The lockout-and the Taft-Hartley injunction that followed-were long planned. First the Pacific Maritime Association locked out all dockworkers on the West Coast for 36 hours. When we went back to work on September 29, we had a large backlog of work-so the employers stated that productivity was too low and accused the union of slowing down. That afternoon the companies locked out the union for the second time...
Looking back at the events of the past few months, it’s hard not to conclude that the West Coast longshore employers had a plan from the beginning that led directly to Taft-Hartley. Taft-Hartley gets the government to enforce a strike-free situation, without slowdowns, through an 80-day cooling-off period-and the Pacific Maritime Association’s most profitable time of the year...
In early October, one United Auto Workers international representative and two former UAW Local 594 officials pleaded not guilty to federal charges of extortion, mail fraud, and violating federal labor laws...
Immediately after the events of September 11 many American union leaders and workers lined up in favor of a war on terrorism. Support for war remained fairly high across the board as U.S. forces entered into a quick military campaign in Afghanistan...
Immédiatement après les événements du 11 septembre, de nombreux syndicalistes et leaders syndicaux se sont déclarés en faveur de la guerre contre le terrorisme, et le soutien syndical à cette politique est resté assez important lors de l'intervention rapide des forces américaines en Afghanistan...
Before his passing on October 5, I had the opportunity, during the late July Labor Party Convention, to visit with my union brother, mentor, and friend Tony Mazzocchi. Tony was lying on a sofa in his room in great pain, but he held off on seeking pain relief from his pancreatic cancer, as he was surrounded by friends and family and did not want to cloud his senses...
Power in the workplace itself. That is the underlying issue in the West Coast longshore struggle and facing most other unions across the world. Unfortunately, unions don’t like to talk about their members having power; they fear that power plays negatively in the media, so they paint a picture of “workers as victims” instead...
On October 1, production workers at the three Toledo Jeep plants in UAW Local 12 voted 57%-43% in favor of a one-year contract with DaimlerChrysler (DCX). Skilled trades workers, however, narrowly rejected the contract and sank the skilled trades supplement...
In the 1980 Presidential debates, Ronald Reagan asked the memorable question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Over twenty years later, and almost two years into the term of President George W. Bush, this question is still relevant. An analysis of current indicators of the nation's social and economic well-being shows that many are again declining...
It's easy to see from Dan McCarthy's article in the September 2002 issue that the Labor Party is smaller than it was. I was present at both the Cleveland and Pittsburgh conventions in 1996 and 1998, and the 1,400 and 1,200 delegates present at those meetings was pretty impressive. I was a little sad, but not surprised, to read of the shrunken (500) turnout at the convention in Washington, D.C...
Un millier d'employés grévistes, ignorant les fonctionnaires de police d'Oakland, ont dansé sur les quatre voies d'une rue du centre-ville au son de "We are Family" et de "Respect" d'Aretha Franklin. Ces chansons ont bien résumé ce que nous nous étions enseigné, nous, le personnel, les étudiants et l'administration de l'Université de Californie (UC), le plus grand système universitaire public du pays. Nous étions devant le bureau de Richard Atkinson, président de l'UC, aussi nous pouvons espérer qu'il a reçu le message...
The leadership of the AFL-CIO has emphasized the importance of organizing the unorganized and has brought much needed energy and youth to the movement. But the speed at which organizing programs have expanded has resulted in over-reliance on a staff-intensive, “organize-from-the-outside” model. And the AFL-CIO appears to be promoting this model by championing campaigns that use it. . . .
Last summer, 430 mostly women African-American, Latino, Haitian, and African immigrant workers at Chrill, a non-profit homecare agency in Newark, decided that $6.50 was not enough and that they wanted health benefits and respect. They began organizing a union with AFSCME. . . .
