is only likely to keep moving up companies agendas.

Sarah Kent contributed to this item.

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Milan Fashion Week Is Back to Its Pre-Pandemic Glory. Whats Changed? - The Business of Fashion

A cross-party group of MPs has urged the government to implement compulsory reporting of the pay gap among different ethnicities, hitting out at the lack of prompt progress on the matter.

The House of Commons women and equalities committee (WEC) revealed in a report published earlier this month that companies should be required by law to publish data on employee salaries that goes beyond the gender pay gap reporting.

WEC argued addressing pay differences between employees of different ethnic backgrounds would add 24 billion a year to the UKs economy, and urged the government to make reporting a legal requirement from 2023, according to The Guardian.

Caroline Nokes, Tory MP and WEC chair, said: The governments failure to move forwards on ethnicity pay gap reporting is perplexing.

We already have the systems in place to start reporting on the ethnicity pay gap, as well as a clear impetus: tackling inequality benefits not only marginalised groups, but the whole economy.

The government has no excuse. All that is lacking, it seems, is the will and attention of the current administration.

The government has not yet published any proposals in relation to a wage reporting consultation which was concluded in January 2019 and has also provided no concrete responses to a petition which gathered over 130,000 signatures.

Wilf Sullivan, of the Trades Union Congress, said: The government is dragging its feet.

The government still seems reluctant and has not said why they are not taking action on a consultation that happened two years ago.

A government spokesperson said: We want to ensure everyone, whatever their background, has equal opportunity to succeed and achieve on merit.

We are considering the findings of the Commission onRaceand Ethnic Disparities independent report, which included recommendations on ethnicity pay reporting, alongside feedback to our consultation on this issue. We will set out our response to this as well as the Women and Equalities Committee report in due course.

Meanwhile, a group campaigning for migrants rights has warned that Romanian citizens in the UK are being victims of modern slavery in the light of Brexit.

Migrants At Work said the government must put a stop to UK migration law and labour law being used to create homegrown slavery.

It comes as the group was allegedly informed by a Romanian community leader that Romanian citizens who applied to keep their rights in the UK after Brexit but have not yet heard back from the Home Office are denied permanent work contracts.

This is despiteHome Office guidancestating that a CoA confirming a valid EUSS application made on or after 1 July can be verified with the Home Office Employer Checking Service, and gives EU citizens the right to new employment whilst waiting for an application outcome.

Related: REVEALED: The share of European female inventors surpasses UKs

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Government accused of dragging its feet on ethnicity pay gap - The London Economic