Workers, Native Americans against Trump’s shutdown

This video from the USA says about itself:

Federal employees demonstrated at the Sacramento International Airport on Jan. 16, 2019. The TSA workers missed their first paychecks due to the government shutdown just the day before. Video by: Alyssa Hodenfield & Daniel Kim

By Philip Guelpa in the USA:

Growing signs of worker resistance to US government shutdown

18 January 2019

As the partial federal government shutdown, now in its fourth week, drags on, its effects on large sectors of the US population are intensifying and the resulting anger and reaction continue to grow.

On Wednesday, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) was forced to openly acknowledge what has been widely known for some time, noting in a statement that “many employees are reporting that they are not able to report to work due to financial limitations.”

TSA workers are among the lowest-paid federal employees, living paycheck to paycheck. The impossible situation to which they are subject—forced to work without any income—is prompting growing resistance going beyond the initial form of individual ‘sickouts.’ A TSA representative reported that increasing numbers are explicitly stating that their refusal to come into work is due to financial hardship. These frank statements, by workers who are legally prohibited from striking, are a gauge of their rising level of anger.

The TSA reports that on Tuesday and Wednesday, 6.1 percent of the workforce was absent. So far, three major airports—Atlanta, Houston and Miami—have been forced to implement contingency plans due to the lack of necessary staff, causing increasing delays for passengers. The situation will only worsen and spread as the lack of pay drives growing numbers of workers to stay home.

On January 10, eight organizations—the National Congress of American Indians, Native American Contractors Association, National Indian Health Board, National Council on Urban Indian Health, National Indian Education Association, National American Indian Housing Association, National Indian Child Welfare Association, and the Self Governance Communication and Education Tribal Consortium—sent a joint letter to President Donald Trump and to the Congress calling for an immediate end to the shutdown of the federal government. Citing the trust relationship between the federal government and the tribal nations, the letter calls the shutdown an abrogation of the US’ treaties with Indian Nations: here.

With no political agreement in sight, there are growing fears within the ruling class that the lockout of 300,000 furloughed federal workers and forced unpaid labor for an additional 500,000 employees, now heading into the fifth week, could well prompt the working class to seek its own way out of the impasse: here.

FEDERAL WORKERS PROTEST SHUTDOWN Furloughed federal workers took to the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington to call for the government to reopen, chanting, “No more food banks, we need paychecks!” And, as the shutdown drags on, food assistance for millions will soon run out. [HuffPost]

FLIGHT UNIONS ISSUE SHUTDOWN WARNING Union leaders representing air traffic controllers, pilots and flight attendants released a joint statement about the incalculable risk to the safety and security of airlines and travelers caused by the government shutdown. “In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. It is unprecedented,” they warned. [HuffPost]

AOC BUCKS PARTY VOTE Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was the lone House Democrat to vote against a bill to reopen the government. “We didn’t vote with the party because one of the spending bills included ICE funding and our community felt strongly about not funding that,” she wrote. [HuffPost]

The Trump administration has prepared a draft national emergency declaration to bypass Congress and use the military to construct additional sections of the border wall with Mexico. The renewed threat to implement policy objectives and allocate funds without the consent of the legislative branch, if carried through, would mark a major and irreversible step towards presidential dictatorship: here.

President Donald Trump retreated from his demand that Congress approve a border wall before he would end the partial shutdown of the federal government, announcing Friday that he would approve a temporary, three-week restoration of funding for those federal agencies where workers have gone without pay since December 22. It was the second step back by Trump in three days, following his acknowledgement late Tuesday night that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the “prerogative” to control the chamber of the House of Representatives, and therefore to postpone his State of the Union speech, which had been scheduled for January 29. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are now expected to quickly pass a continuing resolution to restore funding through February 15, without funding for the border wall. During that period, negotiations will continue between the White House and congressional Democrats on the amount of funding for “border security” and whether any of it will be directed to building permanent structures along the US-Mexico border: here.