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Vol. 76/No. 42      November 19, 2012

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 

November 20, 1987

SAHUARITA, Arizona—“They treat us like slaves, not like people,” said Francisco Sesma, one of more than 40 workers on strike against Santa Cruz Valley Pecan Co.

The workers at the company’s pecan processing plant won a union representation election in August 1986 by a resounding 95-49 margin, voting to join United Steelworkers of America Local 13886. Since then owners Dick and Keith Walden have been stonewalling on negotiations while threatening and victimizing union supporters. The workers were finally forced on strike August 11.

The strikers are fighting the company’s starvation wages, dangerous working conditions, and abuse and discrimination by foremen. Workers currently start at the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, with a 10-cent raise a year.

November 19, 1962

The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Party had “made common cause” in support of the Los Angeles Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The committee adds that members of the SWP were “the concealed masterminds” behind the group.

The SWP has long-standing well-known political differences with the Communist Party. But the SWP also has an equally well-established record of readiness to work with any group, regardless of differences, in promoting progressive causes. It has consistently engaged in united action in a host of civil rights and civil liberties movements, on picket lines and in the fight for peace.

The SWP has joined forces with others of various views in spreading the truth about Cuba and defending its heroic revolution against U.S. aggression.

November 20, 1937

A brazen attempt to save the profits of Big Business by reducing its taxes and cutting down the already meager relief program is being made by the Roosevelt administration.

Roosevelt admitted in his message to Congress that he was alarmed by the current business recession.

The “New Deal” program to meet this crisis was outlined by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau Jr. “A determined movement towards balancing the budget is one of the needed solutions for today’s problems,” Morganthau told Wall Street.

The Roosevelt regime hopes to balance the budget through “reducing relief, farm and public works expenditures,” Morganthau declared, “and would try to encourage expansion of private industry through revising taxes found to be inequitable.”  
 
 
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