UE Local 1110 members in Chicago who work at Republic Windows and Doors, are now engaged in a battle with their employer as well as the giant Bank of America. The bank -- which has already been given $25 billion dollars in taxpayer bailout monies -- is refusing to extend credit to the company. The national Jobs with Justice coalition has taken up the fight on behalf of these UE members,20launching a campaign to expose the shameful behavior by Bank of America -- as well as the many other outrages of the government bailout.

To lend a hand, click here

Do your part today to support these fellow workers and push back against the Wall Street and big bank rip-off of taxpayers. Please participate in the Jobs with Justice Week of Action for a People's Bailout Now! To lend a hand please visit the main Jobs with Justice page.

Chicago Factory Occupied
by Lee Sustar
What YOU Can Do
If negotiations with Bank of America fail to resolve the issue, there will be a picket of BoA's Chicago headquarters at 231 S. La Salle on Tuesday, December 9 at 12 noon.

Women are well on the way to overtaking men in the ranks of organized labor -- and for good reason. As a new study shows, women who’ve joined unions have significantly better pay and benefits than working women who have not joined.

Although only about a fifth of women workers overall currently belong to unions, they already make up about 45 percent of all unionized workers. They’re expected to become a majority within a dozen years, according to the study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The study makes clear the advantages of union membership that have attracted increasing numbers of women. Unionized women, for instance, average 11 percent or about $2 an hour more than non-union women. Three-fourths of union women have employer-financed health care benefits, but only about half their non-union counterparts have those benefits. Three-fourths of the unionized women have pensions, less than half of those outside unions have pensions.

Like other unionized workers, they also can expect paid holidays and vacations and premium pay for overtime work.

The union advantage is particularly strong for women in lower-paid

The war regroups. What if Barack Obama, as he pursues his pragmatic strategy that so far seems to be 10 parts “reassurance” (to the defense and financial establishment) to one part “change,” is really finished with his anti-war base for the next four years?

I don’t know if this is true, but his early moves in the game are gasp-inducing in the extreme: Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel “still refuse to renounce their votes in favor of the (Iraq) war,” Jeremy Scahill writes in The Guardian U.K. And then, of course, Robert Gates, Bush’s own secretary of defense, will keep his job, and James Jones, retired commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, will become national security advisor, creating what starts to look like a serious war cabinet.

I feel a bad case of betrayal coming on.

“What ultimately ties Obama’s team together,” Scahill writes, “is their unified support for the classic U.S. foreign policy recipe: the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of U.S. militarism to defend the America First doctrine.”

A Review of THE SUPERFERRY CHRONICLES: Hawaii's Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth
by Koohan Paik & Jerry Mander.
[Available from: http://www.koabooks.com/ ISBN13:978-0-9773338-9-9 ]

The sleek, aluminum mega-catamaran streaksacross the sea swells at forty miles an hour. Powered by jet engines, it rides high, skimming the surface on twin hulls that slice sharply through the water...and also, incidentally, accidentally through any dolphins, whale pups, sea turtles or, for that matter, human protesters that happen to get in the way.

Five stories high and a football field-and-a-half long, the superferry can carry 866 civilian or military personnel, 282 civilian cars and trucks...or an unknown quantity of Stryker Depleted Uranium-firing military tanks across the high seas and into shallow water on any island chain or continent. China, and other potential US rivals, please take note.