Labor Notes Magazine, November 2007, No. 344

Opposition Swells Against Concessionary Auto Contracts

-- Tiffany Ten Eyck and Chris Kutalik

Negotiations between the Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) were anything but predictable this year. Nationwide strikes at both General Motors and Chrysler, givebacks on an unprecedented scale, and the stirrings of a strong “vote no” opposition inside the union rocked the old auto pattern agreement playbook. . . . Read More

Staffing Ratios, Retiree Benefits Sticking Issues as California Nurses Strike Sutter Health

-- Eileen Prendiville, Mischa Gaus

Leading a strike that one hospital administrator said cost her $1 million a day, 5,000 registered nurses at 10 Northern California hospitals in the Sutter Health chain walked off their jobs for two days in mid-October. Five facilities locked out striking nurses for an additional one to three days when the strike, the largest among nurses in a decade, was over. Represented by the California Nurses Association. . . Read More

Farmworkers Target Tobacco Giant After Deaths in the Fields

-- Paul Abowd

Tobacco kills in many ways. Long before that first puff lies yet more lethality, hidden in the fields where the tobacco leaf is grown. Last year alone, heat stroke claimed nine North Carolina field workers. A new force is joining tobacco pickers as they go about their dangerous, backbreaking work, one that promises to organize the workers to change those conditions. . . . Read More

Viewpoint: One-Sided Class War: The UAW-GM 2007 Negotiations

-- Sam Gindin

In 1978, then United Auto Workers (UAW) President Douglas Fraser, frustrated with corporate America's new aggressiveness, accused employers of waging a "one-sided class war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society." In response, he warned, "we in the UAW intend to reforge the links with those who believe in struggle: the kind of people who sat-down in the factories in the 1930s and who marched in Selma in the 1960s." . . . . Read More

San Francisco: Security Guards Strike to End Double Standard in Pay, Benefits

-- Mark Brenner

Hawaiian Workers Fight Sexual Harassment, Poor Work Conditions at Military-Owned Hotel

-- Kari Lydersen

Peru Free Trade Agreement Faces Mixed Labor Response

-- Daniel Denvir

British Postal Strikes Aim To Stop Privatization

-- Dan Read

‘School-Based’ System Could Have National Repercussions: New York Teachers Union Accepts Merit Pay Deal

-- Mark Brenner

GM Contract Lowlights

-- Dianne Feeley, Tiffany Ten Eyck

Settlement Is Similar to Pre-Strike Offer: University Strikers Call Off Minnesota Walkout

-- Mischa Gaus

Using the Airwaves to Educate & Mobilize

-- Tiffany Ten Eyck

If you happen to be scanning the radio dial near two unique towns in the United States, you could stumble across something unusual: FM radio run by and for farmworkers. In Woodburn, Oregon and south central Florida, farmworkers have added low-power community radio to their organizing arsenal. . . . Read More