Stand up for a
People's Canada and its socialized
economy!
Unite and organize to restrict monopoly right!
Today's TML contains a chronology of
U.S. Steel's wrecking of steel production at Hamilton Works and Lake
Erie Works since assuming ownership and control of Stelco. This
activity is in complete violation of the contract the U.S. monopoly
signed under the authority of the Investment
Canada Act upon assuming control of Stelco in 2007. The chronology
also includes facts on the current situation in Hamilton Works and some
issues that have arisen because of U.S. Steel using retired contract
workers rather than hiring and training young workers.
The chronology raises the issue of who should control
the Canadian socialized economy and who should decide its direction. It
has become clear to many workers that the existing Canadian political
and economic institutions are both incapable and unwilling to restrict
the destructive practices of the monopolies
that now control the decisive sectors of the economy. Many of those
monopolies, whose narrow egocentric aim is causing severe dislocation
of the economy and individual suffering, are based outside Canada such
as U.S. Steel, Vale Inco, Xstrata, Shell, AbitibiBowater etc. Many
other monopolies based in Canada
have also participated in the recent wave of wrecking manufacturing and
attacking workers such as at Nortel and Olymel.
The responsibility to turn the situation around rests
with the Canadian working class and its allies, especially trade
unionists who must lead the fight to defend the rights of all and
worker politicians who must lead the people in organizing for
democratic renewal and to restrict monopoly right.
Chronology of U.S. Steel Wrecking of Stelco
October 2008 -- more than 1,700 steelworkers
were actively making steel at Stelco Hamilton Works and another 1,000
at Lake Erie Works, which are both now owned and controlled by U.S.
Steel. Hamilton Works steelworkers were producing slabs to be sent to
Stelco Lake Erie Works to be rolled
into hot strip. Hamilton Works had a functioning hot strip mill but it
was shut down in 2007 by Rodney Mott, the CEO from North Carolina who
was parachuted into Stelco to use his connections and celebrity status
in certain financial circles in the U.S. to prepare Stelco for sale to
a foreign monopoly.
After the closure of the Hamilton Works' hot strip mill
in 2007, the steel slabs were sent to Lake Erie Works to be milled into
coils and then returned to Hamilton Works to be run through its cold
mill, and then finished by running them through the Z-line and
Hamilton's remaining galvanizing line. The steel
product was then ready enough for sale to a customer.
Hamilton Works also had about 200 workers employed in
the #3 bloom mill and bar mill.
November 2008 -- The major layoffs began in
November 2008 when U.S. Steel shut down the primary end of producing
slabs at Hamilton Works. The only remaining work was finishing hot band
sent to Hamilton from Lake Erie Works.
December 2008 -- U.S. Steel continued its attack
on production by shutting Hamilton Works' bloom and bar mills. At this
point around 800 steelworkers, almost half the workforce at Hamilton
Works, were no longer working and producing steel.
March 3, 2009 -- U.S. Steel announced a shutdown
of the entire Canadian operation. Shortly after, 700 steelworkers at
Hamilton Works and 200 at Lake Erie Works announced their retirement.
August 3, 2009 -- U.S. Steel changed the shutdown
at Lake Erie Works into a lock-out in a brutal attempt to extract
concessions from steelworkers of USW Local 8782.
End of August 2009 -- U.S. Steel restarted the
Hamilton Works' Blast Furnace and 850 steelworkers of Local 1005 began
producing steel slabs. Because of the closure of all finishing at
Hamilton Works and the shutdown of Lake Erie Works, these slabs were
sent to various plants in the U.S., including
the Fairfield plant in Alabama and the Great lakes plant in Detroit.
Orders from Stelco's traditional steel customers are being filled from
plants in the U.S.
First week of January 2010 -- U.S. Steel moved
workers internally within Hamilton Works to the Z-Line Department to
restart production on the Z-line. Because of the continuing closure of
Lake Erie Works, U.S. Steel is bringing in coils processed through cold
mills in the U.S. to be finished on the
Z-line for sale as finished steel to customers in Canada. However, this
arrangement has resulted in only sporadic production.
Early January, 2010 -- The head of production for
U.S. Steel , James Garroux, arrived in Hamilton for an inspection and
told Stelco management that they still have too many people employed in
Hamilton. The talk among salaried employees is that Garroux wants to
sever an additional 100 of them
and then call selected ones back on contract when needed. This of
course is in complete violation of the Investment Canada Act
contract but U.S. Steel executives appear completely unconcerned with
Canadian law.
Mid-January 2010 -- U.S. Steel informed Local
1005 that the company wanted to start up the 4-stand cold rolling mill
in early February 2010. With Lake Erie Works not producing,
this means Hamilton steelworkers would produce slabs to be sent to the
U.S. either Gary Works in Indiana,
Great Lakes in Detroit, Granite City in Illinois, Fairfield in Alabama
or Mon Valley in Pennsylvania and hot strip coils would be returned
back to Hamilton to be run through the 4-stand and the Z-line. The
Hamilton Works' workforce is now 850 workers, which is just about
enough to run the operation at the level
of making slabs with about 100 called-back workers training on jobs
that are new to them.
When U.S. Steel announced that it wanted to restart the
Z-line and then the 4-stand, the monopoly raised the issue of bringing
production
contractors into the plant to train steelworkers who have never worked
on those
lines. With the
layoffs and retirements, not enough steelworkers are available with the
skills to run the 4-stand and Z-line at more than a 5 turn operation (5
turns is 5 days a week of 8 hour shifts). The most efficient operation
is 21 turns (21 turns is four shifts running 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week but not enough qualified workers
are available to run the mills that way.) The layoffs and retirements
have also affected available Stelco trades-people. The shortage is
being filled with contractors, mostly retired Stelco workers, with
several hundred on site every day. The issue of contract
workers in the plant is becoming a serious
one that workers are discussing. (See item "What Is The Future of Our
Youth" below.)
Members and supporters of
USW Local 1005
leafleting at the corner of King & James in downtown Hamilton.
Everyone is welcome to join them every Monday beginning at 3:30 pm.
What Is the Future of Our Youth?
The following is a letter contained in USW Local 1005's Information Update 2010 #3,
January 25, 2010. The letter from an
executive member of Local 1005 presents a suggestion for renewing the
socialized economy in Hamilton with regard to hiring the youth rather
than contracting retired workers. This suggestion
is an example of the broadminded leadership needed to give the
socialized economy a new pro-social direction.
***
With the Unemployment rate hovering around the 10% mark
for some time, why are all these corporations and government divisions
hiring retired workers to come back into the workplace?
Don't you think it would be a greater benefit to
society, and less of a drain on our social programs, to hire some
unemployed workers? These corporations would rather hire retired
contract workers as a way of getting out of pensions and benefits that
they would have to pay if they were to hire new workers.
They also claim that they cannot afford to train new
hires. Retired workers are not going to help sustain a strong economy.
We need full employment not unemployment. Instead of rehiring these
retirees we should be training our youth in apprenticeship programs for
the future, as these retirees are a short term
solution to a long term problem. These retirees have worked hard and
earned a pension so they could retire with dignity.
Unions negotiated 30 and out provisions in their
collective agreements as a way to have people retire and be replaced
with our kids as new hires, not so they could come back into the
workplace and collect a pension cheque and a pay cheque while our kids
have no jobs.
Our youth deserve a standard of living that most of us
have enjoyed for the greater part of our working lives. This standard
of living cannot be sustained with our kids working in retail and
service jobs.
Manufacturing jobs are what we need in our economy as a
way to produce wealth. We even have EI offices bringing back retired
workers to help with the increased work load due to the high
unemployment. Just a thought, but would it not make a little more sense
to have our EI offices hire an unemployed worker
and train them?
Unions need to negotiate collective agreements with
provisions in them to address this issue of part time retired workers
and have these corporations hire our unemployed youth.
In Solidarity,
[signed], Executive Member Local 1005 USW
U.S. Steel Is Not a Person
- USW Local 1005,
Information Update #2, January 18, 2010 -
U.S. Steel is relying on the Canadian Bill of Rights
(BOR) Section 2(e) which guarantees persons a fair hearing under the
principles of fundamental justice. They claim they have rights as a
person.
U.S. Steel Canada as a
"Person"
Even though the concept that corporations are persons is
accepted in "jurisprudence," it bears no relation to reality.
Corporations are very unequal social relations made up of two main
aspects that are in antagonistic contradiction: 1) owners of capital,
and 2) workers.
This unequal antagonistic social relation is extremely unstable and
tense. Owners of capital, who consider themselves "the person" with
regard to business law and the Bill of Rights, are not capable of
existing without their opposing aspect, the working class. Workers are
what give the corporations value through their
work-time transforming raw material into social product and providing
services.
An insight into the nonsense that a corporation is a
"person" becomes clear when one considers the Stelco case. In November
2008, when the recent layoffs started and in March 2009 when U.S. Steel
announced the shutdown of Stelco, did the 3000 workers and over 9000
pensioners want the shutdown of Stelco?
What person wanted to crater Stelco? Was it the "person" of John Surma
(the CEO of U.S. Steel), the "persons" of U.S. Steel's Board of
Directors, or was it the "persons", the workers who produce all the
wealth? Or was it the 9000 pensioners who rely on the present
production and the survival of the company for
their pensions?
The concept that a corporation such as U.S. Steel is a
person is wrong and should not be argued as a basis of fact and law as
the government is doing.
Haiti
"Cuba for Haiti" Campaign Launched
- Canadian Network on Cuba, January 18,
2010 -
Dear Friends,
In response to the horrendous suffering of the Haitian
people resulting from the earthquake and its many aftershocks, many
Canadians have been wondering what is the most effective way to provide
aid. The Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association of Toronto has proposed
the Cuba for Haiti fundraising
campaign which is also endorsed by the Canadian Network on Cuba as a
national effort.
Cuban doctor deployed to Haiti,
January 18, 2010.
Cuba has an unequalled record in helping people in
crises such as the earthquake in Pakistan and natural disasters in many
other countries. In fact it has set up a special emergency unit, the
Henry Reeve Medical Brigade, to respond to such disasters. At the time
of the earthquake in Haiti, 402 Cuban
internationalists, 302 of them medical personnel, had already been
helping Haitians. These together with many of the 500 Haitian doctors
who had been trained in Cuba free of charge formed the essential early
group of lifesavers, attending to 1,102 Haitian patients in the first
24 hours after the earthquake. They have
continued their work, boosted by an additional medical brigade which
arrived promptly from Cuba.
We believe that this kind of unprecedented and
invaluable help which Cuba has been giving Haiti for eleven years
deserves to be supported as strongly as possible. The CNC urges you to
support Cuba in this work by giving a donation to "The
Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund," indicating on your
cheque's memo line "Cuba for Haiti."
Charitable receipts will be issued by the
Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund (Charitable Org - Revenue Canada Reg,
#88876 9197RR0001).
Your donation should be mailed to:
The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund & Friends of
the Mac-Pap Battalion, Int'l Brigades
Att: S. Skup
56 Riverwood Terrace
Bolton, ON L7E 1S4
The "Cuba for Haiti" contributions will go into a
special account, ensuring that 100% of all donations are used for
medical support and aid to Haiti. We are working directly with The
Cuban Embassy in Ottawa and the Consulate General in Toronto.
Sincerely,
Isaac Saney, CNC Co-chair & and National
Spokesperson
Tamara Hansen, CNC Co-Chair
Keith Ellis, CNC Coordinator "Cuba for Haiti"
Tear Gas Fired at Haitians Seeking Food Aid
Starving Haitians have been tear-gassed after
crowding a
relief center with scarce food aid. Desperate earthquake survivors had
rushed to grab bags of dried grains after the center ran low on
supplies for a second consecutive day. According to reports from
Port-au-Prince, forces with the UN ‘peacekeeping' mission
to Haiti fired tear gas at the crowd. The UN says it needs enough food
to feed some two million people for at least fifteen days.
In other news from Haiti, a man has been rescued from
the ruins of a building, two weeks after the earthquake destroyed the
city of Port-au-Prince. Rico Dibrivell, said to be in his early 30s,
apparently became trapped by an aftershock two days after the quake and
was severely dehydrated. The rescue
comes 14 days after the 7.3-magnitude quake, which killed as many as
200,000 people.
The rescued man is the longest survivor so far under the
rubble. A rescue team has also been digging into the rubble of a
university, after a man said he had managed to phone his cousin who
said she was trapped in a basement, along with several other people.
On Saturday, Haiti's government declared the search and
rescue phase over. It is estimated more than 130 people have been
pulled alive by rescue teams in the Haitian capital since the quake.
However, many more have been rescued by ordinary Haitians, often with
their bare hands.
Earlier, Haitian President Rene Preval made an urgent
appeal for more tents to house up to a million people left homeless by
the tremor. Preval said 200,000 tents were needed before the expected
start of the rainy season in May. The president, who lost his house in
the quake, is planning to move into
a tent on the lawn of the destroyed National Palace in the centre of
the capital.
The Haitian government wants to relocate some 400,000
people, currently in makeshift camps across the capital, to temporary
tent villages outside the city.
(Radio Havana Cuba)
UNICEF Decries Trafficking of Haitian Children
The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) on January 22
denounced the disappearance of Haitian children left by themselves in
Port-au-Prince hospitals after the earthquake. The
organization announced it has discovered that at least
15 children have been kidnapped in Haiti and suspected that a human
trafficking network operating through Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
is responsible for the kidnapping.
The Haitian kidnapping of children takes place in
moments
in which the country is facing the world's biggest humanitarian
catastrophe of the last three decades, noted UNICEF official Jean
Claude Legrand.
UNICEF also denounced and the probability of other cases
of kidnapping of Haitian children and has also raised the alarm about
the legality of the accelerated adoption process demanded by Germany,
France, Holland, Spain and the United States, in particular.
The child trafficking networks existed before the quake
and were very active in kidnapping of minors for the international
market of illegal adoptions, remarked Legrand, pointing out that they
may be expanding their activities given the present circumstances
because that smugglers try to take advantage
of the fragility of the state apparatus during such a catastrophe.
The UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau recalled that in
emergency situations children are the most vulnerable amongst the
population. She urged the states adopting Haitian children to respect
The Hague Convention regarding protection of children and their
families from illegal processes. At
the same time UNICEF also pointed out the danger young Haitian women
may also face of being victims of criminal elements trafficking
in women.
In related news, the Catholic Church of Miami also is
preparing a plan for Haiti similar to "Operation Peter Pan," a cruel
and inhuman plan instigated by the CIA that separated 14,000 Cuban
Children from their families in 1960. This counter-revolutionary
operation was the largest recorded exodus
of unaccompanied children in the western hemisphere and remained a
secret for 30 years.
(Prensa Latina)
ALBA Agrees to Send Aid for Reconstruction
President Hugo Chávez of the Bolivarian Republic
of Venezuela led the extraordinary meeting of the Political Council of
the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which
took place on January 24 at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela.
The emergency meeting, which had an immediate response
from the member nations, discussed the regional bloc's contribution to
the reconstruction of devastated Haiti.
According to Chávez, the meeting -- which
included Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica and other ALBA
representatives -- was convened to
talk about the terrible situation in Haiti, a nation with permanent
observer status in ALBA, and to strengthen humanitarian
aid.
At the end of the meeting, the final declaration was
read out by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez and it was
agreed that this plan would be urgently passed on to Haitian President
René Préval via a high level commission.
The text states that the reconstruction efforts in the
sister Caribbean nation "must have the people and government of Haiti
as the major protagonists, thus respecting the principles of
sovereignty and territorial integrity."
The continuity of work underway, centrally in "the
healthcare sphere," was reiterated, in terms of developing a plan
giving priority attention to children and to include the rebuilding of
the Haitian educational infrastructure, food and school aid programs
and the training of teachers.
The creation of a Humanitarian Fund via the Bank of ALBA
was approved and is to be established with the support of member
countries. Members agreed on the supply of food to alleviate the crisis
and the reactivation of food production plans that were underway in the
framework of the ALBA-Food
Initiative.
They also proposed, among other measures, to reintroduce
projects in support of electricity generation, guaranteeing necessary
fuel supplies to plants in Cap-Haïtien, Gonaves and Carrefour,
areas gravely damaged by the earthquake.
(Granma International)
Singular Internationalist Assistance of
Cuban Doctors
and Medical Personnel
Cuban doctors have attended more than 18,000 Haitians
patients since they began their work the same day the 7.3 earthquake
shook Haiti on January 12, reports the January 23 edition of Granma
Daily.
According to Dr. Carlos Alberto Garcia, head of the
Cuban health mission in Haiti, Cuban doctors have performed more than
1,700 surgeries, 800 of which were major surgeries.
Garcia said that there are 657 Cuban trained healthcare
professionals currently working in Haiti, including 417 Cubans and 240
Haitians. In Port-au-Prince, they are working in three hospitals: La
Paz, La Renaissance and Ofatma.
The Cuban medical brigade has set up tent hospitals
outside of Port-au-Prince in Leoganne and Jacmel, and two more are
being erected in Carrefour and Croix des Bouquet. Several Cuban doctors
have also been sent to other departments as Haitians leave the capital
to find aid and shelter.
Five Comprehensive Diagnostic Centers donated to Haiti
by Cuba and Venezuela continue to operate around the clock attending to
earthquake survivors. Two additional centres will be up and running
next week in two departments outside of the city, Granma
reports.
Among the other activities being carried out in Haiti by
the Cuban medical brigade is a health prevention and protection
campaign that includes a tetanus vaccination campaign that as so far
administered 400,000 vaccinations donated by Cuba.
Cuba has also sent a team of specialists to fumigate and
control outbreaks of disease, and a team of physiotherapists to aid in
the recovery process of patients.
Cuban Doctors Aid Haitian Quake Victims
TML is posting below a January 16 news report
from CNN recounting the high level of organization and care Cuban
medical teams, alongside those of other Latin American countries and
Spain are providing in Haiti under extremely difficult circumstances.
Despite the singular and longstanding
assistance provided to Haiti by Cuba, this outstanding response was
initially met with a virtual blackout by U.S. media.
We Send Doctors, Not Soldiers
- Fidel Castro, January 23, 2010 -
In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the
catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I
wrote: "In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has
received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and
blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare
workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge. Our doctors are
working every day at 227 of the 237 communes of that country. On the
other hand, no less than 400 young Haitians have been graduated as
medical doctors in our country. They will now work alongside the
reinforcement that traveled there yesterday
to save lives in that critical situation. Thus, up to one thousand
doctors and healthcare personnel can be mobilized without any special
effort; and most are already there willing to cooperate with any other
State that wishes to save Haitian lives and rehabilitate the injured."
"The head of our medical brigade has informed that 'the
situation is difficult but we are already saving lives.'"
Hour after hour, day and night, the Cuban health
professionals have started to work nonstop in the few facilities that
were able to stand, in tents, and out in the parks or open-air spaces,
since the population feared new aftershocks.
The situation was far more serious than was originally
thought. Tens of thousands of injured were clamoring for help in the
streets of Port-au-Prince; innumerable persons laid, dead or alive,
under the rubbled clay or adobe used in the construction of the houses
where the overwhelming majority of
the population lived. Buildings, even the most solid, collapsed.
Besides, it was necessary to look for the Haitian doctors who had
graduated at the Latin American Medicine School throughout all the
destroyed neighborhoods. Many of them were affected, either directly or
indirectly, by the tragedy.
Some UN officials were trapped in their dormitories and
tens of lives were lost, including the lives of several chiefs of
MINUSTAH, a UN contingent. The fate of hundreds of other members of its
staff was unknown.
Haiti's Presidential Palace crumbled. Many public
facilities, including several hospitals, were left in ruins.
The catastrophe shocked the whole world, which was able
to see what was going on through the images aired by the main
international TV networks. Governments from everywhere in the planet
announced they would be sending rescue experts, food, medicines,
equipment and other resources.
In conformity with the position publicly announced by
Cuba, medical staff from different countries -- namely Spain, Mexico,
and Colombia, among others -- worked very hard alongside our doctors at
the facilities they had improvised. Organizations such as PAHO and
other friendly countries like Venezuela
and other nations supplied medicines and other resources. The
impeccable behavior of Cuban professionals and their leaders was
absolutely void of chauvinism and remained out of the limelight.
Cuba, just as it had done under similar circumstances,
when Hurricane Katrina caused huge devastation in the city of New
Orleans and the lives of thousands of American citizens were in danger,
offered to send a full medical brigade to cooperate with the people of
the United States, a country that,
as is well known, has vast resources. But at that moment what was
needed were trained and well -- equipped doctors to save lives. Given
New Orleans geographical location, more than one thousand doctors of
the "Henry Reeve" contingent mobilized and readied to leave for that
city at any time of the day or the
night, carrying with them the necessary medicines and equipment. It
never crossed our mind that the President of that nation would reject
the offer and let a number of Americans that could have been saved to
die. The mistake made by that government was perhaps the inability to
understand that the people of Cuba
do not see in the American people an enemy; it does not blame it for
the aggressions our homeland has suffered.
Nor was that government capable of understanding that
our country does not need to beg for favors or forgiveness of those
who, for half a century now, have been trying, to no avail, to bring us
to our knees. Our country, also in the case of Haiti, immediately
responded to the US authorities requests
to fly over the eastern part of Cuba as well as other facilities they
needed to deliver assistance, as quickly as possible, to the American
and Haitian citizens who had been affected by the earthquake.
Such have been the principles characterizing the
ethical behavior of our people. Together with its equanimity and
firmness, these have been the ever-present features of our foreign
policy. And this is known only too well by whoever have been our
adversaries in the international arena.
Cuba will firmly stand by the opinion that the tragedy
that has taken place in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western
hemisphere, is a challenge to the richest and more powerful countries
of the world.
Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and
imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti's slavery and subsequent
poverty were imposed from abroad. That terrible earthquake occurred
after the Copenhagen Summit, where the most elemental rights of 192 UN
member States were trampled
upon. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a competition has unleashed in
Haiti to hastily and illegally adopt boys and girls. UNICEF has been
forced to adopt preventive measures against the uprooting of many
children, which will deprive their close relatives from their rights.
There are more than one hundred thousand
deadly victims. A high number of citizens have lost their arms or legs,
or have suffered fractures requiring rehabilitation that would enable
them to work or manage their own.
Eighty per cent of the country needs to be rebuilt.
Haiti requires an economy that is developed enough to meet its needs
according to its productive capacity. The reconstruction of Europe or
Japan, which was based on the productive capacity and the technical
level of the population, was a relatively
simple task as compared to the effort that needs to be made in Haiti.
There, as well as in most of Africa and elsewhere in the Third World,
it is indispensable to create the conditions for a sustainable
development. In only forty years time, humanity will be made of more
than nine billion inhabitants, and right now
is faced with the challenge of a climate change that scientists accept
as an inescapable reality.
In the midst of the Haitian tragedy, without anybody
knowing how and why, thousands of US marines, 82nd Airborne Division
troops and other military forces have occupied Haiti. Worse still is
the fact that neither the United Nations Organization nor the US
government have offered an explanation
to the world's public opinion about this relocation of troops.
Several governments have complained that their aircraft
have not been allowed to land in order to deliver the human and
technical resources that have been sent to Haiti.
Some countries, for their part, have announced they
would be sending an additional number of troops and military equipment.
In my view, such events will complicate and create chaos in
international cooperation, which is already in itself complex. It is
necessary to seriously discuss this issue. The
UN should be entrusted with the leading role it deserves in these so
delicate matters.
Our country is accomplishing a strictly humanitarian
mission. To the extent of its possibilities, it will contribute the
human and material resources at its disposal. The will of our people,
who takes pride in its medical doctors and cooperation workers who
provide vital services, is huge, and will rise
to the occasion.
Any significant cooperation that is offered to our
country will not be rejected, but its acceptance will fully depend on
the importance and transcendence of the assistance that is requested
from the human resources of our homeland.
It is only fair to state that, up until this moment,
our modest aircrafts and the important human resources that Cuba has
made available to the Haitian people have arrived at their destination
without any difficulty whatsoever.
We send doctors, not soldiers!
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 23, 2010
5:30 p.m.
Read The Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
October 2008 -- more than 1,700 steelworkers
were actively making steel at Stelco Hamilton Works and another 1,000
at Lake Erie Works, which are both now owned and controlled by U.S.
Steel. Hamilton Works steelworkers were producing slabs to be sent to
Stelco Lake Erie Works to be rolled
into hot strip. Hamilton Works had a functioning hot strip mill but it
was shut down in 2007 by Rodney Mott, the CEO from North Carolina who
was parachuted into Stelco to use his connections and celebrity status
in certain financial circles in the U.S. to prepare Stelco for sale to
a foreign monopoly.
Starving Haitians have been tear-gassed after
crowding a
relief center with scarce food aid. Desperate earthquake survivors had
rushed to grab bags of dried grains after the center ran low on
supplies for a second consecutive day. According to reports from
Port-au-Prince, forces with the UN ‘peacekeeping' mission
to Haiti fired tear gas at the crowd. The UN says it needs enough food
to feed some two million people for at least fifteen days.