Thread: Socialist Seattle City Councilmember-Solution to Boeing Dispute: Steal its Factories

Socialist Seattle City Councilmember-Elect’s Solution to Boeing Dispute: Steal its Factories

By James Daniels on November 21, 2013 Subscribe to James Daniels's Feed



You just can’t make this stuff up.

According to KIRO 7, Boeing is threatening to take jobs to other states after machinists rejected an offer guaranteeing jobs building the new 777X airliner for eight years. In exchange, new workers would have had to give up guaranteed pensions.

If Boeing honors its threat, Seattle’s soon to be first Socialist city councilmember has a solution you might expect from someone like her: steal Boeing’s property.
As noted in the report, city councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told a crowd of union supporters, “The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine.” She also stated that, if Boeing does indeed move out, it will be an act of “economic terrorism” because it would devastate the state’s economy. In other words, Boeing should have to sacrifice its business interests to pay above-market labor expenses to self-entitled union workers.

Sawant continued, “The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don’t need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do.” Yep, negotiating a deal both parties can live with isn’t an option and the executives aren’t responsible for securing contracts and other core functions that give machinists work in the first place, right?
And it didn’t stop there. Comrade Sawant went on to say, “We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines.”
Meanwhile, Boeing has already begun moving engineering work out of The Evergreen State to California and South Carolina. Executives specifically noted work stoppages in the Puget Sound region as a reason for building elsewhere.
Perhaps an anti-business climate isn’t good for keeping good jobs after all. Who would have guessed?

http://downtrend.com/james/socialist...its-factories/

Indian-origin Kshama Sawant is first elected socialist in US

PTI Nov 20, 2013, 06.50AM IST

(Kshama Sawant has been elected…)

WASHINGTON: Indian-American Kshama Sawant has been elected to the prestigious Seattle City Council, making her the first socialist to be voted to an elected office, 97 years after the city sent their first outspoken radical into office.

Pune-born Sawant, 40, was declared elected after her nearest rival 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin conceded defeat as her lead grew to 1,640 votes -- less than one per cent of the total votes.


The victory of the first socialist was celebrated with an impressive gathering in Seattle.

Her call to take Boeing -the biggest private employer of the region, which is threatening to move jobs out of the state - into public ownership was welcomed with a standing ovation.

"The machines are here, the workers are here. Let us take this entire productive activity into democratic public ownership and retool the machines to produce mass transit," Sawant said.

"Our campaign is not an isolated event, it's a bellwether for what's going to happen in the future," she added.

Sawant is an economics teacher at Seattle Central Community College and a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789.

She was an activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2012 Sawant won a 29 per cent with over 20,000 votes as a Socialist Alternative candidate against Democratic WA State House Speaker Frank Chopp - the strongest vote for an independent left-wing candidate in the US in 2012, and the highest vote for a socialist in decades.

Sawant said as a city councilor, she will use her position to help build, unite, and give political voice to the struggles of low-paid workers, youth, people of colour, and all those who are shut out by the political machine that runs this city on behalf of the wealthy elite.

During the campaign she did not accept any corporate funding.

Born to Vasundhara and H T Ramanujam in Pune in 1973, Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and graduated with a BS from the University of Mumbai in 1994.

Sawant married her husband Vivek, an engineer at Microsoft, and moved to the United States. After moving to the United States Sawant decided to abandon the computer engineering field.

She began to pursue study in economics due to what she described as her own "questions of economic inequality." She entered the economics programme at North Carolina State University where she earned a PhD. She became a United States citizen in 2010.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...richard-conlin

Seattle’s New Socialist Councilwoman Tells Boeing Workers To Seize Factories, “Shut Down Profit-Making Machine”

November 21, 2013 2:32 pm
0 comments Views: 693

Doing what flaming liberal do best, biting the hand that feeds them and creating a socialist utopia, newly elected avowed Socialist Councilwoman Kshama Sawant told a group of union thug Boeing workers in Seattle if the company elects to move out of the state they, "should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine."

Well great, let's just see that happen. I'm sure a bunch of union thugs who march to the tune of an avowed Socialist now on the government payroll, would be capable of running a multi-billion dollar aerospace company. Not!

If Boeing decides to take their manufacturing plant out of state, the liberal councilwoman said, "That will be nothing short of economic terrorism." She is also a proponent of a $15 an hour minimum wage. Of course the liberal mind doesn't have the math skills to figure out a $15 minimum wage is the exact "economic terrorism" they speak about that should cause McD's happy meals to rise in cost to around $11.50.

We'll see who whines about economics when that and everything else in Washington state tied to the minimum wage, like food, goes up by 50% over night.

Read more below from Kiro TV:

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.

On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it’s going to devastate the state’s economy,” she said.

http://www.isthatbaloney.com/seattle...aking-machine/