condoning violence against members of the union who were dissidents on top of that they had a guy who was illegally laid off from a job at the union's request so so this is a situation really brings up the question where you hear the right talking about union thugs all the time but who are the real union thugs in this situation typically the you folks are the ones that are forcing union members to do something they don't want to do they support paul ryan and then when they call them out on this they do this so paul ryan has worked very hard this is a guy who's heavily anti-union to help keep contracts coming to his family's business and the union in turn has done its part by supporting paul ryan and retaliating against anybody who questions them on it missing and then we have the story in california where twenty thousand and two workers with the communication workers of america union went on strike last week and at the same time we have workers elsewhere that are picking up the slack for their strike which is basically undermining their efforts isn't

there are many chemicals found in the water around here which were once used in the union carbide factory two hundred bodies were every time it rains the toxic waste which is lying on the surface of the factory goes deep inside the earth and pollutes the soil. because here because surface which is contaminated and the chemicals which are in the earth needs to be removed and he talks a fighter. otherwise the pollution will continue and people will keep using polluted water and that is very dangerous and mark. i've. just. finished i'm not allowed my name is salam bubble but people call me brother salami and. try have a small business where you know what we are daily wage earners. but i have no savings here walk away no one ever does get saved is spent on medicine. her condition used to be much better. she used to go to the market go for walks and play around with her. she used to laugh and have fun there were no problems. of some time later on we noticed but she couldn't sit up on her own or turn over your kind of what meaning what. slowly she started looking to press. when we would talk to

and the reason i did was we found that the elected russian leadership was no longer wanted the union they were talking about replacing the soviet union with something like the european union when you spoke about gorbachev you mr medlock once said i quote it's very unusual to find a leader who will risk his own leadership in order to change the system doesn't work well your boss of that time mr reagan cold called russia the soviet union the evil empire do you personally believe that russia was the evil empire and to gorbachev's wit and he's power to change it or were this it you know wasn't as evil as reagan portrayed it well reagan never well he used that term in one speech and it was a speech to the domestic audience. one thing reagan understood the moment that he did not conflate the soviet union with russia one thing he was very appreciative of russian history he was very respectful of the victory in world war two but we were very much aware of stalin's purges the fact that stalin killed probably as many soviet citizens as hitler did now you're going to call him or maybe more now you're goi

if 100 were union, we had to skip 400 houses. now, we can go to them and talk to them about the issues. get information to them about the issues that they find important. we will also be doing a couple of other things differently. we will energize our volunteer system a whole lot more actively than we have in the past. last election, we had about 300,000 volunteers on the ground. this time, we are shooting for 400,000. we might. >> that because we have -- we might. >> that because -- we might ex ceed that. you will not see us doing the advertisements for feel good america or the other groups they put out there. we will be doing the ground waves. we will see what happens. >> i find what they say is laughable. they are saying that organizations that support business should be treated equally with the labor movement, which has 15 million members. and conveniently ignore the fact that americans for prosperity, all the different business groups on top of that as though there should be some equivalency between one group on the right an

here and this is where the waste in toxic sludge were dumped by union card we were standing right on top of it and the other side is you can see there used to be a small leak which you had a car but also used as a dumping ground for their waste people depended on the water from the leak so they drank it and it cost and pedantic. union carbide knew from the design stage that the bhopal plant could pollute groundwater they also knew that there was there was a surrounding community that used that groundwater for its drinking water supply. so they believe that they can get rid of someone. by being it and then when they had like some kind of sludge so they took all dust from the bones and here and there and you see this black lining underneath the ground of this landfill they believe that this kind of lining if this lining on the ground it can get. away from the. lining and the need to go everywhere i want here. we believe the solar evaporation ponds continues to be a source of the subsurface water pollution that's now leeching through the aqua for and spreading into the surrounding commu

back in 2009, 20,000 salaried workers and retirees at delphi auto parts were not in a labor union saw their pensions cut. delphi workers in the united auto workers were made whole. all along treasury white house say the decisions were made by the independent pension benefit guarantee corporation. key officials testified to that under oath. the e-mails recently obtained by the daily caller said that's not the case. that is 3 months before the pension decision was made they had a meeting with general motors and delphi. that calls into question who calls the shots and why. labor union's driving force behind the election in 2008 donating $100 million. money turned out to be well spent for the delphi union workers not really for any one else in this case. >> sounds like this could have been politically motivated. if they were truly lie behind this these feeks are not made whole while the unions were. >> there is a hearing to find out what exactly happened. the obvious we is those who saw their pensions cut. >> will they get their money back? folks have thall enon hard times we are talking

union carbide factory made people sleep forever. those who are no more today the people they use. those mothers and sisters who were sleeping bad night in their homes. the gas leakage from the union carbide made them sleep forever. anderson go to hell union carbide go to hell. for so many years who's been drinking poisonous water even today the water is still poisonous and all of our children are sick. the entire community split up with a problem that is why we will keep fighting until you agree until all demands the fine to continue. and i do for a gas leak from a union carbide corporation factory in bhopal killed up to twenty five thousand people it was one of the world's worst industrial accidents more than thirty thousand people are believed to have died from the effects of toxic chemicals released into the air from this factory the union carbide plant in the central indian city of book. on up on the contaminated water is making our lives how they're going to get even that small. holdings of tons of stuff that we just live better if it is three forty six tons of waste that if that warehouse additives of thousan

millions of dollars they were also representing michelle rhee who's one of the most prominent anti teach you union proponents in this country so they were taking money from both sides at the same time supporting s.p. five which is the was the bill in ohio to outlaw collective bargaining rights got repealed. wow so i mean ok here we are and i mentioned it briefly in the setup that unions have traditionally been the funders of the democratic party just because democratic party has traditionally been a political party looking out for working people we now and pose. citizens united we have corporations that can spend unlimited amounts of money so the right has boosted their fund raising while unions have declined so union dues are dropped so unions are operating with much smaller budgets is this a wise sort of investment to be reaching out to p.r. firms rather that i mean what else could they be doing with that money well i think certainly put it on the story you know there are p.r. firms that only represent the union side and do good work although overall you know a lot of unions like abyssinian the

were simply not strong enough to. impose their world order you have a germany and the soviet union were pretty much out of the league of nations and england and france by themselves and the united states was also out of it england france was really too weak to impose a world order but you know. if you don't have a leader then you're not going to get concerted action and you're going to get chaos that's why you need a leader you might not like the united states but you have what you have you know in syria what you. order then disorder georgia when you reply there is yes i agree that there should be order but the only way that you can have all the is by a consensus of the great powers and therefore respecting the rights of the great powers and not to do things that clearly untag and eyes of them and ensure that they will always be in opposition they were united. in order policy go ahead ryan jump in i'm just interested to know what great powers as he called it he feels should decide our foreign policy if we have to work with this giant consensus that he's advocating. well russia russia and china are permanent members of

they were unionized but if you are working in the staff the ship had a thousand crew 800 of them are devoted to the passengers. stewart, bill boies, bartenders, stewardess, there were crowds of people to take care of the passengers. >> thank you steve, for answering my questions but i think what i would like to do now is open the floor a little bit so that anybody in the audience who might want to ask the author a question has that opportunity. dewolf think that is a good idea. >> after only 17 years of service there are two reasons for this. in the late 50's the aircraft came in and initially the shipping companies were like this is a huge deal. people probably want to take the ship one way to relax but it ends up being by the early 60's the united states, we are all losing money so they had a big cash and trainer ramesh hands and then the u.s. government began thinking well we don't really need ships anymore to trap the troops to oversee we are not losing their plans. as of november 1959 the government pulled the plug on the ships very generous subsidies. the united states says we c

there were union workers in the parking lot when we came in, representing the obama campaign.lking here, i had a woman make her way through the crowd to hand me a press release saying workers facing outsourcing by bain to meet the rally here in wisconsin. you have a huge republican crowd here but the democrats are trying to turn out as well to make clear, yes, the energy of the moment is with the romney/ryan ticket. the focus in this state, a lot of democrats say of course they're proud to have the son of wisconsin on a national political ticket but this is how it works in presidential politics. the republican side because it goes first, governor romney deciding a running mate, they get most of the attention right now. it is safe to say here and elsewhere, when the glow of the republican announcement fades a bit, the democrats are ready to fight back. >> as you look at mitt romney, john, he seems in the last events we've seen over the last day or so, pretty comfortable with paul ryan and i'm told that that was really important to him when he was making his choice, that it was

they were paid well because in were unionized. the ship had a thousand crew. 800 were devoted to taking care of the passengers. stewards, bell boys, bartenders, stewardesses. whole crowds of people to take care of passengers. >> thank you for answering my questions. i'd like to open up the forum a little bit so that anyone in the audience who might want to ask the author a question, has that opportunity. do you think that's a good idea? [inaudible] >> the ship was withdrawn from service in november of 1969 after only 17 years of service, and there were two reasons for this. the first was in the late '50s the jet aircraft came in and initially the shipping companies didn't think it was a huge deal. they're not -- people probably want to take a ship one way to relax, but -- ended up being the death knell for the transatlantic ships and by the early 960s the united states line had a big cash drainer on its hands. and then the u.s. government began thinking we don't need ships anymore to take troops overseas. we're using airplanes. so

they were not paid well because they were unionized but if you are working in the service staff 800 of them were devoted to the passengers there were stewardesses, whole crowds of people to take care of the passengers. >> i think what i would like to do now is open the form a little bit so that anyone in the audience that might want to ask the author a question of that opportunity. >> [inaudible] >> the service in november after almost 17 years of service, and there were two reasons for this. the first was in the late 50's the aircraft came and initially all of the shipping companies were like this is a huge deal. they are not -- people will probably want to take the ship one way to relax. by the early 60's, so by the early 60's they had a big cash strainer on its hands and the u.s. government began thinking we don't really need them anymore to try to take the troops who are not using your plans, november, 1969, the government pulled the plug on the ships very generous subsidy. the united states finds we can't afford to operate the ship without the subsidy and there is a lot of labor o

they were used as strikebreakers when union efforts early on at the turn of the 20th century when theye trying to increase workers' rights. on the one hand blacks were not allowed into unions in many cases, and then corporations themselves use blackses as a strike break. but, they know this very acutely. there have been a ton of studies that show white anti-welfare attitudes are driven specifically by racist ideas. the fact that none of it is true and there is a hankering feeling feeling, subconscious attitude it doesn't really matter. in this moment apparently you can say whatever you want. it doesn't matter if it's true in presidential politics as well as governance. this is a disturbing issue. we're at a moment, cenk, when democrats and progressive people have to push back and say if you're voting for the republican part now it's the party of explicit racist ideology. and that's basically what it is. there is no hemming and hawing about it. these are very specific coded words. i want to add with what you said. when reagan talked about the welfare queen, he talked about her being on

union endorses president obama. let's go to a point that ron just made there, tom, and that is, right in the front row, there were many individuals there wearing union t-shirts. paul ryan is going to face more of this as he is on the road, as he hits states in the south, key swing states. does this pick hurt the union vote for -- and there wasn't many to begin with, for the republican ticket here? >> i think the selection of paul ryan is going to have a negative impact on the romney campaign. paul ryan has got quite a reputation of being opposed to all of the things we believe make for a good, solid middle class. and to cut taxes to help the wealthy and expect the middle class and the poor to pay more isn't going to be what i think romney was looking for. it not what the american voter are looking for. >> tom, it's interesting, with you saying that, on the flip side, you are putting money in state races. you think washington is broken at the moment. what does this say about the excitement coming from union voters, if you are doing that. >> union voter, i would characterize them as being really dissatisfied with the po

conference of dill gaits selectedded by the soviet union there were a handful of delegateds could expect only to serve the cause of propaganda. devastating opponents accused conference organizers wittingly or not playing in to the hands of the soviets. a hand of the 600 sponsors encouraged the organizers to make space for the critics of the soviet union. but the organizers were committed to a conference that would not conversation gait either side. it intent as one of them put it bring together the people of discuss the possibility of peaceful coexistence that had a clear international flavor to it. that's the line that hellman took and the line that thraft condemned her as a stalinist. it was out of that conference that anticommunist largely grew. so i'll going read you one more short piece although there could be many more. and this comes toward the end of her life. .. >> an intellectual who did not stand up for those who were called before the committee. she argues that freedom of speech, the right to decide, was integral to american democracy. and that in that period, it was the libe

some were going for the union. some were fighting for the south. the feelings that ran so deep, you know, there were vengeance killings. there'll be vengeance killings in libya, serbia, croatia, for the next 50 years, and we had the exact same thing. these were -- economics caused this. this was not just people who thought of shooting across the fence. tavis: mm-hmm. >> there were reasons why this was happening in america. i really love going into that aspect of understanding that, you know, suddenly these families were expanding in these valleys. they had 13 children. if they all marry, suddenly i am going to have a valley of 80 relatives, right? they need to go to the city, and when they do not go to the city, and economics start to drive down, what do they do? young men go to town, and they drink, and when they drink, there's violence, and there's anger, and there's no employment. you could replicate this same thing for young men around the world who cannot find their way, and they use something like the civil war for an excuse to fight. well, y

many other people, was it exacerbated by looking across the parking lot and seeing workers who were uniont deal with the same loss and the same pain? >> it's terribly frustrating. we are not saying those people didn't deserve what they earned. we would just like the same treatment. many of these workers worked side by side for years. their neighbors. they live in the same neighborhood. they are friends, they are family members. so blatantly unfair what was done. shannon: you mentioned a number of hearings that have been held. we know more are coming. you mentioned a lawsuit that's been going on for 3 1/2 years but you feel you haven't gotten fair treatment yet. what do you think it will take to get you to that point? >> i believe we'll get there through our lawsuit. but that in itself is a costly thing for our members. you are talking about people who lost their pensions that are have literally contributed their last dime to a lawsuit to restore those pensions. do i think we'll win it in court? i think these kind of things we are seeing now will give us a court victory. but really as the

profit for just the wrong people and chemicals made the decision to purchase union carbide knowing that these liabilities were outstanding so when you purchase the assets of a company purchased those liabilities. we are just asking for our right to clean water union carbide has fully exploited the sort of international dimension of this problem it informs the american courts that new york law can't apply because these events took place in india but the same time the same indian law doesn't apply so in effect they're arguing that they're above the law so there are international rules. for. of course international law has no enforcement laws are forced by somebody. if the united states doesn't force a. lot of oh but they should take responsibility for. where dime from the water i mean no one is offering clean water they have no choice. dow chemical go to how it go to how do how. agents of dow should be spanked. if you look at subject to the jurisdiction over the deal then you'll have to submit to the american boards and the american courts have to do something about . this in two thousand and four the supreme c

this was interesting to us because in soviet times there were 15 union republics, 18 autonomous republics all with a roughly ethnic base, and the joke was they were never autonomous, nor republics. and that when the soviet union collapsed, it was a question what would happen to the other ethnic places. in the case of chechnya, as you all know, civil war broke out ending in the flight of russian authority, and it's still a scene of violence today. ca zahn was different. the capital had an interesting president. his name was shamiyev. and he had been an orthodox communist, and he had been the regional boss of tartarstan. be but when he saw what was happening, he decided to try something interesting. and that is that he wanted to make a deal with yeltsin, then the president of russia, that would give substantial awe on a, particularly cultural autonomy, to tartarstan. and what he did was he stretched the word "sovereignty." he sponsored a member side in which the peoples of tartarstan voted overwhelmingly for sovereignty. but if you look at the wording of the resolution that they approved, o

two days earlier, two policemen were among the others killed -- during a feud between rival mining unions. >> originally, there were to be two rival memorial services. one official event and a second service organized by the striking miners themselves. the two sides have been brought together after last-minute negotiations, a rare and welcome sign of unity in a community bitterly divided since the killings here last week. this is where the 34 miners were killed, close to where the memorial service is being held. they came charging down from the rocky outcrop towards the police line. what happened next was the most bloody security operation since the days of apartheid. >> it is clear from the pictures that police opened fire with assault rifles at close range. but it is hard to tell whether the miners had guns as well as so-called traditional weapons like machetes. >> where in the west of the scene people confronting the police. there is nothing traditional about this. what was the problem? >> these are killings that have shocked south africa. >> the shootings last week were the most blood

. >> intercontinental flights were not affected. union officials have promised more strikes in the coming days if the wage agreement is not reached soon. >> frankfurt airport ground to a standstill as the lufthansa cabin crew strike took effect. lufthansa had to cancel a around 200 out of 360 flights. >> i fly a lot. it is my wedding anniversary, and here i am waiting. it is annoying. >> you think the ground crew nom -- the ground crew, not the cabin crew, were striking. no one is here. >> it affects me, but they are entitled to strike. wage cutting in germany cannot continue like this. >> the dispute is not just about higher wages. the cabin crew also opposes the use of temporary staff on lufthansa flights. the company wants to employ temp workers on flights to and from berlin. the union accuses them of trying to erode pay and conditions. >> lufthansa wants to cut pay by 20% to 30% alongside this 3% wage increase over 36 months. we refuse to even discuss this. >> the strike ended at 1:00 on friday afternoon, but the knock on effects have

there were some union workers in the parking lot when we came in and as we were talking, i had a womanorkers facing outsourcing by bain to make the rally here. to make clear that clear the energy of the moment is with the romney ryan ticket. a lot of democrats in this state say of course they're proud to have a son of wisconsin on a national political ticket, but this is how it works in presidential politics. the republican side because it goes first, governor romney just has his running mate, they get most of the attention now, but it is safe to say here and elsewhere, when the glow of the republican announcement fades a little bit, the democrats are more than ready to fight back. >> as you look at mitt romney, john, he seems in the last events we've seen over the last day or so, pretty comfortable with paul ryan and i'm told that that was really important to him. when he was making his choice that it was someone he could feel comfortable with. maybe it's because they both call themselves nerds. but i do think that it is somebody who would have hired and clearly paul ryan is very emot

now representtists from the steel workers union were on hand with investigators today. they say they want to make sure all of the facts there are uncovered. >> we want to make sure that everybody goes home at the end of the day the same way they got there, and that's our number one goal, and we certainly hope that as we go through this investigation the lessons we learned will help us accomplish that and make sure that people do go home to their families safe. >> again, investigators went back to that scene there at the richmond refinery this morning. they are still there. we're still trying to get in contact with federal investigators today but they are just very busy. we hope to get some updates late this afternoon or perhaps tomorrow. meanwhile, again here in martinez, some scary moments. a brief fire broke out at 2:00. it was contained within ten minutes, but, again, health advisory was issued for some time and certainly rattled nerves here in another east bay community. reporting live from n martinez, jodi hernandez, nbc bay area news. >> if you filled up recently

what the soviet union did would have a direct effect on my children, on all of america. so i was interested in it, you were, everyone was. the cold war ends -- who then is our enemy? does the united states require, for political and economic reasons, to have out there some large and me? without the soviet union, whom do we have? we certainly have global terrorism as a threat, but is that a threat to the united states and to its system? maybe, but maybe not. but a soviet nuclear attack was a threat that was very clear. right now, one of our problems is that the threat is diffuse. it is out there. you know it, but it is not clear exactly what it is. that is one of our great problems right now. how much money do you need for defense? the people at the pentagon argue, quite understandably, more and more and more, but they are not cutting back. it is quite unrealistic. against whom are you going to be using all these weapons? there is no soviet union anymore. are you imagining that china is going to be the big threat to the united states in five or 10 years? there are some people in washington who argue that ch

[inaudible] there were supposedly non-union workers there. more non-union mines have more casualties unfortunately and injuries than union mines. republicans want to do away with the unions. do you think there will be more injuries in mining? the unions have gone down to 7%. if the unions have gone down, why has not the economy gone up? we were actually doing better when there were more unions. thank you. host: thank you, alan. kohl's safety and union membership. guest: i do not know of any data that shows that the unions or organized mines have a differential on mortality rates. the occurrence tragedy was terrible in 2010 and it was a non-union operation. the fact of the matter is that, while union membership at coal mines has dropped substantially over the last 20 years, at the same time, the injury rates and the fatality rates at coal mines have also dropped. since 1990, our injury rates are down by some type%. we operate about -- down by 75%. we need to focus on 12% to figure out how to get to zero. host: does the increase in safety repor

the union said of things, they were made whole. they losting in. government money went to the unions is that the split? is that how it came down? >>guest: that is exactly the split. i might point out that i might have been in management, but most of the salary retirees were secretaries, clerks, engineers, they were not senior executives. they are regular working people who worked side by side with the union people who received the top offs to the pensions. it was totally unfair. totally at the discretion of the auto task force group. >>stuart: earlier today we had a guest showing government e-mails they had unearthed, they put them out there, and it seemed to show that the treasury had a direct hand in saying, no, you guys don't get it, the union does. it was the treasury that pulled the trigger, so to speak. what do you make of this? >>guest: well, we absolutely believe that and we have asserted that for a long time throughout this three years our lawsuit. in fact, it is interesting, i know what one of the e-mails says and it mentioned pointedly, t

you were talking earlier about the president's union advantage. i was hoping you could, um, talk a bit about president obama as a candidate specifically for unions and union members as opposed to working people broadly. um, i think when you talk to a lot of labor leaders these days, there is some disenchancement with the president. -- disenchantment with the president. some feel he hasn't done everything he can to go to bat for organized labor. i'm wondering whether you sense in the rank and file and within labor leaders maybe an enthusiasm problem with the president, and if you feel like you can make a strong case that he's done everything he can for the labor movement. >> as he done everything he can for the labor movement, that's a simple answer. no one has ever done, no president has ever done that. has he done a lot for the labor movement? absolutely, he has. has he done a lot for working people? absolutely, he has. let's just take the simple guy that goes to work every day whether you're in a mine, an auto factory, or you go to a school as a

[bell] the unions died. they were shot by the police department. they died. blood was spilled. it has to be incorporated into whatever we tie into our projects in one way or the other too many crimes are having it too good in san francisco under large projects. we need to be considerate in san francisco of the projects. thank you very much. [bell] >> any other public comment? eakseeing none, please call the consent calendar. >> consent calendar, approve modification #148 total contract amount of 38,736,000 two hundred 90 four dollars and with a time extension of two hundred 36 calendar days and with a payment operation amount of $756,000. an improvement of the upgrade, improve modification #3, decreasing the contract by $178,000. a total contract amount of 200 -- 2 million, four hundred $43,000. -- $2,443,000. a payment for -- a payment extension of 63 calendar days and with a total contract duration of 316 calendar days. and and approved contract in the amount of $2,206,000 of which 1 million two hundred $18,000 is funded by waste water enterprise and 988,000 is funded by depa