Threat of the Trans-Pacific Agreement

by Alejandro Nadal

This week negotiations begin again in Singapore on the Transpacific agreement, a project hailed by its promoters as the biggest, most ambitious trade agreement ever. Eleven countries participate: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, United States, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zeeland, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It’s billed as a tool for growth, employment and prosperity, but the reality will be quite different.

The world economy has seen three decades of neoliberal trade agreements along with strong financial liberalization, both domestically and in transborder flows. They have been accompanied by new rules on intellectual property, government procurement, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, labor relations and the prohibition of performance requirements on international corporations. These agreements radically redefine any nation’s development strategy, delivering it into the hands of transnationals and the “free market”.

What has the result been? A semi-stagnant world economy, high unemployment, rapid environmental deterioration and the worst crisis in 80 years. One might think that with these “achievements” we would have stopped negotiating new trade agreements. But it’s exactly the opposite.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Northern Marianas Pension System endangered if measures not taken

Retirement Fund may be depleted in 2.9 years

by Alexis Villegas Zotomayor

Marianas Variety

If no efforts are made to stanch the Retirement Fund’s financial bleeding, the pension agency would be insolvent in 2.9 years, an official said. In his Dec. 22 letter to Rep. Sylvestre Iguel, Fund Administrator Richard S. Villagomez provided the lawmaker a projection of the Fund’s demise.

He wrote, “If no significant additional contributions are made to support current benefit payouts, the Fund will no longer be able to pay benefits in less than three years.”

Villagomez was commenting on Iguel’s H.B. 17-204 which would continue to allow Class I members of the Fund the option to pay in the difference between Class I and Class II to retire with Class II benefits.

Villagomez pointed out that the Fund had repeatedly alerted the lawmakers on the fiscal condition of the Fund.

He provided Iguel, Covenant-Saipan, with a graph that showed employee contributions for all active member employees, which cannot be paid out as benefits amount to approximately $113 million.Villagomez said, “If the Fund continues to withdraw $53 million per year as it did in fiscal year 2011 to fund benefit payouts, the Fund assets will be completely depleted in approximately 2.9 years.”

He told Iguel that if the Fund was put in a situation where it could no longer pay benefits, the Legislature would need to appropriate $80 million from the annual budget to pay current benefit obligations. He also told Iguel that the amount would balloon to $100 million by 2025 before it would start to decrease.

However, for Villagomez there’s still hope.

If the Fund would withdraw less than $53 million, it would be able to continue paying the benefits longer into the future with all other factors held constant. But if the drawdowns exceed $53 million, Villagomez predicted the Fund would be gone in less than 2.9 years — “with all factors held constant.”

For Villagomez, Iguel’s bill would accelerate the growth of future payouts and the Fund’s demise as the pension agency would be forced to make larger drawdowns to cover for increased benefit payouts.He reminded Iguel of the key factor in a reform measure in 1989 was the closing of the more generous Class II membership which he said was unsustainable.

P.L. 6-17, he said, reduced benefits for each year that the retiree would not be able to meet the retirement age of 62 years old to receive retirement annuity. Another law, P.L. 15-70 mandated that Class I members could still opt for early retirement with no corresponding deduction if they retired under 62.

Iguel’s bill proposes to make this permanent.

Although the bill questions the fairness of the early retirement option under P.L. 15-70 in the same way that H.B. 17-226 also raised concern with fairness that active members continue to contribute to a retirement system that will be dead in less than three years.

“We reason that it is ‘not fair’ to all members — active employees and retirees — that the heart of the matter has not been addressed: how are we going to fund the benefits of current retirees and new retirees (even those who retire under H.B. 17-204 if it becomes law) after the Fund runs out of money in less than three years,” Villagomez said.

Given the precarious condition of the Fund being in dire straits, he asked the suspension of early retirement in its entirety until the pension program has sufficient funding to support reactivation.

Virgin Islands Liberty Day - A Pan Africanist Perspective

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What Liberty Day means for you

K. Leba Ola-Niyi 

Pan-African Support Group

When we observe Liberty Day -and the United Nations has declared this the "Year of the Peoples of African Descent" - we should reflect on our victories, setbacks, and challenges as African workers and people in the Virgin Islands.

Our history of African labor gives an account of our ancestors who had waged a just war against racial oppression, economic exploitation, and political subjugation. The descendants of the emancipated Africans have the vocation of achieving the goals of African liberation, unity, and dignity.

Let us remind the Western world that African labor - the multitude of slaves, servants, and subjects - contributed to the economic development and high living standards in European capitalist societies and cities. Let us never forget that the enslaved and colonized Africans produced the wealth reaped by the ruling elites of Europe, the United States, and some countries in South America for over four centuries.

We can learn from the progressive legacy of David Hamilton Jackson, a great working-class and African leader. Jackson's qualities of leadership included humility, militancy, African consciousness, integrity, race first, courage, critical thinker, visionary, activism, and solidarity with other freedom struggles.

Our people demanded and secured the basic rights of freedom of the press and freedom of association. The St. Croix Labor Union was a large social movement that organized, informed, and empowered 6,000 African agricultural laborers. The Herald, the first African newspaper, was the voice of the poor and powerless African masses. The union owned a press, credit union, and several properties in the town and countryside. Land was purchased and distributed to small black farmers. Other labor rights included collective bargain and strike.

In addition, there were Garveyites who participated in the African labor movement that strived to assume power, improve working and living conditions and higher wages for its members and their families. Like Marcus Garvey, D. Hamilton Jackson used African/Black history to emancipate enslaved minds and empower the African masses to chart a new direction for freedom and justice.

Progressive labor leaders such D. Hamilton Jackson and Rothschild Francis led the struggle for home rule, democracy, political rights, and social justice.

In this colonial, capitalist, and class society, African people and workers are abused by free markets and neoconservative extremists. Right-wing economic and political elites are waging class warfare on poor people and workers. They change labor laws such as collective bargaining and union rights to destroy the labor unions and labor movements. The courts impose TROs on labor unrests such as strikes and job actions. Governments and corporate giants impose harsh and unfair austerity measures such as salary cuts, frozen wage increases, mass layoffs, and benefit reductions.

Governments slash public social service programs such as education, health, food, and housing. Governments bail out greedy economic behemoths at the social and economic expenses of the poor, powerless, unemployed, uninsured, hungry, and homeless. The richest citizens, CEOs, and corporate owners reaped the lion's share of tax cuts, giveaways, or exemptions without meeting their social obligations. Most workers are working harder and longer for part-time pay. High unemployment, poverty, and income inequity are the triplets of social misery for many workers and poor people in this so-called American Paradise.

In this colonial arrangement, African people produce what they do not consume and consume what they do not produce. Corporate giants control the commanding heights of the local economy. The commanding heights include tourism, commerce, retail, transportation, manufacturing, bank, insurance, and communications.

While most Africans are workers and consumers, the multinational corporations and non-African merchant class have the most market shares, reap the highest returns from the sales, and secure the biggest proportion of local, regional, and global production and services.

African people must organize and participate in the social and political movements to achieve qualitative changes in this unjust society. You should start or join labor unions and labor movements to level the paying and playing fields. You should form a nationalist movement to eradicate colonialism in all its manifestations.

We must construct and develop a new society and viable Virgin Islands nationality based on African principles. To build and share the wealth, workers should own and manage cooperatives and companies in the profitable sectors of this island economy. In our effort to define ourselves as an African, Caribbean, and Virgin Islands people, you must embrace, know, value, protect, and practice our African cultural heritage.

Finally, you must opt for an economic alternative to the unfettered free market economics that have failed to eliminate or reduce poverty and inequity in the midst of plenty. We must organize, centralize and act now to make a peaceful world possible.

U.S. Virgin Islands Honours D. Hamilton Jackson, national hero, on Liberty Day

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V.I. honors Jackson as a liberaton

By Joy Blackburn

Virgin Islands Daily News

ST. CROIX - An educator. A judge. An editor. A labor leader who organized the first union in the territory and won better working conditions and wages for agricultural workers on St. Croix. A man of principle and courage. Someone who spent his entire life fighting injustice and working to improve the lives of his people.

The Black Moses.

Those were just some of the words used to describe Virgin Islander David Hamilton Jackson on Tuesday at an annual event in Grove Place commemorating Jackson's life and contributions to the people of the Virgin Islands.

Tuesday was the territorial holiday set aside to honor Jackson, who was born on St. Croix in 1884 and died in 1946. D. Hamilton Jackson Day also is known as Liberty Day or Bull and Bread Day.

More than 200 people gathered at D. Hamilton Jackson Park in Grove Place for the annual commemoration, which featured remarks by politicians and a keynote speech by historian and radio talk show host Mario Moorhead, along with music and introductions of beauty pageant contestants.

As always, the celebration featured the traditional serving of bull and bread. Moorhead made history come alive as he described Hamilton's life from birth to death, his struggles, his accomplishments and his legacy to the people of the Virgin Islands in a lengthy keynote address.

Moorhead said Jackson's birth to two school teachers was "a rare if not a unique circumstance," noting that Jackson's parents were among the "fortunate few" in the Danish West Indies who were of African descent and also educators. At the time of Jackson's birth, "more than 90 percent of our people could neither read or write," Moorhead said.

He spoke about Jackson's intellectual curiosity and noted that Jackson taught school "until his quick intellect required more of him," and he moved to Christiansted, where he went to work for the owner of a dry goods store.

There, Jackson was able to meet and socialize with people of "like minds," who were troubled by the conditions under which those of African descent were living in the Danish West Indies, Moorhead said.

Eventually, Jackson was able to convince his peers that he needed to go to Denmark to persuade the Danish Crown to grant them freedom of assembly, Moorhead said. Jackson motivated people to make donations to help pay for the trip and went to Denmark in 1915.

While there, Jackson convinced Denmark that the last thing it needed was conflict and social unrest in the islands and that granting freedom of assembly would make the Danish West Indies a more productive place, Moorhead said.

Jackson also won the right to print a newspaper. When Jackson returned to St. Croix, "he was like a rock star, traveling from estate to estate all over the island," using his skills as an orator to electrify and solidify the community, Moorhead said.

On Nov. 1, 1915, the first edition of Jackson's newspaper, The Herald, was published. Moorhead spoke extensively of Jackson leading the effort to form the St. Croix Labor Union and of his demand for better working conditions and wages for agricultural workers. There were 6,000 members "within days," Moorhead said. At the time, wages were 20 cents a day, Moorhead said.

Moorhead described the workers going on strike when planters refused Jackson's demands, and Jackson's pronouncement that "we will eat bush, but we are not going to give in.There was a solidarity on this island that today seems not just unlikely, but impossible," Moorhead said. After some time, the plantation owners asked Jackson to come to the table, Moorhead said. As a result of the negotiations, wages were doubled.

By 1920, the St. Croix Labor Union was so successful that it had negotiated wages of $1 a day, he said.

Moorhead also spoke eloquently of Jackson's struggles and of his lifelong fight to better the lives of people in the territory.

Jackson's accomplishments include campaigning for greater self-governance and human rights in the islands and taking a leadership role in marshaling support for the transfer of the islands from Danish to American rule.

After the United States purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917, Jackson made several trips to Washington, D.C., to protest naval rule in the islands and to lobby for a civil government. He was influential in the formulation of the 1936 Organic Act, the set of laws by which the territory was governed. He served as a member of the Colonial Council and was a judge in the police court, Moorhead said.

"David Hamilton Jackson was a liberator and a fighter for the people right down to the end," Moorhead said. Moorhead also described Jackson as "one of the greatest Crucians who ever lived," and urged the audience to pressure today's educators to teach young Virgin Islanders about Jackson's social philosophies.

V.I. Delegate to Congress Donna Christensen, Senate President Ronald Russell and Lt. Gov. Gregory Francis also gave remarks about Jackson at the event. Gov. John deJongh Jr. did not attend.

The commemoration, put on by the Grove Place Action Committee working with the Grove Place Weed and Seed Teen Youth Group and supported by donations, wrapped up with the traditional serving of bull and bread: beef, potato stuffing, rolls and gravy, accompanied by taddy, a citrus drink made from sour oranges and limes.