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Reinventing the International Labour Movement for the 21st Century
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The widely-recognised crisis of the traditional labour movement requires re-invention to meet the challenges and possibilities of a globalised, informatised and life destroying capitalism. Let's discuss new cases, strategies, ideologies, theories.
Location: Cyberia
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Peter Waterman: All in Common - a New/Old Slogan for International Labour
All in Common: A New/Old Slogan for International Labour and Labour Internationalism
(2003)
[Source: Waterman, Peter. 2003. ‘Omnia Sint Communia: A New/Old Slogan for International Labour and Labour Internationalism’, European Social Forum, Florence, Italy, 7-10 November, 2002. http://www.commoner.org.uk/].
The 18th Century
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
(English folk poem, circa 1764)
The Long 19th Century
[T]he proletariat, the great class embracing all the producers of civilized nation[s], the class which in freeing itself will free humanity from servile toil and will make of the human animal a free being - the proletariat, betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission, has let itself be perverted by the dogma of work. Rude and terrible has been its punishment. All its individual and social woes are born of its passion for work.
(Paul Lafargue 1893)
Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,' we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system.' It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with the capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
(Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1905)
The Late-20th/Early-21st Century
Regular IFI [International Financial Institutions] consultations with Global Unions create an opportunity for effective change...In the past year, Global Unions delegations have participated in exchanges on trade union involvement in PRSPs [Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers] and on the impact of privatisation on labour and found them to be useful…Working women and men are interested in many of the objectives that the IFIs [International Financial Institutions] state as being theirs, ranging from increased jobs that offer better security and working conditions, to higher incomes, improved social protection and quality public services. Unions will only support IFI policies if they make such improvements a reality.
(Global Unions 2002)
The expanded application of the principle of the common heritage of humankind shows the potential of this concept... Against capitalist expansionism, it proposes the idea of sustainable development; against private property and national appropriation, the idea of shared resource management, rational use and transmission to future generations; against nation-state sovereignty, the idea of trust, management by the international community...; against the hubris of the pursuit of power that so often leads to war, the idea of peaceful use; against the political economy of the modern world system, the idea of equitable redistribution of the world's wealth...'
(Boaventura de Sousa Santos 1995: 371-2).
[A]ready fragile prior to Enron, the legitimacy of global capitalism as the dominant system of production, distribution, and exchange will be eroded even further, even in the heartland of the system. During the halcyon days of the so-called New Economy in 2000, a Business Week survey found that 72 per cent of Americans felt that corporations had too much power over their lives. That figure is likely to be much higher now.
(Walden Bello 2002)
Despite all the attempts at privatization, it turns out that there are some things that don’t want to be owned. Music, water, seeds, electricity, ideas—they keep bursting out of the confines erected around them. They have a natural resistance to enclosure, a tendency to escape, to cross-pollinate, to flow through fences, and flee out open windows.
(Naomi Klein 2002)
Introduction: back to the future?
The death of international labour's old utopias (Communist, Social-Democratic, Radical-Nationalist - even Business Unionist?) leaves the international trade union movement bereft of much more than a defensive agenda which it still believes can and must be achieved in partnership with capital and state. In so far as labour adopts defensive or even militant oppositional stances, these still leave it dependent on the practices and discourses of a dynamically-expanding, globalised and networked capitalism. This repeatedly penetrates labour's defences, shifts the goalposts, even abandons football and the football field for computer games and cyberspace. Speaking in the name of evidently unconsulted ‘working women and men’, the recently re-branded Global Unions (see above) prioritise recognition by, and collaboration with, the enemy - the International Financial Institutions - over any other political aim, any other historical tradition, any other ethical principle, any alternative imaginable end. And, as far as I can see, over any measurable positive impact.
Labour needs a new ethic, vision and strategy that will not only undergird such defensive and limited actions as unions must take, but also enable them to act autonomously and to go on the political and moral offensive against aggressive global capital and the collusive inter/state instances and regimes. And then, of course, labour needs to increasingly appeal to and articulate itself with the new 'global justice and solidarity movements' that recognize an enemy when they see one and reject collaboration with such.
Slogans and banners matter.
A new labour internationalism needs to go both way back for inspiration and way forward in address. The democratic and secular trinity of the French Revolution,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
is still valid but needs updating and specifying (Fraternity, obviously, as Solidarity). The Wobblies’ slogan
Abolition of the Wage System
and related workerist/antiwork slogans, need marrying with relevant demands coming from other radical-democratic communities and identities. And they need specification of what follows ‘abolition’. The 50-year-old slogan of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions,
Bread, Peace and Freedom
forgets equality and solidarity, and still bears the burden of a Cold War interpretation of ‘Free Trade Unionism’. Whilst the ICFTU and its associates have been re-branding themselves as Global Unions they have left their traditional slogan untouched. A discussion on this, involving working people and their allies, might help create an international labour movement fit for both immediate defence and eventual re-assertion in the 21st century. Some might like to see a slogan combining
Equality,
Solidarity,
Democracy,
Useful Production,
Sustainability,
Peace,
Pluralism
…?
Each of these is today part of the meaning of the others. But I propose to prioritise, at least for discussion, this egalitarian slogan,
Omnia Sint Communia
(All in Common)
Egalitarianism (called, under Communist regimes, ‘petty-bourgeois egalitarianism’) also needs a re-specification. It could draw on radical-democratic labour and popular tradition (see the first quotes above), and should look forward beyond capitalist globalisation, beyond capitalism (as implied in some of the later quotes above). I suggest re-interpreting equality in terms of the old/new principle of the commons. This is an old space of sharing, subsistence and rights, a new space for popular encroachment on 1) a capitalism gone cancerous and of 2) inter/state regimes that are complicit with this and/or ineffective (Branford and Rocha 2002).
Appropriately, today, the commons are understood as simultaneously local, national, regional, global and extra-terrestrial. The sky here is not the limit. The tension between the capitalist political-economy (the state-capital, hierarchy-competition, power-exploitation syndrome) and the commons clearly now includes, alongside the oceans and the sea-bed, the electro-magnetic spectrum and cyberspace (CivSoc/CPSR website; Barbrook 2002). These provide an infinite terrain for disputation and, whilst capital and state have the economic, technical, institutional, legal and administrative means for their domination, the political and ethical principles of the hegemons are being increasingly exposed as both rigid and threadbare.
Labour - national and international, North and South, East and West - is now increasingly confronting the privatisation of everything (Martin 1993, 2002, Public Services International Research Unit website). The unions find themselves, in these often local, momentary or partial struggles, in alliance with urban dwellers, women’s movements, schoolteachers and parents, agricultural producers, indigenous peoples, the ecological and/or consumer movements, with gays, progessive professionals and technicians, with democratic cultural and communication activists. The struggle to defend and extend the commons, can combine these possible minorities into hypothetical majorities. It would obviously empower the labour movement if such separate, disparate, momentary, partial movements could be systematically linked by a political and ethical principle which has the function and appeal once provided by Communism, Anarchism, Social-Democracy, or Radical-Nationalism. These national-industrial socialisms/ radicalisms can now be seen to have been premature, simplifying, reductionist, universalistic - and utopian in the negative sense. Utopia, however, becomes less futuristic, more familiar, if and when we recognize that capitalism is not a unitary object but a complex and contradictory one, which does not - even under globalisation - occupy all social space (Gibson-Graham 1996).
Below I will discuss the relationship between labour and the commons primarily at the international/global level - remembering, of course, that ‘global’ also means holistic, and that any place, space or level must today be understood in a dialectical/dialogical relation with others. But I want to start with that which the international labour movement has so evidently lost, largely reducing itself to the role of ‘town mayor in wartime’ (a somewhat pejorative Dutch reference to collaborating officials under the Nazi occupation), to defensive battles that have to be continually re-fought so as to prevent further retreat, or to the repetition of archaic-romantic revolutionary-apocalyptical dogma. I want to start with Utopia, and for two reasons: 1) because
The Future is Not What it Used to Be
(graffito, cited Sousa Santos 1995:479)
and 2) because
A map of the world that does not include Utopia
is not even worth glancing at
(Oscar Wilde).
Indeed, these two slogans could well accompany Omnia Sint Communia on the road to
Utopia
which is actually a very nice word indeed since it means both 'nowhere' and 'good place'. It is, in other words, a desirable place that does not (yet) exist. Utopia has occupied an ambiguous position in the labour movement, ever since Marx and Engels replaced ‘utopian socialism’ by 'scientific socialism', whilst proposing Communism (which they hardly specified) as its necessary, desirable, inevitable alternative. With the disappearance of 'labour's utopias' (Beilharz 1992), labour internationally has lost most of its capacity to think beyond the shrinking horizons imposed on it by capitalism’s expanding ones. Yet, as globalised cultural industries become increasingly central to capitalism, and increasingly occupy the 'free time' of consumers, so must the struggle to 'emancipate ourselves from mental slavery'. Here we could certainly begin with those socialists who already recognized this (Frankel 1987) or are belatedly doing so (Panitch and Leys 2000). The latter (discussed Waterman 2000), summarise their utopia thus:
1. Overcoming alienation;
2. Attenuating the division of labour;
3. Transforming consumption;
4. Alternative ways of living [the feminist one];
5. Socialising markets;
6. Planning ecologically;
7. Internationalising equality;
8. Communicating democratically;
9. Realising democracy;
10. Omnia sint communia
Before considering the last of these (to which I am evidently indebted), we need to recognise the position under capitalist globalisation of
Labour
for whom it has meant, simultaneously, the worldwide generalization and intensification of proletarianisation (loss of pre- or non-capitalist means of production) and the dramatic and repeated de-/re-structuring of 'labour for capital' worldwide. Labour (as wage work, as class identity, in the trade-union form, as a significant partner in capitalist industrial relations, as a part of capitalist civil society) is in profound crisis. This requires – even for defence of the traditional unionized working class – a re-invention of the labour movement, including
1. recognition, as the subject of the labour movement, of all forms of labour for capital, waged or not;
2. developing an international labour rights movement worldwide, inspired not by religious or liberal principles of ‘fairness’, but by the necessity, first, of ‘taking labour out of competition’, secondly surpassing the wage-labour system;
3. the struggle for free time against enforced work (time also freed from commoditised entertainment and leisure industries);
4. working out and struggling for guaranteed basic income inter/nationally (i.e. income regardless of ‘work for capitalism’);
5. development of the 'solidarity economy' and 'solidarity economics';
6. development of a 'new social unionism', implying networking between:
- movements of distinct kinds of labourer;
- labour and other radical-democratic social movements (women, peace, culture/communication, ecology, human rights);
- traditional and high-tech or intermediate technical/managerial sectors;
- struggles against the wage-labour system with struggles for the resources and spaces for the support of life.
The last of these returns us to
The commons
the experience of which has been universal amongst the poor as they have been confronted by, and resisted the imposition of, first, seigniorial/colonial types of enclosure, then the full capitalist onslaught - clock-time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism (Thompson 1974). Despite centuries of encroachment by capital and state (a nationalistic, elitist, bureaucratic surrogate for a 'universal people' that could have at those times only a notional existence), and despite the seductions of consumer capitalism, popular imagination can still be stirred both by the memory of the commons, and by contemporary expressions of resistance to such encroachment (indigenous peoples' movements). The revival of the notion of the commons, under globalization, comes from at least two, inter-connected, directions:
1. decades of struggle by the environmental and related movements (often of middle-class origin) for defence or extension of the commons (in terms of space and resources, whether local, national, regional, global, whether subterranean, extra-terrestrial, cyberspatial);
2. increasing popular struggles (of labour, urban, rural, indigenous and other such communities) against the increasing aggression, despoliation and depredation of neo-liberal capitalist privatization, concentration, speculation and corruption. And increasing socialist discussion of such.
Much of the first type of struggle, 'for the common heritage of humankind' (CHH), may take legalistic or bureaucratic forms. Labour/popular struggles may also still be expressed as resistance, opposition and a return to a golden (even tarnished) past of state-control. Yet discourses of the commons - and a consequent extension of all possible radical-democratic alternatives to ownership/control by capital/state - could strengthen traditional labour demands and enrich those of middle-class professionals, technicians and others.
The principle of the commons is subversive of the principles underlying 1) the modern nation-state (actually the state-defined nation) and 2) corporate capitalism. The state-nation depends on the principle of sovereignty, which implies state hegemony within geographical borders (and inter-state relations beyond these). It defines the human-being as a national, either as lowest common denominator or as highest common factor. Underlying corporate capitalism is the principle of private property (privatized consumption, privatized services) which, as extended to the human-being sees him/her as both individualized and property-owning - the ‘political theory of possessive individualism’ (Macpherson 1962). In its extreme contemporary forms, it turns even the national citizen into a cosmopolitan consumer, and literally brands this consumer with a corporate logo (Klein 2000). So extreme - so world-embracing and world-consuming - have become the old contradictions between production and consumption, the worker as producer and the worker as consumer, producing regions and consuming regions, that the movements around/against labour and consumption - even fashion/aesthetics - are now converging (Ross 1999). One US-based international solidarity movement is now producing its own anti-sweat (non-capitalist? post-capitalist?) sports clothes (No Sweat website).
My plea for the international labour movement to join its voice to both the discourse and the struggles concerning CHH, is intended to both broaden the horizons and the appeal of the former, and to give the latter an articulation with class/popular/democratic interests and identities that it might otherwise lack.
Broadening international labour’s horizons and appeal. Where, at present, the international trade union movement does fight privatization, this is, customarily, in terms of harm-reduction or benefit-increase. Whilst reference may be made, on the one hand, to the damage done by corporate globalisation/privatization, and, on the other hand, to a ‘social interest’ or ‘social aspect’, no challenge of principle is made to those of capital accumulation or state sovereignty. And, whilst I am unfamiliar with the full range of positions taken by the unions concerning ‘the common heritage’, it is customary for the international ones to tail-end projects of progressive technocrats and bureaucrats, and propose ‘social partnership’ solutions to problems that its ‘partners’ have created (‘Trade Unions OK…’ 1998; Unicorn Website).
Giving ‘the common heritage’ a class and popular colour. In so far as it has origins in the weaker Third World, during the Cold War, the CHH has always contained a subversive potential. The notion has many elements, including: non-appropriation, management by all peoples, international sharing of benefits, peaceful use, conservation for the future. It refers to an expanding range of overlapping areas and terrains of dispute: the oceans (surface and floor); the Antarctic; cultural artifacts and exceptional urban and natural sites; energy; food; science and technology; space, the atmosphere, the electro-magnetic spectrum, telecommunications, the Internet; genetic resources (Chemillier-Gendreau 2002; Souza Santos 1995). Given the statist origin of the CHH, we should not be surprised that defining and empowering the ‘community’ - to which this past, present and future heritage might belong – is problematic. Particularly when the community of states (the hegemonically-defined ‘international community’), is confronted by rich, powerful and – above all dynamic – corporations with which such states have been historically conjoined. Chemillier-Gendreau says the community to which this heritage belongs has to be invented, in terms of both its identity and its powers (which can include trusteeship alongside ownership). Her notion of a future ‘people of peoples’ echoes the Zapatista one of a ‘world that contains many worlds’, or the ‘community of communities’ of De Angelis (2001). At the level of principles, here, there is a pluralistic idea of overlapping communities/sovereignities . And, at least implicitly, of multiple socio-political levels, of places (geographic), spaces (socio-cultural), that exist in a dialectical and dialogical relationship with each other. Such a notion of community does not assume harmony, it simply invites us to enclose, and even foreclose on, the major sources of disharmony – capitalist accumulation and state hierarchy. But even if this is agreed, we still need to confront the problem of
Linking Labour and the Commons Internationally
Whatever the history, the memory or even the desire, we have to recognise the distance that today exists between labour struggles and those around the commons, nationally and internationally. It would be easy to blame this on any half-dozen of the socialist’s hand-me-down Others: the ‘labour bureaucracy’; ‘trade union reformism’, the ‘labour aristocracy’, the ‘Northern unions’, ‘trade union imperialism’. However, as US cartoon character, Pogo, once so notably said, ‘I have seen the enemy and he is us’. Working classes (no less than myself and my readers) have been profoundly socialised into not only working for wages but also privatized consumption, passive and vicarious entertainment, and the notion that freedom consists of choice between competing political elites, competing TV channels and annually-outdated audio-visual equipment. These desires are by no means confined to working classes that can presently afford such. They dangle in front of those who can only hope to obtain them by ‘proletarian shopping’, riot and theft. This is nothing to be afraid of, though it is something we should feel challenged by. We have to be able to offer models of private and social consumption that are more attractive and more achievable as well as more sustainable.
Where we do find the linkage between labour and the commons being made (implicitly more often than explicitly) may be mostly at the margins. This means at the margins of the trade union organizations (campaigns for defence/extension of social services; where unionists are sacked and/or denied wage labour; where the form of relationship to capital is most ambiguous); margins of the labour movement (amongst libertarian socialists, or those working in or on cooperatives, the social economy, solidarity economies), margins of the state-nation (indigenous peoples, rural labourers, the urban poor); margins of the capitalist world system (the national economies worst affected by unemployment).
It would be to repeat a long-standing error to divide up such initiatives and ideas into ‘reformist/palliative’ and ‘revolutionary/emancipatory’, particularly if the one is identified with virtue, the other with vice. This would be to understand these struggles and strategies ideologically (consistent with a theory/party/thinker claiming to embody truth) rather than in terms of self-education and self-empowerment (in which self-activating subjects demonstrate or determine outcomes). The relationship between reformism-within and emancipation-from, like that between labour and the commons, can and must today be understood in terms of experiment, critical self-reflection, dialectic and dialogue. Such an understanding also means that the recovery or re-invention of the commons does not depend on one world area, one type of worker, one type of organization (the trade union, the labour or socialist party, the vanguard network).
In-conclusion
This paper, like any set of initial reflections, raises as many questions as it answers (more answers may be suggested by the resources below). But they seem to me as good a way as any to start a global dialogue.
What, for example, does or should omnia sint communia actually mean? Which community? Ownership, usufruct, access, trusteeship?
How would we meaningfully internationalise equality?
All in common (my bicycle as well as my chains)?
What are we to call this new Utopia, if not Communism? Commonism? Commonerism? It cannot be called Communism any more, or not at present. That was a utopia of the national-industrial-capitalist era. Many people and peoples are alienated (pace Marx and Engels) from 'Communism'. And the effect of its contemporary use - if not the intention of those who still use it - is to isolate them from those many others who are contributing to a reinvention of the commons.
In so far as we are talking of a process as much as a condition, a movement more than a state of affairs, why not call it by the name that preceded national industrial socialism, and call it the New Utopianism? Or the New Social Emancipation?
Maybe not the New Utopianism, given the negative connotation in the popular mind.
Maybe the New Social Emancipation, which contains historical and even contemporary echoes of movements against slavery (including the waged kind), racial discrimination and patriarchy?
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Our World is not for Sale. http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/
Public Services International Research Unit. http://www.psiru.org
Reinventing Social Emancipation http://www.ces.fe.uc.pt/emancipa/en/
Tragedy of the Commons. http://members.aol.com/trajcom/private/trajcom.htm
The Commoner: A Web Journal for Other Values. http://www.commoner.org.uk/
Work Questions. http://members.aon.at/ro.neunteufel/work.htm#->
Unicorn: A Global Unions Anti-Corruption Network/La Red Sindical Global Anticorrupción. corruption@psiru.org, http://www.psiru.org/corruption/indexnew.asp
Discussion Forum
Different name? Different description?
Let's start here, folks.I think the name maybe kind of fixed, bearing in mind I already invited 125 people to join the fun.But if anyone can think of a better description (limited to some 125 words?)…Continue
Started by peter waterman Feb 17, 2011.
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Comment by Joe Balkis on July 23, 2011 at 16:33 -
Join 100,000 Workers in the IKEA Campaign
100,000 Support Swedwood Workers in Danville
http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/2011/07/22/100000-support-swedwood-worke...
Join the petition here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-ikea-to-respect-its-workers
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Other news on IKEA:
KUVO news cast: IKEA controversies on taxes and labour issues amidst opening of new store in the US
http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/2011/07/22/kuvo-news-cast-ikea-controver...
“Voluntary” Meeting with Swedwood Plant Manager with Overtime Pay
http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/2011/07/22/voluntary-meetings-with-swedw...
Heat Index at Swedwood Plant Exceeds 115
http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/2011/07/22/heat-index-inside-swedwood-pl...
Germany: IG BAU Urges to Vote for Union at Swedwood, Danville
http://blogs.bwint.org/mnc/2011/07/20/germany-ig-bau-urges-to-vote-...
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Comment by peter waterman on March 18, 2011 at 17:00 -
Another Public Transport Policy is Possible (Gtr Toronto Workers' Assembly, Canada)
The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 480
March 18, 2011
No Fare is Fair
A Roundtable with Members of the Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly Transit Committee
Ali Mustafa
The Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly (GTWA) is a promising new initiative aiming to build a united, non-sectarian, and militant anti-capitalist movement in the city among a diversity of rank-and-file labour unionists, grassroots community organizers, and youth alike. Since the GTWA's inception in early 2010, mass public transit has emerged as one of the organization's key political battlegrounds. In this in-depth roundtable discussion, members of the GTWA's transit committee Jordy Cummings, Lisa Leinveer, Leo Panitch, Kamilla Pietrzyk, and Herman Rosenfeld explore both the opportunities and obstacles facing the campaign Towards a Free and Accessible TTC.
Ali Mustafa (AM): Towards a Free and Accessible TTC became the first major campaign adopted by the GTWA. Why is mass public transit a key priority to the work and overall vision of the GTWA?
Herman Rosenfeld: Actually, it took about two assemblies before we endorsed this campaign. We took some time to evaluate different possible campaigns and, after that, we decided to choose transit as a priority. All working people – all people, really – should have the right to mobility and shouldn't have to pay for it like any commodity. It should also be accessible to all people and not doled out according to how much money you have, which part of the city you happen to live in, or whether or not you are living with a disability. If we want to politicize people by putting forward a vision of a different kind of society, free and accessible transit has to be a part of that strategy.
Members of the Free and Accessible Transit Committee flyering outside the Dufferin Subway stop.
The campaign also poses a vision of public transit that is ‘non-commodified’ – that is, not something that is bought or sold in the marketplace but exists as a service and public good that is not owned or managed by private business interests seeking to make a profit. A similar vision motivated people to create public Medicare in Canada. In mobilizing people and doing education around the need to make public transit a right that is accessible and fare-free, this campaign forces us to address current attitudes about taxes, public-sector spending, and austerity by not only understanding them but challenging the legitimacy of the neoliberal ideas behind them.
Jordy Cummings: The GTWA is a new kind of political organization, in recognition of the limitations of the past. One of the ways we can open up space for an anti-capitalist vision that is shared by diverse elements of the Left is to start with something deceptively simple like free and accessible transit, and from there you begin to get an entire vision of a de-commodified social order. It's not just a ‘single issue’ campaign; it's a campaign that fundamentally challenges capitalist social relations from a working class, transit-using standpoint.
But what about those who live in the outlying regions of Toronto who are either forced to buy private automobiles or take ninety minutes or more to get to work because of the poorly planned transit routes? Most people in Toronto use transit every day to go to work and come home, so fighting for free and accessible transit is a fundamental issue to address a broader anti-capitalist vision overall.
Kamilla Pietrzyk: This campaign also arose in part from the energies around the Right to the City campaign and the recognition that organizing around the issue of transit can have great popular appeal right now because so many residents of Toronto are upset about the recent fare-hikes. While transit systems in other large metropolitan areas get large government subsidies to cover their costs, Toronto's transit system relies on user fees for approximately 70 per cent of its operating budget, causing fares to rise to $3.00 in 2010. As a result, there has been a lot of dissatisfaction regarding the state of transit in the city. We believe that by building an effective campaign around free and accessible transit, we can direct that anger and frustration around fare-hikes to include an analysis of public goods, public accountability, the failures of the market system, and the right to democratic participation in the shaping of our city. A free transit campaign has the potential to be a popular movement because it has clear and tangible links to the daily experiences of many people, especially those with low income.
AM: What type of groundwork has been done to date by the GTWA transit committee to help build the campaign across the city – including any education, outreach, and public events – and what has been the general response to these efforts thus far?
Kamilla Pietrzyk: So far we have organized a number of large public events and held a series of smaller flyering actions at major TTC stations. The larger events include a public forum on Free and Accessible TTC in July 2010, which involved a number of speakers from transit-related groups and initiatives. We also held a street party in Christie Pits Park in October 2010, which was the official launch of the campaign and featured speakers, musical performances, food, and general festivities. Both of these events were successful in stimulating further debate around transit issues in Toronto and mobilizing new support for the campaign. Our more mundane organizing has focused on engaging with people at TTC stations, giving out pamphlets and talking to them about transit in Toronto. The response from the public has been very supportive. The vast majority think that free and accessible transit is a tremendous idea; their only reservation tends to be around the question of how to fund it. But even on this point, many of them become sympathetic once they find out that for the $1-billion wasted on security during the G20 summit in Toronto last summer, we could have enjoyed free transit for a full year.
We intend to continue our public outreach work through ongoing flyering efforts. We have also been inspired by the popularity of the Bad Hotel Youtube video, where a group of activists infiltrated Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco and performed an adaptation of Lady Gaga's song Bad Romance in support of the workers' struggle to secure a fair contract. We recently developed a set of Guerrilla theatre scripts to be performed in conjunction with the GTWA's cultural committee on streetcars, buses, and subways.
AM: Are you linked in any way yet with other groups in the city also campaigning around the issue of mass public transit (fare-free seeking or not) in order to build a ‘broad-based movement’ on this front?
Herman Rosenfeld: We have organized joint events with DAMN 2025, a group working for full accessibility of public transit and people living with disabilities; and Sistering, who have been agitating for lower fares. Surprisingly, there aren't all that many movements dealing with fare issues.
AM: What do you have to say to those who argue that free and accessible mass transit is a wonderful idea in principle but in reality too unrealistic or impractical, especially during a major period of recession?
Jordy Cummings: That's not an easy question to answer, but we do need to take free and accessible transit as a first principle. On a concrete level, given the amount of money the state (let alone private markets) spend on jails, the G20 Summit security budget, and military armaments, there is certainly enough money available for free and accessible transit to become a reality. But there is also immense pressure for austerity in the other direction.
As a union activist, I learned that you need to demand more than you think you're going to get, so fighting austerity by merely demanding that the status quo is maintained isn't going to cut it. ‘Be realistic, demand the impossible,’ as the saying goes.
Lisa Leinveer: I would agree with Jordy, and add that for many people with disabilities and their allies, both fare accessibility and physical accessibility of public transit is a first principle. A physically accessible transit system is not an extravagant accommodation. Not having an accessible transit system is a form of social segregation. For many people in Toronto, transit is the only option to get from one place to another across the city, and yet close to 30 per cent of TTC bus routes, 50 per cent of subway stations, and 100 per cent of streetcars are totally physically inaccessible. Transit is a public good; it should be accessible to all the people of a city.
Herman Rosenfeld: For the powers that run this city and country – and the business community in general – this will never be practical or desirable, recession or not. But it does challenge many basic assumptions of living under neoliberalism: there isn't enough money to go around and pay for transit as a social service; the current recession requires austerity, rather than expanding public services; taxes are already too high, so we have to shrink the size of government, and so on. These notions need to be challenged as part of a political and ideological assault on the ‘common sense’ of this era of capitalism. Fighting for free and accessible transit forces us to do so.
In another way, we also need to fight for shorter-term reforms that can give us confidence for ultimately demanding more expansive goals. We can call for cuts to current fares, dramatic increases in the levels of service, and democratic control over the larger planning processes – this would allow us to hone in on specific ways of increasing services for particular communities and build a base for a larger campaign. Of course, even raising these rather short-term demands also requires us to respond to the same set of concerns that people raise about the longer-term ones.
Leo Panitch: Everything from schools to libraries to healthcare to water services is paid for by tax revenue. Roads don't have user fees – why should public transit? We can pay for free transit through a fair tax system. The amount of taxes that riders would have to pay for fare-free transit would be much lower than the amount that they spend each year on the cost of commuting. Even those who drive cars are prepared to pay taxes for less traffic – and there is no better way to do this than by expanded and free public transit. Harper's government is spending money on building new prisons and buying the military new fighter planes for $35-billion for no useful purpose. All sorts of tax breaks are given to the oil and gas industry as it threatens our environment. Is this how we want our taxes spent? We need to make our tax dollars benefit the common good and make our governments provide fare-free transit!
AM: Since former Premier of Ontario Mike Harris saw all provincial and federal subsidies to the TTC cut in 1996, the TTC's financial viability has been entirely dependent on municipal funding and user fees (the latter comprising 70 per cent of the revenue base). Assuming increased property taxes alone cannot make up the shortfall, how exactly do you envision the project for free TTC service being funded?
Herman Rosenfeld: Harris didn't cut federal subsidies – that was the result of the abandonment of city life by the Liberal and Conservative governments of Chretien, Martin and Harper. Public transit should be funded by a combination of municipal taxes, federal and provincial funding, and contributions through driver tolls. Property taxes are unfair and limited. Cities like Toronto need new sources of taxation, such as a city income tax. The rates for federal and provincial income taxes can be made fair by lowering them on the bottom-end and increasing them for large, wealthy corporations, as well as those that receive huge bonuses in the financial sector.
Most importantly, the needs of people in cities must become a priority of state financing – this is a question of priorities between giving subsidies to private capital in the hope that wealthy investors will be bribed into creating low-paying jobs, or using the resources created by working people to serve our collective needs and, in the process, creating high-paying, secure, and environmentally friendly employment.
Capital costs (building new lines and infrastructure) can be financed through bond issues, which is another way for describing borrowing on international bond markets. The possibilities of doing this are dependent on the belief that we can pay those bonds back over time through revenues derived by tax dollars, and the new economic activity that a massive new transit system would create.
Leo Panitch: The transportation sector that is so central to Ontario's whole economy is in crisis. This crisis is obvious from auto industry shutdowns and layoffs and the notorious traffic congestion on our roads. We need to change the old car plants so people get jobs producing the mass transit vehicles needed for a free and accessible public transit system. Just as the original subways, and the street cars and buses too, were funded by issuing Ontario bonds, so can this be done today. The very low interest rates make it less costly to do this than ever before, while the new jobs provided will expand the tax base. Far from placing a burden on future generations, this would guarantee them a future. And we also need to be able to rely on our banks to direct funds to shifting the whole transportation sector toward public transit. The money we put in our banking system should be used to meet our society's real needs.
It's time for a wider vision for our city. Free public transit will help create the healthier, cleaner and better integrated neighbourhoods we all want. And rather than pitting public transit workers against riders, it will help create a public transit community committed to excellent service and accessibility for all. We all want more and better public transit, less road traffic, fewer accidents, cleaner air and greater mobility.
AM: Your campaign material sites several cities across North America currently operating under zero user-fees, including Commerce, California; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Coral Gables, Florida. But since all of these cities are significantly smaller in size than Toronto, is it possible that Toronto is simply too large for this kind of project to be feasible?
Herman Rosenfeld: I think this reflects the political difficulties of getting this kind of project on the public agenda in big cities, rather than any technical or other obstacles. Cities are the center of neoliberal economies, particularly with the dominance of finance and private-sector development in major urban centres. This kind of campaign challenges the nature of how those places are organized and structured, which is why they seem so difficult to move on. Smaller centres that are geared around colleges or tourism don't present the same challenges.
Lisa Leinveer: We can also learn much about how accessible transit can be done by looking to examples of other transit systems in the world. Many newer transit systems are far more accessible. A study of different transit technologies globally yields many innovative approaches to transit that prioritize physical access and green technology; among these are Curitiba's high-speed accessible bus system, and variations on the Light Rail Transit (LRT) system that was proposed in Toronto and has been implemented in many cities around the world. Although no system is perfect, the successes and limitations of various systems can guide our fight to make transit free and accessible here in Toronto. When overall access is not made a fundamental priority, it is a reflection of the deeply ableist and elitist priorities of the government.
AM: The Bus Riders Union (BRU) in Los Angeles is perhaps the most successful example in North America of a working class movement built around the issue of mass public transit, yet even they have avoided calling for fare-free transit. Why is the GTWA transit committee seeking free TTC service, and not merely a cheaper or more affordable option?
Jordy Cummings: We have discussed incremental demands within the spirit of ‘Free and Accessible Transit.’ One slogan recently proposed has been ‘Cut Fares, Not Services.’ Speaking for myself, I'd again drive home the point that demanding lower fares won't get lower fares. Saying ‘No Fare is Fair’ is more likely to create an impetus for lower fares.
Herman Rosenfeld: There is nothing wrong in raising or fighting for lower fares and greater levels of service and accessibility than we have today – that is different than giving up on the fundamental goals of this campaign. The BRU is based on building an organizational power-base among bus riders in order to increase the accessibility and availability of bus service in Los Angeles. In other ways, its goals are similar to ours: allowing working people to access public transit; protecting the environment; and acting to organize workers in communities as a way to build a movement against the logic of private market accumulation.
AM: Why is ‘accessibility’ in particular a key demand of the campaign, and what do you see as some of the glaring failures currently characterizing TTC service in this regard?
Kamilla Pietrzyk: If we are serious about improving transit accessibility, then saving Transit City is not enough. We need to demand better, safer, more accessible transit. We also need a commitment to improving and expanding existing transit infrastructure, so that people from communities outside the downtown core like Markham, Scarborough, or North York can enjoy adequate transit services. Huge portions of the city are virtually inaccessible because there are no accessible transit routes nearby. We want all of our transit vehicles and stations fully accessible.
Lisa Leinveer: As I stated earlier, far too many of the bus routes and subway stations are totally physically inaccessible. Repair of any subway stations that actually are accessible has been underprioritized. Many elevators and escalators in subway stations have been out of service for months. For example, the elevator at the Yonge/Bloor station was out of service for nine months before it was finally back in operation on December 16, 2010. As a result, many people could not transfer between the North-South line and the East-West line during this time. These kinds of service delays mean that people who need elevators and escalators cannot use those stations for extended periods of time, further blocking them from accessing some areas of the city. These repairs need to be prioritized, and more stations need to be made accessible in the first place.
Wheel-Trans, the unreliable ‘alternative’ to the TTC, is a segregated and discriminatory system that requires painful and humiliating tests for eligibility. If a person does qualify, they have to plan trips 24-hours in advance, and if they need to call instead of using the Internet, they may spend up to an hour on the phone waiting to get through because there are not enough workers on the line. There is much more demand than supply of Wheel-Trans buses, which means that if a person requests a ride at 2pm, they might be offered one at 4pm, or they might simply be declined. There are many other unfair rules that govern the lives of Wheel-Trans users.
A Wheel-Trans ride might arrive 20 minutes early, or 45 minutes late – without penalty. At the same time, if a rider is not ready within 5 minutes, the driver will leave and they will have missed their ride. If a rider happens to miss a ride four times in a month, they are cut off of Wheel-Trans access for two weeks. People often face discrimination and abuse from drivers working under terrible labour conditions. We also demand improved training and working conditions of Wheel-Trans drivers. We are not calling for the end of Wheel-Trans, since for many people it's the only way that they access public transit at this point. Rather, we are calling for the whole transit system to be made physically accessible, including all stations, bus routes, and streetcars.
Fare access is also a disability issue. Poverty in general is a disability issue, since poverty and disability are critically linked in the context of capitalist societies like Canada. Transit costs $3 per ride and $6 for a round-trip – if you have attendant care, that goes up to $12 for a round-trip! This is compounded by a political and economic system that keeps many people with disabilities in poverty. We demand free transit for TTC users and their attendants.
AM: Rob Ford, the recently elected Mayor of Toronto, campaigned on an open platform to annul Transit City, and by all appearances seems keen to fulfill his promise. Where does your campaign stand in relation to Transit City, and do you think it is possible to in any way reconcile the two initiatives?
Herman Rosenfeld: Transit City is in reality a series of light rail lines that seeks to include inner suburban neighbourhoods in the larger transit grid; it's the result of a series of compromises that represent the strengths and weaknesses of the [former Mayor David] Miller era (and previous city and provincial administrations). We tend not to defend all of Transit City but parts of it. As a result, we are not part of the movement that argues that the be-all and end-all of transit policy is the defense of Transit City.
For us, the key is open, democratic planning; a rejection of neoliberal austerity; and opposition to the anti-public transit policy of Ford. We need to consult with people in the affected areas to see what they want and need and try and articulate that message around the concerns of those currently working to defend Transit City.
Lisa Leinveer: To that I would add that although it's commendable that the LRT system proposed would be accessible, this should not sway us from our critiques of Transit City overall, nor from our goals of changing the infrastructure of existing lines to make them physically accessible.
AM: What is your envisioned relation to the TTC and TTC workers?
Jordy Cummings: Like other public services, the relationship would not change. There is some fear among TTC workers that free transit would mean less jobs, but there's no reason that those taking tickets or working within finance and other departments cannot be redeployed in a variety of ways to make transit a more affordable and accessible experience.
Recently, Mayor Ford and the ‘liberal’ provincial government recently attempted to make TTC an essential service – this is a slap in the face to TTC workers. While the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) cannot publicly back our campaign, TTC workers I've encountered have been remarkably receptive to the idea, as have other public and private sector trade unionists.
Lisa Leinveer: Being in solidarity with TTC workers, we believe that systemic change should include the improvement of working conditions for TTC and Wheel-Trans workers. We oppose framing these debates in narrow terms – for example, saying that it's the fault of the drivers that Wheel-Trans is unreliable. Part of making transit in Toronto less ableist, and therefore more accessible, is the prioritization of anti-ableist training and better working conditions for all TTC staff.
AM: Finally, people will need to begin to believe that fare-free transit is possible before it can happen. What do you currently see as the key obstacle to the campaign becoming something that is seen as attainable in the public consciousness?
Jordy Cummings: The majority of people in Toronto in principle would back the idea of free transit. I think the obstacle is how we're socialized under capitalism to see things (public and private goods) as commodities, and the entire set of social relations that accompanies this way of thinking. For example, it seems normal for us to pay for some services, yet not for an appointment with our doctor or taking out a library book. What is the difference?
Leo Panitch: Nothing unites the people of the Greater Toronto Area as much as mass public transit, whether it is the TTC or GO Transit. We take it for granted since we use it every day and spend a good portion of our hard-earned money on unfair fares. Why then, is our supposedly ‘public’ transit system among the least public in the world? Our fares pay a large part of transit costs. Since 1991, fares have increased from $1.10 to $3.00 in 2010. And fares will likely continue to increase $0.25 each year. Why should we stand for this? Transit systems in other cities get more government funding to cover their costs. Other cities in the world put money into mass transit because people demand that the comfort, safety and cost of their commute is part of the common good. We Canadians are proud that we have a Medicare system that means we don't have to pay for each time we go to the doctor or a hospital. We don't have to pay a fee for water each time we turn on the tap or flush the toilet. We know that a public education system means our children don't have to pay to go to school. We got these things because people came together and demanded them and won them from governments. A fare-free and accessible TTC is possible, if we demand it. •
Jordy Cummings is a PhD candidate in Political Science at York University, and active with CUPE Local 3903. Lisa Leinveer is an activist working with DAMN2025 in Toronto. Leo Panitch is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University. Kamilla Pietrzyk is an activist and PhD student currently living in Toronto. Herman Rosenfeld is a former national representative in the education department of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and now teaches Labour Studies at McMaster University. They are all active in the Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly (GTWA) transit committee.
Ali Mustafa is a freelance journalist, writer, and media activist. He resides in Toronto. His writing can be found at FromBeyondTheMargins.blogspot.com
To contact or get involved with the GTWA transit committee:
Email: nofareisfair@gmail.com
Blog: gtwanofareisfair.blogspot.com
Tumblr: nofareisfairgtwa.tumblr.com
Twitter: @nofareisfair
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Comment by Orsan Senalp on February 22, 2011 at 23:23 -
http://abvakabo.wboffice.nl/office/info/
This is the link to online community experiment launched by Dutch public employees union Abvakabo: http://abvakabo.wboffice.nl/office/info/
It has been created as part of 'Organisational Renewal' project. As I heard, so far it did not really work. The way it looks and how it works and to whom it talks to is I beleive explains the failure.
First of all it reflect the hierarchy and closeness have been embedded to the old 'organisation'. It aims at creating an interface for active members, most of them aged and retired, unlike you Peter, they are far from computer skills, so participation is highly limited. The discussions, contents, etc all hidden behind union e-walls. Yet still, as an attempt, building such a paltform for active members, launching such a project, or opening blogs where members can alos react, big Dutch unions are trying hard to work with the sort of social network unoinsm practice. This means they feel need to open to the idea of renewal, but want to hold on to the past as well. For that reason I believe it is important to contribute within unoins to these new experiements, which also invovles in creative and necessarry alliances with new social movements.
Butt beyond that as IWW 2.0 methophor indicates, what is needed today, for a reneval of union movement, in my opinion, is a new type of union that can operate beyond national borders, take emancipation of labour from work as its target -which would also mean aiming the abolising the wage system, and in order to do so could organise social movement activists from other struggle fields on a peerage base. In this sense it would build itself as a network of networks. The New Toolkit, by the seconds passing, being improved, and it provides tools for labour class that allow it to get empowered itself in relatively very short time. Egypt was a good example. If right connections have been made, links built, and potential engery get activated, labour class globally can be hyperempowered -as the guy described in the one of the latest posts that I added on my unionbook blog,
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Comment by Orsan Senalp on February 22, 2011 at 22:12
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Sorry for cross posting, it is a relevant post:
"In response to Peter Waterman’s call, GAIA, New Transnational Social Network Union [experiment] launches a wiki Charter building page. The below text taken from there.
“The items below are Australia Asia Worker Link (AAWL)’s proposal for a Global Labour Charter. GAIA supports this initiative and open AAWL’s text to a wiki formation process, here in this space, in order to create the most cretive and geniune charter that fits the global conditions of labour in the 21st cantury. Continue reading "
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Comment by peter waterman on February 20, 2011 at 15:44
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Peter sez:
Haven't viewed this but it sounds relevant. Opinions of others? That means if it is accesible.
Now click on...
LeftStreamed - Recorded in Toronto — January 30, 2011
GTWA - Labour Conference: Building the Working Class Movement
Keynote speaker: Brenda Stokely
“A Movement To Change the World”
Brenda Stokely is a human rights activist dedicated to ending all forms of national oppression, racism, sexism and exploitation of workers. She co-found and built several key organizations, including the 2004 Million Worker March Movement, NY Labor Against the War (co-convener), founding member of Troops Out Now, Coalition to Save Harlem and many more.
Click here to view presentation
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distribute widely. Comments on the video and suggestions are
welcome - write to info@socialistproject.caFor more analysis of contemporary politics check out
'Relay: A Socialist Project Review' at www.socialistproject.ca/relay
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Comment by peter waterman on February 19, 2011 at 21:59
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Peter sez:Delighted to see this piece by veteran US socialist labour specialist, Don La Botz, who I last saw, coincidentally, in Madison, Wisconsin, many yonks ago, where he was talking to students on solidarity with Mexican workers.I am only unsure about whether his language is up to his case, since he is still distinguishing, as the only two possible types of struggle 'the economic' and 'the political', with the latter implying the political party (parties) and the state (or states, as with Wisconsin).Don here ignores the extensive international dialogue about 'the new social unionism' or 'socialist movement unionism' or 'social justice unionism' - to which US writers have contributed much.Surpassing the economic/political dichotomy (which Don admittedly qualifies) with a notion of 'the social', makes room for both kinds of struggle indicated by these concepts whilst including the cultural, and 'civil society' (the non-corporate, non-state) as a significant arena for an emancipatory politics.Now read on...I am
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/labotz180211.html
A New American Workers Movement Has Begun
by Dan La Botz
Thousands of workers demonstrated at the state capital in Madison, Wisconsin on Feb. 15 and 16 to protest plans by that state's Republican Governor Scott Walker to take away the state workers' union rights. Walker cleverly attempted to divide the public workers by excluding police and firefighters from his anti-union law, and the media have worked to divide public employees against private sector workers. Yet, both firefighters and private sector workers showed up at the statehouse to join public workers of all sorts in what has been one of the largest workers demonstrations in the United States in decades. Only California has seen demonstrations as large as these in recent years.Many demonstrators in Madison, taking a clue from the rebellions against authoritarian and anti-worker governments that are sweeping the Middle East, carried signs saying, "Let's negotiate like they do in Egypt." While the situation in Wisconsin is hardly comparable to the revolution in the Arab world, what we are witnessing is the beginning of a new American workers movement. Because this movement is so different than what many expected, it may take us by surprise.
Not What We Expected
Many of us, myself included, had for years expected a rank-and-file workers movement to arise out of shop-floor struggles in industrial workplaces, out of the fight for union democracy, and out of the process of working-class struggle against the employers. While that perspective still has much validity, something different is happening. The new labor movement that is arising does not start in the industrial working class (though it will get there soon enough), it does not focus on shop floor issues (though they will no doubt be taken up shortly), it is not primarily motiv
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Comment by peter waterman on February 18, 2011 at 17:50
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Thanks, Orsan. And I look forward to you developing both of these projects. I would like to see the arguments you make being enriched by real-world examples, even of momentary or partial success.
As for your idea of an IWW 0.2, I think we need to know more about IWW 0.1, its achievements, limitations and lessons for today. One limitation, for me, would have been precisely its syndicalism - the idea of a world to be firstly liberated and then controlled by workers. This would suggest that workers are 1) the privileged emancipatory agent, 2) that consequently women, peasants, the indigenous, ecologists, pacifists, take a secondary or dependent position.
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Comment by Orsan Senalp on February 18, 2011 at 17:30
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Among many other possibilities two strategies appeals to me as they might have god potential in terms of reinventing international labour movement for the 21st century, in order to stop capital and state's offensive and make another world indeed possible. As Egypt case has shown still organised labour makes the defining impact for radical social change. :
1. promoting distributed, peer social relationships among unions, union executives, experts and most importantly members, from different workplaces, sectors, localities, nations, genders, ages, etc. [developemnts in the p2p tecnology, online social networking platforms can make a radical contribution in this sense]
2. Building transnational unions ensambling IWW in the begginnig of he 20.century. but IWW 2.0,, that would go beyond industrialist focus and organise all segments of wage earners as well as uneployed. Such union if get succesful would create a pressure on exsisting unions around the world for a real change.
In order to pursue these two strategies, that can be linked to the concept of Social Network Unionism, I have initiated a blog [http://snuproject.wordpress.com/
and formed an experimental online space, called GAIA [Global Aliance for Immediate Alteration - http://openfsm.net/projects/gaia/summary] both idea yet needs to be well grounded on earth via real world networks.
That would be great to hear what participants of this group created by Peter very timely. Thanks Peter for this much needed space!
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Comment by peter waterman on February 18, 2011 at 16:01
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Thanx, Jeff, for being the first contributor to this site. I know you as a major labour specialist on worker rights within MNCs, particularly in the Global South. As well as a longtime and tough critic of SocialResponsibilityBabble.
I'd like, on this group to hear of counter-strategies being mounted, or what you might here suggest.
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Comment by Jeff Ballinger on February 18, 2011 at 12:51 -
Apple report
Apple's latest audit of its suppliers has found 37 'core violations' of its code of conduct, up from 17 this time last year - but not to worry. Management at Foxconn, it says, 'definitely saved lives' during the spate of suicides at its Hon Hai plant.
The company promised action following the suicides - or, rather, the public outcry that accompanied them. And in its 2011 Supplier Responsibility report, it describes how it sent in a team of suicide experts which praised Foxconn for its response. <snip>
excerpt: ...is expanding its initiatives to make sure its partners don't employ underage workers, that they appropriately train employees and that they pay fair wages... Apple has taken steps to strengthen the rights of manufacturing facility workers +++++
Dear friends:
contract-factory operators will "pay fair wages" -- how, exactly, will the company undertake this? rubbish
- will the company give contract-workers the rights that Chinese leaders deny them?
this is a tactic that was used by Nike when the company needed to hype its credibility: issue a very damning, soul-searching report (exactly ten years ago)... for more info on this tactic, pls contact me if you would like to see apology by a major newspaper after Nike folks "spun" them: Deal with Nike delivers news, hard questions (2005) Public editor: Embargo's limits to reporting dull independence -
- in addressing the issue this way, Apple 1) neutralizes some critics; 2) seduces tech journalists who have only a passing familiarity with int'l worker rights issues and, 3) reassures the headquarters staff in Cupertino, Calif. - all issues are being addressed, we're contrite, the right people are "all over this" - &c.
-- Jeff B.
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