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As politicians pursued voters and media coverage around the country this Fall, labor’s most voluble and highly visible national spokesperson was out on the hustings as well. A non-candidate himself — at least for now — Service Employees President Andy Stern had a new book to promote...

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As 15,000 Steelworkers (USW) members entered their third month of striking Goodyear Tire and Rubber, company claims about the strike’s impact seemed to crack wide open....

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This August, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), a network of over 140 worker centers that organize mostly immigrant day laborers, entered into an agreement that would allow worker centers to apply for membership with local and state federations of the AFL-CIO. The agreement could signal a new chapter in the way organized labor relates to low-wage and immigrant workers....

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Thousands of New Jersey schoolchildren got an unexpected holiday December 11, as teachers joined with firefighters and other public employees in a massive rally at the statehouse in Trenton....

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Over 200 activists from 45 local unions, regional bodies, and national unions met in Cleveland December 1-3 at the U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) Assembly and Conference. They spent the weekend making plans to increase labor’s campaign to end the war and occupation in Iraq. . . .

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I work at the Tar Heel, North Carolina plant, the largest pork processing plant in the world, where we process 32,000 hogs a day.

Every day I see my fellow workers forced to toil in dangerous, inhumane conditions. We are often injured severely and when we are, if we can’t work any more, we are fired. Many of my colleagues have been denied workers compensation by the company and our towns are filled with families devastated because the main breadwinner is crippled for life.

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Labor Notes spoke with Leonard Riley and Tony Perlstein, co-chairs of the Longshore Workers Coalition, a reform group in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). Riley is from ILA Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina and Perlstein is from Local 1588 in Bayonne, New Jersey. . . .

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Members of the Service Employees (SEIU) in Northern California are demanding just immigration reform. That’s not too surprising. For the past two decades, SEIU has been one of organized labor’s strongest advocates for immigrant rights. . . .

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Sixty labor, immigrant rights, and Latino community activists picketed in front of Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Detroit on December 15. The picket was organized by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Latinos Unidos, Centro Obrero, and other Detroit-area groups to protest federal raids on immigrant workers at six meatpacking plants. Similar protests were reported in California, Nebraska, Iowa, and elsewhere.

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Jim Randels has been a high school teacher in New Orleans since 1984. A former New Orleans Teacher of the Year, Randels is also a board member of United Teachers of New Orleans (American Federation of Teachers Local 527). . . .

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After a month of escalating actions, 5,300 janitors in Houston, organized by the Service Employees (SEIU), secured a first contract with five of the city’s biggest cleaning companies on November 20. . . .

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Workers represented by three different unions (the ABVV/FGTB, CGSLB, and the CSC) walked off of the night shift of Volkswagen’s (VW) Brussels plant in Belgium on November 17 to protest the elimination of 3,500 jobs and the probable closure of the plant. After four days of picketing outside the factory doors, workers marched inside to occupy the factory. . . .

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This was the third year that I joined with people from all over the country at Fort Benning, Georgia to demand the closing of the School of the Americas (SOA). This year’s demonstration was the largest, with an estimated 22,000 demonstrators. . . .

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Since Colombian workers at food giant Nestlé formed their union, SINALTRAINAL, in 1982, eight Nestlé employees have been murdered for union activity. Hundreds of other Nestlé workers have been victims of death threats, kidnapping, torture, and imprisonment. . . .

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Some problems are so big that it takes more than a good stewards council to solve them. Budget shortfalls, outsourcing, business closings, political corruption, health care and education crises, the war—you need a lot of clout to take on these types of issues. . . .

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Some problems are so big that it takes more than a good stewards council to solve them. Budget shortfalls, outsourcing, business closings, political corruption, health care and education crises, the war—you need a lot of clout to take on these types of issues.

On its own, even a strong stewards council doesn’t have this power, but it can provide a solid foundation for building campaigns around these problems. To take on bigger problems, labor needs to reach out to local communities, and stewards councils can serve as the spark behind community-labor coalitions.

BUDGET CRISIS

For many years there has been a budget crisis in Los Angeles County, but in 2002, it reached a breaking point. The county announced that due to the big budget shortfall ($700 million in the Department of Health Services alone) it was going to close all 28 county health clinics, shut three hospital emergency rooms, close two hospitals, and lay off 8,000 health workers.

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United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) activists at the world’s largest hog slaughterhouse are asking supporters to host a “Smithfield-Free Holiday Party.” At these parties, both the host and guests should refuse to purchase pork from the Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, where workers have been struggling for the last decade to organize a union.

In November, over 1,000 Smithfield employees at the Tar Heel plant staged a two-day walk out following the firing of 50 immigrant workers. This walkout was the latest in a series of actions led by Smithfield workers dissatisfied with unsafe working conditions, low pay, and abusive management.

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Strikers from Ben’s Delicatessen in Montreal held a demonstration December 5, complete with free, smoked meat sandwiches. 22 waiters, bus boys, and short-order cooks at Ben’s have been without a contract since February 2006 and on strike since July 20, shutting down the deli for more than five months.

They are demanding that Ben’s bargain fairly with their union, Syndicat des Travailleuses et Travailleurs de la Charcuterie Ben’s (CSN).

CSN is seeking a $.40 Cdn/per hour pay increase, retiree benefits, and severance pay. Strikers are also demanding air-conditioning and heating system repairs, as well as other workplace improvements. Ben’s management has refused to bargain with the union.

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Students at Purdue University began a hunger strike at the end of November, demanding that the university administration take steps toward becoming a “Sweat-Free Campus.” Currently, as is the case at many universities, Purdue apparel is made in nonunion shops that offer low wages and poor working conditions.

Purdue’s is one of many student campaigns across the U.S. encouraging university administrations to sign on to the Designated Supplier’s Program. The DSP is designed to monitor and enforce codes of conduct for companies that manufacture university apparel.

To pressure the Purdue administration to sign on to the DSP, 15 students at Purdue have been on a hunger strike for over 20 days. Tell Purdue President Martin Jischke to sign Purdue on to the Designated Suppliers Program and begin supporting unionized workers in sweat-free factories. Call 765-494-9708 or write to Jischke at Perdue Hunger Strikers. You can also sign an online petition supporting the strikers at Sweat-free Purdue Petition.

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Two Iranian labor activists, Seyed Davoud Razavi and Abdolreza Tarazi, were arrested while handing out union flyers at a bus station December 3 in the city of Khavaran. Mansour Osanloo, the president of their union, has been in prison since November 19. Osanloo was re-arrested after having recently spent seven months in the Evin Prison, which is notorious for torture. No public charges have been made against Osanloo, Razavi, or Tarazi, whose Union of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (UWTSBC) is not recognized by the Iranian government.

Ravayi and Tarazi are two of the fifty workers suspended from their company without pay since last year’s UWTSBC strike.