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Labor: A Renewal of Solidarity and Struggle — or Continued Decline?
The following report on the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh is posted by Jerry Tucker, special correspondent to the Monthly Review and MRZine. Tucker is a former International Executive Board Member of the UAW and a founder of the New Directions Movement within that union. He is also a co-founder of the Center for Labor […]
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Liberalism’s Long Goodbye
Former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern‘s recent commentary on labor “The End of ‘More’” (Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2006), albeit apologetically, confirms that liberal orthodoxy is on the side of telling U.S. workers and working-class communities to quit struggling against the tide of “a new competitive reality.” But whose reality is […]
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A New Labor Federation Claims Its Space: If Enthusiasm on Display Were Substance, CtW Could Claim a Good Start
Jerry Tucker The founding convention of the Change-to-Win labor federation held in St. Louis on September 27, 2005 was, if nothing else, filled with enthusiasm and efficiently managed. The founding unions’ top leaders put forward a lean and specifically organizing-focused agenda, and it was adopted without even a hint of dissent. The longer-term question is […]
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A House Divided: For Better or Worse?
Note: this concluding report on the AFL-CIO Convention and events surrounding it will be offered in two parts. First, a summary and catch-up on certain events and impressions of the week in Chicago; second, an attempt to sort out and analyze these events, what they represent in a larger context, and what it all could […]
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Defeating Right-to-Work in Missouri, 1978: A Rank & File Victory
For students of the U.S. labor movement, searching the 1970s for meaningful working class victories can prove to be a tedious and frustrating task. During the tumultuous 1960s, U.S. labor, at best, offered benign neglect to the potentially transformational struggles of that era — Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War resistance, women’s rights, environmental, and other pivotal […]
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U.S. Labor in Crisis: The Current Internal Debate and the Role of Democracy in Its Revitalization
[The following is a speech delivered by Jerry Tucker on March 12, 2005 at the conference on “Work and Social Movements in the United States” at University of Paris – Sorbonne (March 10-12, 2005). Tucker will report daily on the AFL-CIO 2005 convention in Chicago on July 25-28. — Ed.] There is today a rare […]