The speech below was delivered by the President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), Dave Coles, to the labor breakfast titled “Confronting the Climate Crisis: Can Labor Help Shape an Effective Strategy?” held at the City University of New York on 17 January 2013. The obvious answer to the question […]
Subjects Archives: Labor
Revisiting Dust-Covered Dreams
Najaf, Iraq, November 11, 2012 I returned from Baghdad last night. Over coffee this morning, I filled the father of my host family in on my trip. I told him it was wonderful to see everyone, but I only heard sad stories. A few minutes ago a fierce wind rose, blowing the trees and […]
Remembering Jerry Tucker, Labor Leader and Educator
My friend and colleague of more than 25 years died today from pancreatic cancer. If you never had the privilege of meeting and working with Jerry Tucker, it is truly a shame. Rarely do we cross paths with someone who makes such a difference in our lives. Jerry was such a man. I first heard […]
Putting Out The Fire? Iraqi Labor Unions Throttled, During and After Occupation
In the wake of last year’s long overdue U.S. troop withdrawal, mainstream media coverage of Iraq has dwindled to near zero — except when there’s another suicide bombing (which usually merits just a paragraph or two in world news round-ups). The fate of costly U.S.-funded projects and institutions is little known or largely forgotten, $800 […]
Interview with Eduardo Galeano: “Two Centuries of Workers’ Conquests, Cast Into a Dustbin”
Montevideo From his usual table at Café Brasilero downtown, leaving the cold weather of southern winter outside its large window, Eduardo Galeano insists that “the grandeur of humanity lies in small things, quotidian things, done every day, what’s done by the nameless without knowing that they are doing it.” So, his answers mingle with […]
The Main Street Moment: Struggle in the Heartland
Oklahoma public-sector workers and activists speak out on the attacks on workers’ civil rights. Produced by the Labor Policy Institute of Oklahoma. | Print
Migrant Workers in Post-Gaddafi Libya
In Libya after Muammar Gaddafi, the situation of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa is worsening. Most of them had come to this rich African country looking for jobs. Now, thousands of them are arrested and taken to detention centers, where they are targeted for abuse by their captors, most of whom are illegal armed groups.
Attacks on Teachers, Airline Workers, and Public Pensions in Canada Highlight Need for a Fighting Labor Movement
A trend is taking hold across Canada of working class resistance to the capitalist crisis and attacks by governments and corporations on workers’ rights and the social wage. Library workers in the city of Toronto and transit and university workers in Halifax recently went on strike, as did daycare workers in Quebec. Workers at Air […]
Iran: Workers’ Victory at a Glance
Bucking the trend, Mahshahr petrochemical workers have shown that it is possible to win a major labor battle even in these times of lockouts, plant closures, and mass layoffs. Other unionists and labor activists are taking note. On January 9, several thousand contracting workers at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex and other nearby facilities in […]
The Longview Longshore Fight: Join the Caravan to Mass Labor Protest — Defend Our Union and Our Jobs!!!
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is waging a battle against union-busting. ILWU Local 21 in Longview, Washington is under attack by a giant consortium, EGT, which has built a $200 million grain terminal and is running it as a scab operation. This directly violates the port agreement with ILWU which has had jurisdiction […]
Labor Has a Legitimate Lien on Capital
When Steve Miller, the vulture capitalist who drove Delphi into the ditch of America’s dreams, declared, “Bankruptcy is a growth industry,” he was smiling, but he wasn’t joking. Bankruptcy in the US isn’t a sign of economic distress or mismanagement. It’s a business plan — calculated, cunning, and void of redeeming social value. American Airlines […]
Labor, Organized (#N17)
Thirty years before the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, President Reagan fired enough striking air traffic controllers to fill a protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge (11, 345 PATCO members, to be exact). And in the three decades since Reagan famously said “if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they […]
The Occupy Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement: An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub
The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world. The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for […]
Defend Occupy Oakland with the Muscle of Organized Labor
Demonstrators in downtown Oakland protesting the bank-driven economic crisis were brutally attacked by police from 18 Bay Area agencies on Tuesday Oct. 25. Mayor Quan, who was supported by ILWU Local 10 in the recent elections, ordered this bloody assault. Cops used potentially lethal weapons to break up the occupation of Frank Ogawa (now […]
#OWS, Times Square, and the Global Labor Movement
“I’m just a soccer mom. Well, a swimming mom, if you want to be exact.” This is how the middle-aged women holding up the “Worked 1973-2003” sign at Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street rally at Times Square described herself to me. She stood next to a young boy leaning against his dad, the son holding up […]
MINUSTAH: Keeping the Peace, or Conspiring against It?
Nou dwe sèl mèt bout tè sa a: We should be the only owners of this land. From an anti-MINUSTAH protest last month. Photo by Ansel Herz. This was Haitian protesters’ message at a demonstration last month against the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH. October marks an upswing […]
#OWS and the U.S. Labor Movement
If you go to Zuccotti Park looking for the U.S. labor movement, you might be disappointed. Other than a presence in the October 5 march and a series of public endorsements, you will find no purple SEIU banners, no occupiers in red & black UNITE-HERE t-shirts, no AFL-CIO booth at Liberty Plaza, and no permanent […]
Why TWU Local 100 Is Supporting Occupy Wall Street
The Transport Workers Union Local 100 applauds the courage of the young people on Wall Street who are dramatically demonstrating for what our position has been for some time: the shared sacrifice preached by government officials looks awfully like a one-way street. Workers and ordinary citizens are putting up all the sacrifice, and the […]
Labor’s Defeat in Wisconsin and the Specter of 2012
On March 9, 2011 Republicans at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin approved Governor Scott Walker’s bill ending most collective bargaining rights for union-organized state employees. The capitol had been occupied for over a month by unionists, students, and their supporters who were opposed to the bill. This was the first mass labor upsurge of […]
Obama’s Gift to Verizon: The Poison Pill in PPACA Used to Extract Concessions from Labor
Since Saturday night (August 6), 45,000 members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have been on strike from Massachusetts to Virginia — in the largest private sector work stoppage in the last seven years. Health care cost shifting is high on the list of givebacks demanded […]
