Subjects Archives: Labor

Today’s critical labor struggles revolve around immigrants’ rights, while today’s struggles over immigrants’ rights are grounded in workplace and labor organizing.  Global, national, and local histories have woven these issues tightly together.  In the U.S. we are seeing the beginnings of a multifaceted movement which engages these dynamically linked histories. Twenty-five years ago, U.S. labor […]

  The 21 year old social partnership pact between unions, employers and the Government in Ireland is entering one of its periodic crises as one national pay agreement Towards 2016 begins to run out and talks on a successor have collapsed. The Government is expected to attempt resuscitation in late August or early September, writes Padraig […]

Returning to school after winter break, Austin Garrido found that Uloop, an online marketplace for college students, had cut his hourly pay.  Elsewhere on the University of California-Polytechnic’s campus in Pomona, his co-worker Sarah Doolittle also discovered a light paycheck. Unhappy about $8 an hour and shrunken bonuses from the Craigslist-type outfit, the two posted […]

This video is an edited part of a 60 minute labor TV show the Labor Video Project is producing on the 2008 SEIU convention in Puerto Rico.  To find out more about the issue of the Puerto Rican teachers and the struggle against privatization you can go to: www.fmprlucha.org mysite.verizon.net/vze2kxcd/fmprsupportcommitteenewyork/ www.coordinadorasindical.org/ www.utier.org/estructuras/index.php More Videos about […]

  Introduction by Michael D. Yates Over the past several years, a vigorous debate has taken place within organized labor and among its allies over how best to rebuild a dying labor movement.  Much of the is debate has centered around the actions and arguments of the leaders of the nation’s largest union, The Service […]

  There is always something unsettling about people who say one thing and do another.  There is for one thing the hypocrisy.  Then, there is the uncertainty.  It only takes a few disappointments to sow the seeds of doubt about whether you can ever trust their judgement again or whether you can ever expect them […]

  The road from the airport to the hotel shows the story: modern buildings partly conceal dilapidated, crowded structures that seem on the verge of collapse.  Ancient jalopies chug along as if by inertia, while the latest luxury models zip past them.  Huge billboards advertise multinational corporations.  All this goes side by side with centuries-old […]

The Murphy Institute, The Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, and the Metro NY Labor Communications Council invite you to a Labor Breakfast Forum Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path toward Social Justice Featuring authorBill Fletcher, Jr. co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal past President of TransAfrica Forum […]

Solidarity Divided A Conversation and Book Signing with Bill Fletcher, Jr. Co-author of Solidarity Divided, University of California Press Date: Wed, June 18 Time: 6pm – 8pm Place: Busboys and Poetswww.busboysandpoets.com 2021 14th St NW Washington, DC 20009 Provoked by the continuing crisis of organized labor after the departure of the Change to Win coalition […]

  Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California, a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a […]

  As everybody in our country knows, the Congress of South African Trade Unions has been at the forefront of the campaign to create jobs and eradicate poverty.  For years we have fought to ensure that this struggle is taken seriously and remains at the centre of the national agenda. COSATU has done everything in […]

  See, also, Stephanie Luce, “Rebuilding Labor’s Power: There Are No Shortcuts,” MRZine, 2 May 2008. I feel sorry for Stephanie Luce and I don’t even know her. As I read her piece, dated April 22, “The Future of the Labor Movement? Reflections on the Labor Notes Conference,” I was surprised to learn that she […]

See, also, Stephanie Luce, “The Future of the Labor Movement? Reflections on the Labor Notes Conference,” MRZine, 22 April 2008; and Dave Regan, “Why We Demonstrated in Dearborn,” MRZine, 2 May 2008. I am not surprised Dave Regan doesn’t remember our argument.  I am sure he hears my concerns all the time, but the conversation […]

  (SAN FRANCISCO, CA) More than 25,000 longshore workers at 29 west coast ports are exercising their First Amendment rights today by taking a day off work and calling for an end to the war in Iraq. “Longshore workers are standing-down on the job and standing up for America,” said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath.  “We’re […]

After a sustained campaign in which police arrested two dozen non-violent protesters in downtown Davis, California, Sodexho food-service workers at UC Davis have won recognition as university employees.  The recent decision means that 200 career workers and 450 student workers will gain higher wages and better benefits as labor union members on the UC payroll.  […]

See, also, Dave Regan, “Why We Demonstrated in Dearborn,” MRZine, 2 May 2008; and Stephanie Luce, “Rebuilding Labor’s Power: There Are No Shortcuts,” MRZine, 2 May 2008. I had a fantastic time at the Labor Notes conference last weekend, and am eager to build on the new connections I made and campaigns I learned about. […]

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 […]