The first week he was in New Orleans, Juan Sifford was recruited on a street corner to tear down a chain-link fence and dig up some bamboo roots. The contractor promised him and three other workers $100 each for the job...

The first week he was in New Orleans, Juan Sifford was recruited on a street corner to tear down a chain-link fence and dig up some bamboo roots. The contractor promised him and three other workers $100 each for the job.

When the work was done and the men piled back into the contractor's truck, he drove them to what Sifford calls "a really bad neighborhood. He climbs down off the truck and he gives us $120. Not individually, collectively. Then he showed me his sidearm."

The only thing unusual about Sifford's story is that he's not a Latino immigrant. He's a Black man from North Carolina, trying his luck as a day laborer on the street corners of post-flood New Orleans.

I ran for office to make changes in my union, the Municipal Employees Federation (MEF), one of 12 chapters that make up AFSCME Local 101 in Santa Clara County, California. I ran mainly because I was angry about 2005 contract negotiations, which were disorganized and chaotic...

I ran for office to make changes in my union, the Municipal Employees Federation (MEF), one of 12 chapters that make up AFSCME Local 101 in Santa Clara County, California. MEF represents workers at the City of San Jose. I ran mainly because I was angry about 2005 contract negotiations, which were disorganized and chaotic.

Labor Notes has been very helpful to me as both a member and an officer. I've used Labor Notes' monthly newsletter and various books that I've bought from Labor Notes to create an election strategy and run for office.

On August 29, 107 construction workers faced their first day of trial in Australian Federal Court. The workers face fines of up to $28,000 each for striking in support of their fired shop steward. Under new Australian labor laws, this strike was declared illegal. The government fines add up to over $ 2 million for these union workers. Many of the workers are now under the threat of losing their homes.

These 107 are among the first to face prosecution under Prime Minister John Howard’s new industrial relations laws. The workers struck last February on the construction site of the Perth Southern Railway.

Frontier Telephone workers in Georgia won union representation with the Communication Workers of America in April 2005. To this date, the workers (now members of CWA Local 3220) still don’t have a contract.

Frontier’s parent company, Citizens Communications, made over $56 million more in the second quarter of this year than last year and the company’s CEO made almost $4 million last year. Yet the company refuses to give its workers a fair contract.

In fact, the company’s latest demands include the right to outsource its entire workforce. Cable splicers, technicians, installers, and dispatchers in Statesboro, Georgia, face being entirely replaced by subcontractors. Already, most of the skilled unionized workers spend much time re-fixing and undoing subcontractor’s mistakes and errors.

At Elder Manufacturing, the company slogan is “Elderwear: We Care.” Elder produces uniforms at a factory in El Salvador. Recently, the company chose to shift its production to a new facility nearly two hours away from the current site. The company announced this to its employees on Friday and expected them to spend an extra four hours driving to and from work on the following Monday. In El Salvador the workers are entitled to severance pay, if they didn’t want to work at the new location.

The workers were infuriated. They had been paid 63 cents per hour and were fined an hour’s pay for every minute they were late. They demanded severance pay to which they are legally entitled under Salvadoran law. The company has responded by claiming the workers quit and therefore don’t qualify for severance pay. Management has also said that these workers will not be allowed to work at the new factory.

Starbucks has once again fired one of its workers for being a union activist. In early August, Starbucks barista Daniel Gross was fired for his union organizing, making Gross the fourth such firing in less than a year. Starbucks has been engaged in an illegal union busting campaign for over a year.

General Distribution Workers Industrial Union (IU) 660, the retail division of the Industrial Workers of the World, has been organizing baristas across the country. Daniel Gross, one of the founders of the Starbucks union, was allegedly fired, while at the picket line, for telling district manager Allison Marx that his co-worker and union brother should not be fired.