Subjects Archives: Labor

The left press is buzzing about the SEIU disruption of the 2008 Labor Notes Conference in Detroit.  Perhaps lost, as a result, is the significance of this  event. This bi-annual labor activist conference has been taking place for almost 30 years now, and it provides a space for labor activists to meet and discuss all […]

  The Taft-Hartley mandatory Labor Board election is a steel trap.  It extinguishes the Constitutional right of free association for most workers most of the time.  It has effectively ended self-organization and the formation of new unions.  Tinkering with Board election procedures in an effort to revive the labor movement is exactly the wrong course […]

  Thirty-two years, one month, and ten days ago — on 16 February 1976 to be exact — bankers, industrialists, the Sociedad Rural, and other leading organizations of rural sectors initiated a strike in support of a coup d’état (known as the Bosses’ Apegé Lockout), anticipating the military revolt of 24 March, all with the […]

Is there anyone with a deeper knowledge of the contemporary American labor movement than Kim Moody?  He not only seems familiar with the strategies and outcomes of practically every strike and organizing drive of the last twenty years.  He also appears to know the status of each union local, large and small, as well as […]

New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel’s recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians — half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children — since February 27.

  Shahla Lahiji is the first Iranian woman who succeeded in getting a publisher’s license registered in her own name.  She founded Roshangaran and Women’s Studies, a publishing house, 23 years ago.  Lahiji sees herself in a kind of living history on the question of women’s labor, for her mother was the fifth woman who […]

THE MAN WHO HATED WORK AND LOVED LABOR by Les LeopoldBUY THIS BOOK I just finished reading Les Leopold’s biography of Tony Mazzocchi, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor.   I finished it in about a day.  It’s that kind of a read, an old-fashioned page turner for anyone interested in the working class […]

  “O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day“Help fund the good fight.   By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]

On October 9, the Oregon AFL-CIO passed a resolution opposing the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement and three other pending trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.  A state federation condemning a free trade deal would normally be an unremarkable event, except for the remarkable absence in the Peru case of a typically heavy-weight free […]

  THE BIG RED SONGBOOK Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Salvatore Salerno (eds.) BUY THIS BOOK The 2007 publication of The Big Red Songbook is long overdue.  Folklorist Archie Green has been in possession of 29 editions of the legendary Little Red Songbook of the IWW since Wobbly folklorist John Neuhaus entrusted them to […]

  On August 8, 2007 a German labor court in Nuremberg issued a temporary restraining order preventing a strike called by the GDL train drivers’ union, to the delight of the business press. The strike had been approved by a great majority of the train drivers, and was due to start on August 9th.  The state-owned […]

Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera.  One of them holds an automatic weapon.  John Lennon’s “Imagine” plays in the background.  This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by US soldiers stationed in Paraguay.  The video footage and other military activity in this heart of […]

LaborFest, held each July to honor the aspirations and struggles of working people, is a moveable feast that ranges across the San Francisco area and back and forth in time. Why San Francisco? San Francisco is union country and it is working people who established LaborFest and have hosted it for the past 14 years.  […]

1. Introduction: The War We are in the fight of our lives.  The hostile onslaught against U.S. labor that was launched after the Second World War and redoubled in the 1980s is entering a new phase that will profoundly influence the future of all working people in North America.  How we respond to this latest […]

The June 29 announcement of the approval of a wage-cutting agreement between Delphi Corporation, an auto parts manufacturing giant, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) means that U.S. labor has suffered yet another defeat in the ongoing war of attrition that is being waged against working people around the world. Details of the pact have […]

  On Wednesday, June 6, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a sweep of homes in New Haven, Connecticut.  They arrested 33 immigrant workers and set off a series of mass protests calling for the release of detainees and an immediate halt to federal raids.  On Saturday, June 16, a mass mobilization […]

  The Center for Labor Renewal was conceived in 2005 when the national U.S. labor union leadership was engaging in a ‘debate’ which largely ignored the fundamental crisis of our nation’s working class.  It was launched in the Spring of 2006 following a meeting of activists from unions, worker centers, educators, and working class organizations […]

  Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard are performing three different and sometimes discordant tunes as they ride high in the polls and promote their industrial relations policy.  This is not just a matter of vote maximising; it tells us a lot about the nature and transformation of the Australian Labor […]

When I ask Canadian trade unionists and activists fighting against lower labor and social standards about their political vision, they often refer to European welfare states, notably Sweden.  The Swedish social system, their reference implies, proves that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal politics of boosting profits at the expense of working people.  It […]

In the 1980s, the right wing began its media blitz and has kept it up since then, but the labor movement has failed to match it or even develop a minimal communications network to reach union and non-union workers with information crucial to their wellbeing.  The movement has no national newspaper or magazine and no […]