Paper mills dumping their employees has taken a toll on the lives of the type of people who are casual political voters and will make Wisconsin a landslide win for Obama.

From the Wisconsin Rapids area to Wausau to Green Bay-Appleton, 1,000s of millworkers are seeing how valued their labor and their lives are in 21st century America capitalism and world trade.

Jerks like McCain owning 13 cars and nine houses don't get it as he offers the option of buying health insurance fired workers cannot afford, and then slashing their unemployment benefits, while blasting the notion that Americans buy products produced by American labor.

I don't think McCain has any idea the destruction that losing one's job can cause, which is why I feel that Ohio and Pennsylvania will join Wisconsin in telling McCain and the Republicans to go to hell.

Walter Shapiro has an article in Salon reporting from Green Bay:

How about no more air-trips to Turkey for the Esperanza Unita's executive director, Robert Miranda, until Esperanza Unita pays their workers?

From today's MJS: Esperanza Unida's payroll problems continue under Miranda's administration:

Mark Freund, a former welding instructor and manager at Esperanza Unida, said he wasn’t in a position not to get paid, or to get paid late.

Update - Kimberly’s last remaining paper mill closing, taking 475 jobs (July 31, 2008)

Great two-part series by Barry Adams in the Wisconsin State Journal, Paper mill jobs disappearing; stunned workers look for alternatives, and in this morning’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, we read the news, Midwest Airlines to cut 1,200 jobs.

I grew up in Wisconsin Rapids and spent two summers at a mill working as a summer replacement employee (SRE), when I was a student at UW-Madison.

It was work, and a 20-something art history undergraduate woman was not always treated with immense kindness by long-time colleagues.

But Adams' articles capture well the devastation wrought far and wide. Few who grew up in the Rap don’t know at least one friend or family member who hasn’t lost a job in the last several years.

Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Sue Ledbetter, Labor 2008 state director for Wisconsin, reports on a labor council meeting inMilwaukee.

This month, the Milwaukee Area Labor Council’s
monthly delegate meeting featured a special economic forum panel discussion introduced by council Secretary-Treasurer Sheila Cochran: “Wrong Directions for the Economy.”