On Monday, January 6, a seven-year-old boy was found dead in Newark, and his two brothers were found almost starved. These children had been under the protection of social workers with New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services......
Union members braved the blistering cold and the tragic death of a picketer in mid-January to launch the first national strike against General Electric in three decades. The two-day strike targeted company plans to shift health care costs onto workers......
For seven years, AFL-CIO leaders have jawboned unions to organize. The federation has directly funded more campaigns, helped train and recruit new organizers, and supported their work with abundant public relations-and still union membership declines. To address the crisis in organizing, the AFL-CIO convened a summit in Washington January 10-11. . . .
The U.S. labor movement got a brutal history lesson last October 8 when President Bush went to federal court for an injunction to end the employer lockout of the International Longshore Warehouse Union from West Coast ports. Many union members probably thought that Taft-Hartley was the name of an upscale clothing store or a venture capital firm.
I agree with much of Stephen Lerner’s analysis of labor’s woes and inability to organize. Yes, we need to focus on economically rational targets, to mobilize allies, to work together, to get a vision. But some of Lerner’s solutions seem doomed to make matters worse: member swapping, massive mergers, deferred democracy. . . .
In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan replaced thousands of air traffic controllers and threw their leaders in jail, the permanent replacement of strikers became a normal aspect of U.S. labor relations. Strikes became far riskier for workers than they'd been at any time since the turn of the century Labor relations are now undergoing a similar, equally profound change. West coast dockers have compared the new terrain they faced in bargaining their recent contract to negotiations in a barbed wire straitjacket. Although their union and the world's largest shipping companies reached agreement on a new pact in late November, the circumstances overshadowing the talks were a clear warning to the rest of labor throughout the country......
El 14 de diciembre, trabajadores de la limpieza de edificios en la región de Boston de SEIU Local 254, votaron por rechazar una propuesta de formar un nuevo local, así sorprendiendo a los administradores del local que habían avanzado el plan. Menos de 400 trabajadores de los 12,000 votaron; la baja concurrencia permitió que un pequeño grupo de miembros conservadores pudieron manejar el voto, 203-159......
The Congress of South African Trade Unions--the largest labor federation in South Africa -- was launched in 1985 at the height of a "state of emergency" imposed by the apartheid government. One of its founding principles was "One Industry, One Union" -- that unions should be organized to cover an entire industry and should not compete with each other. . . .
