It’s no secret that the union movement is divided on health care reform. Resolutions favoring “Medicare for All,” a single-payer system, have been passed by 558 unions, central labor councils, state federations, and other union organizations. Yet in practice leaders of many of those same unions have acted as if actual single-payer legislation (Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703) didn’t exist.

Since the birth of television, Hollywood has given doctors a permanent starring role in prime-time hospital dramas. But most doctor shows have relegated the nation’s largest healthcare profession - nursing - to the status of bit players.

Many activists cast the battle between the National Union of Healthcare Workers and SEIU International as a struggle over the soul of unionism. Outspent by about 50 to 1, the new union narrowly lost its first major contest for 10,000 Fresno homecare workers.

We’ve gone from democracy to hypocrisy in California. Prior to February at Kaiser Santa Clara Medical Center we had labor unity. The 2,400-plus members understood the importance of union solidarity. All shop stewards were elected by the rank and file. Since that time, when our local, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW), was put under trusteeship by the Service Employees International (SEIU), our 60-plus shop steward council is down to just a handful.

Technology gives health care workers new tools to digitize medical records and locate supplies, but it also gives managers the ability to track workers. Increased monitoring means speed-up, harassment, and worse.

Sanitation workers in Charleston, South Carolina, are knocking on doors to drum up support for their battle to gain recognition for Local 1199B, part of the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare Employees-AFSCME.

Each year around budget time, Californians hear a familiar story from Sacramento: There’s another stalemate, because state law caps property tax rates and requires two-thirds of legislators to approve tax hikes.

Since workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago occupied their factory last December—and won—many people have been trying to remember the big wave of sit-downs that swept through the U.S. during the Great Depression. Could there be a similar wave today?

Outsized buttons proclaimed it “history in the making.” Indeed, nothing like it has been seen in the United States for decades. Over 1,500 union members gathered in Cleveland June 6-9 to found a labor party. A groundswell of interest in the last two months doubled the turn-out convention organizers had expected ….

It’s been three months since UNITE split from HERE, morphing into Workers United (WU) and affiliating with the Service Employees (SEIU). The battle, primarily over money and members, rages on after settlement talks fizzled in May and International President Bruce Raynor resigned from UNITE HERE. Three days later he took the top post at WU as the breakaway union fights for viability in court and in the shops.

What are the banks doing with our bailout billions? In a small factory in western Illinois, Wells Fargo has become a huge roadblock to economic recovery. Several hundred angry people shared their frustration with the bank, marching in the pouring rain June 11 at its Chicago offices.

Workers at Hart Marx clothing factories voted in May to occupy their plants if the company’s lenders tried to shutter the 127-year-old company. Hart Marx declared bankruptcy in January and its primary lender, Wells Fargo—a recipient of $25 billion in the taxpayer bailout—was eager to liquidate the firm.

As a state employee, a human service caseworker, I've gotten educated about Illinois's budget woes out of necessity. My job is to determine eligibility and serve people who are poor, disabled, or elderly and rely on state services--Medicaid and food stamps. More of us are in need of these services just as big business interests and their media mouthpieces launch another round of attacks on funding.

At the end of each day our hotline staff at the Illinois Hunger Coalition looked overwhelmed and sad, frustrated that they were barely keeping up with the volume of callers. The Hunger Hotline had been ringing persistently for nearly a month, as 1,300 households were given help in applying for food stamps or in tracking down their worker at the Department of Human Services because they had not received their desperately needed food stamps.

I was a student and aspiring labor journalist when I volunteered for picket duty with the locked-out workers from A.E. Staley Co., the giant corn processing plant in Decatur, Illinois. By then, 1994, the lockout was already months old and much of the action was taking place far away from the plant, as the “road warriors,” union members turned activists, crisscrossed the country to spread the word about the labor struggle that had turned their central Illinois town into a war zone.

The big turnout for Labor Notes’ three Troublemakers Schools in New York (March), Chicago (May), and the Bay Area (May) indicates that union members are hungry to find ways to resist the economic crisis. The schools were far bigger than any previous ones—drawing 225, 175, and 270 people, respectively.

Just because a job’s green doesn’t mean it’s good. With everything going green—if it really is—what does that mean for our workplaces? A union-backed report by Good Jobs First cautioned that job creation in the new “green economy” often means more low-wage, low-benefit work with companies hostile to unions.

There’s no rocket science to a contract campaign during a recession. But it is different. You can even come out the other side with a stronger union. Here are a few ideas on how.

Janitors in California’s SEIU Local 1877 are fighting tech giant Cisco Systems’ mass layoffs. Since February, the Cisco’s janitorial services contractor, American Building Management, has laid off 75 janitors, more than 40 percent of its workforce.

Most of the workers are low-income immigrants and mothers. Janitors still on the job are suffering as well, forced to assume higher workloads that threaten health and safety.

While employees at multinational oil producers in Algeria relax in air-conditioned shelters, workers at a catering contractor that serves them swelter in tents in the desert. The workers, employed by a subsidiary of the multinational Compass Group, have shifts that last six weeks without a day off.

They decided to create a union in 2006, but management disputed the union’s legitimacy despite initial support from 1,400 workers out of 1,800. They refused to permit meetings on company property, allowed by law.

On April 4, 2009, the contract covering 110,000 workers between CWA and AT&T expired. Bargaining continued while CWA members worked. The company booked a $12.9 billion profit the year before. Eighty-eight percent percent of voting members authorized a strike in late March. The previous negotiations, in 2004, led to a four-day strike. The union kept the pressure on with rallies and demonstrations, usually accompanied by this song.