Any relation to Mark Pollack the attorney and former Pittsburgh city councilman---a big guy and too nice for politics as practiced in post-industrial Pittsburgh.
Yes, steelworkers are very proud of their steel industry. We now have the lowest man hours per ton of steel produced in the world. Even with the most productive steel industry in the world we are being swamped by foreign steel being sold into this country at less than the cost of production. You might ask, how can this be? Well it's real simple. The IMF and their twin brother the World Bank tell these economies that are in trouble like South Korea, Russia, Brazil etc. export at any cost, even below the cost of production. These troubled economies are also told to follow austerity plans and privatize to raise capital to build more into already overbuilt industries, so they can export more.
Talks cheap. The forces of global corporatism have never been stronger, and, their neo-liberal apologists have never been smoother.
Andy, if we go down we will take the other steelworkers in the world with us in a race to the bottom.
Speaking of jokes. I had an MBA tell me that China is one big union!
Sincerely, Tom Lehman
Andrew C Pollack wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Nov 1998 15:01:34 -0500 Tom Lehman <uswa12 at lorainccc.edu>
> writes:
> >
> >My guesstimate of import penetration into our domestic steel market,
> >that I sent you about a month or so ago, was trending toward 30%.
> >The>latest from our president George Becker sees a 48% import
> penetration
> >of>our domestic market.
> >
> >Sincerely,
> >Tom L.
>
> "Our" domestic steel market?
>
> Bill Henning of CWA Local 1180 told a story this weekend at a conference
> in New York about how his local had convinced a CWA convention to change
> a "Buy American" resolution into a "Buy Union" one. Contrast this to
> Tom's approach.
>
> Is it too much to ask, in this age of globalization, of massive worker
> revolts among South Korean, South African, Brazilian and other
> steelworkers, that the first person plural should apply to classes and
> not to nations? With unions all over the world holding international
> solidarity conferences all the time -- seems like there's one at least
> every month -- is this the best "our" steelworkers union can come up
> with?
>
> Remember the immortal words of Lenny Bruce:
>
> "The Lone Ranger, seeing Indians on all the hills around him, turns to
> Tonto and says, 'Looks like we're surrounded, Tonto." To which Tonto
> replies:
>
> 'What do you mean WE, white man?'"
>
> Andy Pollack
> who grew up in Pittsburgh and knows whereof he speaks
> ___________________________________________________________________
> You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
> Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
> or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <../attachments/19981103/eac4fff8/attachment.htm>