As Michigan is in a full-blown budget crisis, the Department of Corrections and Governor Granholm proposed yesterday that Camp Manistique, a prison labor camp in the Upper Peninsula, be shut down.  Closing Camp Manistique, which is a minimum-security facility, would save the state $4.5 million per year.  It would also cost 45 prison employees their jobs (although according to The Mining Journal, both prisoners and employees would be transferred to other facilities).

The prison employees are unionized, and they tend to vote Democrat, therefore the Dems have undertaken a full-blown campaign to keep the prison open.  Prisoners currently incarcerated in Michigan, of course, cannot vote.  Although shutting down Camp Manistique would not actually reduce the number of prisoners in the state, Michigan, like other states, has a detention and corrections budget spiraling out of control.  Michigan’s annual prison budget is $1.9 billion, a fifth of the state’s general fund.  Tom Clay from Citizens Research Council of Michigan says that if Michigan didn’t have such high rates of incarceration compared to other Great Lakes states, the prison budget would be closer to $1.4 billion.  According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, “States such as Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania have more residents than Michigan but incarcerate fewer inmates. Michigan's per-capita incarceration rate is the country's 11th-highest, ranks higher than seven other Great Lakes states and is fourth-highest among the 11 most populous states.”

Today is May 1st, recognized in all but a handful of countries in the world as “International Workers’ Day.”  The U.S. is one of those handful, that does not commemorate the struggles of working people on the first of this month.  But in fact, May Day originated in the U.S in the late 19th century.

The demand for safe conditions at work places, the right of workers to organize, and above all an eight-hour work day was at the forefront of the burgeoning workers’ rights movement of the 1800s.  In Chicago, the movement culminated with a rally at Haymarket Square that ended violently, with a bomb thrown into the crowd and police opening fire on the marchers.  Subsequently, a group of eight anarchist men were scapegoated for the bombing.  All were convicted, some of them even hanged, and 3 eventually pardoned.

The (organized) labor movement in the U.S. has a history of classism, racism and gender discrimination.  Strides made in the 20th century often came with a price—most notably, in the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from the union-affirming Wagner Act of 1935.  Agricultural and domestic workers also happened to be overwhelmingly either people of color, women, or immigrants.  This continues today, as our most vulnerable workers, especially undocumented migrants, are still not protected from exploitation.

Let today’s May Day be about confronting what has and continues to divide workers, and affirming the right to dignity and economic security that all people deserve.

You cheered with them when they took on Taco Bell and Yum Brands.  Now, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has done it again!  For the past 2 years, the CIW has run a campaign to expose the dismal conditions and treatment farmworkers who supply McDonald's receive.  Today, McD's and suppliers have agreed to the following as a result of the campaign:

1. A penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for McDonald's;
2. A stronger code of conduct based on the principle of worker participation;
3. And a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields and investigating workers' complaints of abuse.

Yay CIW!  And we can't forget the important role students played in supporting the campaign, through the spearheading organization Student/Farmworker Alliance, that works in solidarity with the CIW.

The Truth Tour is still on though!  This weekend, organizers, students, workers, and even some celebs will gather in Chicago to demand the dignity and just treatment of farmworkers.

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, Signal International hired hundreds of guest laborers in India, promising them greencards and permanent residency, along with well-paying jobs.  Many of the workers spent their life savings or even sold their houses to pay the fee for H2-B visas, but upon arriving here, were only given the temporary visas, paid half of what they were promised, and found their living conditions squalid.

About a week ago, company representatives and armed security guards raided the workers’ camp, took 6 workers, and locked them in a room, saying they would be deported to India.  One of the workers, Sabu Lal, even slit his wrists hoping that his self-mutilation would keep him from deportation.  He was recently interviewed on Democracy Now: 

“How I can go back to India? There is nothing. My family is waiting for me to fulfill their wishes by earning something from America. They are dreaming to come to America. These guys cheated me. From India, for ’til I come here, they cheated me, and family is cheated…They are treating us like slaves. And whenever we making some comments, they are saying that ‘Just shut your mouth.’”