Search

Re "After Corbyn, After Covid" by Gary Younge [June 1/8 ]: As an ex - Labour MP and ex-minister for Europe, I would like to qualify the conventional wisdom from him that the UK chose "to leave the European Union in a referendum. But in Labour seats in the North - and I represented one for 18 years - while the totality voted for Brexit, most identifiable Labour voters did not. The fact is the Remain campaign was poorly run, and Labour voters backed Remain by the same margin as Scottish National Party voters. [Extracted from the article]

Just when the Democrats thought it was safe to go back in the tepid waters of me-too politics, the specter of U.S. politician Jesse Jackson rises again to shatter their calm. Their hope that Jackson could be contained in the nightmare world of Washington has been dashed by his refusal to run for Mayor. Now it appears that he will resume his presidential campaign for 1992, and if the primaries are timed in an advantageous way, he may have his best shot yet at a place on the ticket. Jackson terrifies the neoliberal apparatchiks of the party establishment precisely because he represents the emergence of their repressed political conscience. He raises the issues they have rejected, he organizes the constituencies they have abandoned, he projects the vision they have denied.

The article presents information on Malaysia. In Malaysia, there is a remarkable man who has reached the elusive goal of medieval alchemists - the transmutation of metal. He is the country's Registrar of Trade Unions, and a few years ago, when the Malaysian Metalworkers Union came politely to him to explain that hundreds of workers at the famous Selangor and Penang pewter plants wished to join the union, the registrar announced that pewter was not a metal. In light of this remarkable scientific declaration, the pewter workers could not logically join a metalworkers union.

American soldiers in Saudi Arabia who bother to buy any of the local newspapers will be puzzled by advertisements that look suspiciously like the wanted notices issued by police forces throughout the world. Those who read Arabic will discover that these are indeed wanted notices for workers who have left their employer without permission. They are published as a warning to any other employer not to hire the runaway but instead to send him back to his original master. There were around 860,000 immigrant workers in Kuwait and at a stroke; they lost all their possessions, savings and retirement benefits. Indians who fled from Iraq or Kuwait had to leave everything behind and borrow an average of $1,700 to return home, a debt that will be around their families' necks for years to come.

The article focuses on issues discussed at the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) congress, held from November 13-20 in Moscow, Russia. Listed among its member confederations are unions from both Iraq and Kuwait. The WFTU, launched with fanfare in Paris, France, in 1945 to unite the world's unions, is now in considerable disarray. Depicted in cold war terminology as a propaganda trumpet for Russian policy and ideology, the WFTU has representatives from non-communist countries in which unions are part of the state apparatus. Perhaps the biggest crisis facing the WFTU is the future course of trade unionism in Russia and its current republics.

Presents letters to the editor referencing articles and topics discussed in previous issues. Comments of a reader on an article related to the European labor activities; Feedback of a reader on the article "Borderline Marxists"; Comments of a reader on an article related to socialism.

Presents several letters to the editor. Information on business interest in health care reforms; Information on the issue of collective bargaining in the telephone industry; Information on an article on migrant labor.

Presents several letters to the editor. Movement for economic democracy that restructures the authority over economic decision-making must necessarily proceed hand-in-hand with movements for ethical investing and consuming; Plight of South African workers; Skepticism of corporate efforts toward social accountability.