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­by Mark Carney

Workers and religios people protest against Hotel Hilton. ­(photo coutesy of Local 2)

Embroiled in a tense, seventeen month-long contract dispute, Local 2, the San Francisco hotel workers’ union, has this month increased the pressure on downtown hotels with a series of actions. In response, the hotels have enlisted the assistance of powerful business lobbies, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce.

On Tuesday, Jan. 18, hundreds of hotel workers protested in front of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Union Square. At issue, in addition to the Hyatt’s notoriously anti-union stance and one of the highest workplace injury rates in the industry, is a complaint the Hyatt has filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), claiming that Local 2 is unlawfully allocating money away from a child/elder care fund into a legal fund. Although allocations are strictly stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement, in practice a small measure of flexibility has historically been granted to the union.

Riddhi Mehta, Local 2 spokeswoman, questioned the sincerity and purpose of the complaint, saying, “Around eight years ago, the union switched over two cents an hour from the overfunded Legal Fund to the underfunded Child and Elder Care Fund. Nobody objected eight years ago: Why now?”.

In explaining the allocation, Mehta cited the increased cost that the federal government charges for immigration documents. “Of the 1,000 claims made in the last six months to the Legal Fund, 75 percent were related to immigration; Hyatt workers, ironically, are the second-highest benefi ciaries of the Fund,” said Mehta, hinting that the Hyatt may also have an anti-immigrant agenda.

Many observers noted that, in the press conference announcing the complaint, little mention was made of the complaint itself. Instead, Hyatt general manager David Nadelman and representatives of powerful business lobbies, both national and local, spoke of the detrimental economic impact of the stalled contract negotiations, which they asserted to be entirely the fault of Local

2. “A prolonged labor action has a negative impact on our economy where tourists contribute $8 billion annually, 70,000 jobs are directly involved and $500,000 in tax revenue is generated, argued Joe D’Alessandro, CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association.

Two weeks ago, on Jan. 7, Local 2, together with several prominent law professors, protested in front of the Hilton Union Square Hotel. The protest, consisting of a picket line and a rally, was in support of the national boycott of Hilton hotels undertaken by groups allied with labor unions.

­The picket line, made boisterous by the indignation of the workers and the chanting of union songs to the accompaniment of a drummer and two saxophonists, lasted four hours.

The chants, fittingly, were short and catchy, such as this one: “We’re gonna pull the plug, We’re gonna shut them down, San Francisco is a union town.” Passersby, both in cars and on foot, showed support for the rally, although most likely those staying in the Hilton disapproved.

During the rally, several well-known law professors spoke in favor of a boycott which their own professional association, the American Association of Law Schools, had chosen not to honor. Karl Klare, a professor of Law at Northeastern University, urged on the workers, telling them that, “ In every generation workers have to devise new strategies… The conventional strike is no longer the weapon of choice for unions.”

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por Mike Adams,

Natural News

(NaturalNews) It’s one of the most common false arguments of GMO pushers: There’s nothing to be worried about with genetically modified foods, they argue, because almost everything is genetically modified, they claim. What they’re referring to is the genetic selection used in the long, slow development of many crops such as wheat, which originally began as a grass but was shaped generation after generation through the selection of larger seeds, ultimately leading to modern-day wheat.

This stands in stark contrast to genetic engineering, which is the artificial inserting of genetic code (often from animal species, by the way) into the DNA of a plant. This is a completely artificial, interventionist “engineering” of the DNA of a plant that wildly differs from mere genetic “selection.”

GMO poison pushers attempt to confuse people with these terms by claiming that “lots of foods are genetically modifi ed,” thereby blurring the distinction between genetic selection versus genetic engineering. I’ve even heard top-level scientists attempt to use this false argument, hoping that no one will notice.

The simple truth is that genetic selection works in harmony with natural processes of gene variation within a species. If you grow corn, and you save the seeds from your best-tasting corn to plant the next generation of corn, you are engaged in genetic selection. This is natural. But the GMO industry doesn’t even want you to be able to save your seeds from one generation to the next. They use “terminator” technology in the seeds to ensure that the second generation of seeds is non-viable.

That alone is a crime against humanity because it forces a seed monopoly upon farmers and consumers in developing nations and fi rst-world nations. This is why any individual or organization that is in favor of seed-termination technology in GMOs is supporting a crime against nature.

As usual, the powerful corporations pushing GMOs are attempting to blatantly confuse consumers (and journalists) over the difference between genetic selection versus genetic engineering. None of the biotech GMOs are created through selection processes along.

They all are based on artifi cial genetic engineering. 10 facts you need to ­know about GMOs:

• GMOs are created through artificial genetic engineering of plant DNA, usually through inserting animal genes into plants.

• Genetic “selection,” in contrast, is a natural process whereby people plant seeds, generation after generation, from their crops that demonstrate desirable characteristics. This is how wheat, corn and other crops were developed over centuries of seed selection.

• The GMO industry uses seed terminator technology to forbid seed saving and planting, thereby forcing farmers to buy seeds year after year (creating a seed monopoly and a single point of control for food).

• People who promote GMOs are engaged in crimes against humanity and crimes against nature. They promote dangerous technologies that threaten the future of life on earth by causing genetic pollution and a sharp loss of seed diversity.

• GMOs have been linked to at least 200,000 suicides in India over the past decade due to failed crops (http://www.naturalnews.com).

• The GMO industry has financially taken over much of the mainstream media, politicians and science journals (http://www.naturalnews.com/031093_u…). They will not stop until they achieve complete control over the world food supply, enslaving humanity in a food monopoly.

• GMOs cause “genetic pollution” that damage other crops and ultimately threaten the reproductive viability of crops in the long term. The future of food is jeopardized by GMOs.

• The GMO industry is now attempting to brand all opponents of GMOs as “unscientifi c” by claiming that GMO = science, and therefore anyone who opposes GMOs is automatically an opponent of science (http://www.naturalnews.com).

• The GMO push into Europe is a confirmed conspiracy involving U.S. officials and GMO corporations, as revealed in a Wikileaks cable that the mainstream media has still refused to report (http://www.naturalnews.com/0 3 0 8 2 8 _ G . . . .

• The next great food famine (and mass starvation) will undoubtedly be caused by GMOs. And yet the industry claims that GMOs will save the planet from starvation! Only in a crooked, corrupt world could an industry claim to be saving the world while actually enslaving the world. Watch NaturalNews editor Mike Adams rap about GMOs in the hit song, “Just Say No to GMOs.”

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

On live TV on Jan. 27, President Hugo Chávez threatened Pedro Rodríguez, the executive president of BBVA Banco Provincial, the country’s third largest bank by assets, with expropriation if the bank didn’t help deliver on low income housing projects. The bank later issued a statement vowing to work with the government. Chávez, who is seeking re-election in 2012, has made housing his main priority for 2011, after the recent floods emergency displaced over 25,000 families.

The government is under pressure for failing, despite repeated promises by the president over the past decade, to tackle the country’s acute housing deficit. Chávez blames private construction firms and past governments, but the government’s average new build of 34,000 units a year in the last five years is down by more than a third on the previous government.

Dilma – echos de Piñera?

The ground literally shook under President Sebastián Piñera’s inauguration in Valparaíso on March 11, 2010, as central and southern Chile was rocked by strong aftershocks in the aftermath of one of country’s worst ever earthquakes less than fortnight earlier on Feb. 27.

The heavens certainly opened over Dilma Rousseff’s historic inauguration as Brazil’s first woman president on Jan. 1, but that was nothing compared to the torrential rains that deluged parts of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro a few week later. Like Piñera, Dilma was thrown a huge curve ball in the shape of an unprecedented natural disaster in her first weeks in office.

As in Chile, Brazil’sdisaster preparedness and emergency relief planning was found wanting, prompting citizen anger and criticism from as far away as the United Nations (UN). But like the businessman Piñera, the technocrat Dilma reacted with a cool and calm head, promising to unleash “the great organisational capacity of Brazil’s federal government” to see to it that some 5.0m (mostly low income) Brazilians are moved out of designated ‘at risk’ areas in coming years. Dilma has thus set the bar high for her new administration. She might do well to cast an eye towards Chile, where after a year marked by the trauma of the earthquake and then the glory of the operation to rescue 33 trapped miners, Piñera is now the least popular Chilean president since the return to democracy in 1990.

Morales struggles with ­Bolivian reconciliation bid President Evo Morales marked the start of his sixth year in power and his second as Bolivia’s first ‘plurinational’ President with a call for “reconciliation” and “strategic alliances” in his annual state-of-thenation address. His popularity is at an all-time low due to the gasolinazo (his failed attempt at scrapping state fuel subsidies). Food prices are also soaring. The appeal is directed not only at traditional opposition sectors such as the Santa Cruz agricultural lobby – currently demanding measures to boost production – but also at Morales’ support base, which proved key to his recent defeat.

Sandra Torres de Colom – a First Lady “like no other”?

Upon taking office in January 2008, President Alvaro Colom declared that his wife, Sandra Torres, would be a First Lady “like no other”.

The full meaning of this is becoming apparent amid mounting speculation that, despite some constitutional doubts, she will stand as the presidential candidate for the ruling centre-left Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) in the September 2011 general elections. Her possible candidacy is also significant in the context of the emerging regional tendency where leaders faced with constitutional barriers to their immediate re-election, have entertained the idea of promoting their wives’ election as a means of preserving power and influence beyond their mandates. Latin News.

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por Rosalba Ruíz

WASHINGTON, D.C. — There is no strong economic argument to change dramatically the number of low-skilled immigrants in the United States, at least in the short run, says a report just released here by the Migration Policy Institute. That’s the conclusion of economist Harry Holzer, a Georgetown Public Policy Institute professor who reviewed stacks of research literature to assess the costs and benefits low-skilled immigrants bring to the U.S. economy.

His report, “Immigration Policy and Less-Skilled Workers in the United States,” suggests some directions that immigration reform can take, highlighting the importance of the labor market. Key among the suggestions is one that has tied this nation in political knots for years: a pathway to legal residency for undocumented workers.

A response panel of experts — economists and public policy administrators that included MPI president Demetrios Papademetriou and former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner — drew an audience of some 200 persons to MPI on the subfreezing morning of Jan. 13. Offered the chance to broaden the dialogue with questions, they joined in to raise other immigration policy concerns such as social and humanitarian aspects.

Costs and Benefits

Immigration has increased the number of less-skilled workers (those without a high school diploma) in the United States since the 1980s. Holzer’s report suggests that the impact of this expansion on the wages and employment prospects of less-skilled workers is minimal. Among his cited reasons are that immigrants consume products and services, increasing overall labor demand, and that employers adjust production techniques to take advantage of the larger supply of lowskilled workers that immigration generates.

As far as who benefits, in general it is the employers, who pay lower wages, and consumers, who pay less for goods and services: high-income consumers  benefi t from reduced childcare, landscaping and restaurant tabs, for example. The low-income consumer receives cheaper food, medical care and housing.

However, costs and benefits are complex and differ, depending on many variables, such as immigration fl ow, legal status of the workers, and the condition of the labor market and the economy at the time, he qualifi es. If there is an infl ux of low-skilled workers, this might improve the net real earnings (due to higher earnings and lower prices) of higher-income, native-born consumers, but might reduce them for lower income U.S. workers.

Workers who are undocumented usually are paid less than authorized ones, so “it would be better if we convert them to legal immigrants,” Holzer explained, adding that too often the cost/benefit discussion is framed around the legal status of the lowskilled workers. Immigrants here illegally tend to be scapegoated, he pointed out, saying a question that should be asked is how we help native-born unskilled workers via education, workforce development or market interventions. Policy Changes Because it is nearly impossible to determine an optimal level for lessskilled immigrants, Holzer said U.S. policy should aim at maximizing benefi ts; minimizing costs and helping immigrants who stay in the country integrate and gain upward mobility.

­The report points to some ways to do that: First, provide pathways to legal status and citizenship for low-skilled workers already here and a legal route for future workers by using provisional visas that make it possible for some temporary workers to become permanent residents. Second, allow lessskilled workers on employment-based visas to switch employers more easily and gain a path to citizenship.

Third, set employer visa fees at a level sufficient to offset some of the costs that low skilled immigration impose. And finally, to ensure fl exibility in the numbers admitted so that flows can respond to employer demand and macroeconomic conditions.

If those strategies were implemented, said Holzer, the risk of worker exploitation would be reduced.