Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Resistance to Unprecedented Corporate Power - Fascist Corporations Fight Back



Walmart Retaliates Against Black Friday Activists By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet 23 November 12


[Excerpted] Two weeks ago, Walmart filed its own NLRB complaint against the United Food & Commercial Workers, seeking an injunction against the planned Black Friday actions. The complaint failed. A week later, UFCW-affiliated OUR Walmart group filed a complaint with the labor board against Walmart, alleging retaliation against workers involved in the OUR Walmart campaign.
Even if you've never set foot near a Walmart store in your life, today's actions offer a host of ways to get involved in the fight for fair pay and benefits. The AFL-CIO blog, among other Web sites, offers a list of ways to get involved.
The video below, Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man, features a former general manager for the company speaking of the ways managers cheated workers out of wages they had earned, rigged a vote against a union in the company's Annapolis, Md., store, and how hard it was to eat in the staff lunchroom, where workers took their breaks with no food, because they couldn't afford to buy lunch. The video is a bonus scene from Robert Greenwald's documentary: Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price....

Pipeline Protest Draws Pepper Spray From Deputies By Published: November 23, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/us/texas-transcanada-protesters-are-pepper-sprayed.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121124

[Excerpted] Since September, when construction began on the Keystone, the Tar Sands Blockade, a grass-roots coalition of East Texas landowners and environmental advocates from across the country, has been waging a nonviolent guerrilla campaign against the pipeline. About every week since construction began, blockade volunteers have locked themselves to construction equipment in protest. So far, 43 have been arrested. But on Monday, protesters who were not locked to equipment were pepper-sprayed as well, the first such incident, according to Ron Seifert, a spokesman for the Tar Sands Blockade.

The protesters have come from across the country. Some are young activists from the coasts, veterans of the Occupy movement and other environmental campaigns who believe that developing the Alberta tar sands will seriously aggravate climate change. Many are locals angered by what they see as TransCanada’s highhanded treatment of landowners. 

“I don’t like how they’ve treated people,” said 75-year-old Jeanette Singleton of nearby Nacogdoches, who was worried about the Keystone’s effect on the Angelina River. “If you don’t want to sign, they just take your land from you. It doesn’t seem right.” 

TransCanada has attracted particular ire for its use of eminent domain to take easements from landowners who did not want to sign. Many landowners who eventually did sign say they did so out of fear of having their land seized otherwise....

 



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