Five months ago, it seemed possible that the living wage movement which has been sweeping the country over the past eight years would wind down. In the post-September 11 world, with a recession hitting state and city budgets, it seemed possible that coalitions would have a harder time winning legislation aimed at raising wages...
A conference of 50,000 people? That’s how many activists gathered in Porto Alegre, Brazil in February to participate in the second annual World Social Forum...
Labor was handed (and missed) a tremendous opportunity in February when the World Economic Forum met in New York. The forum, an exclusive annual gathering of corporate and political leaders,normally meets in Davos, Switzerland. Protests led by global justice activists forced the WEF out of the Alps and into the corporate valleys of Manhattan this year...
Imagine a radio news network run by its rank and file, where employees and supporters determine network policy. Imagine that this network broadcasts stories that affect working people, about labor disputes and corporate mismanagement, rather than stories that suit the interests of advertisers and investors...
Hundreds of workers employed by private mail hauler Pat Salmon & Sons struck on December 11, in an unfair labor practices strike to pressure the company to come to a first contract with the American Postal Workers Union. A strong majority of drivers struck every one of Salmon’s terminals in Albuquerque, Little Rock, Shreveport, and Memphis just as the Christmas mail crunch was beginning...
Who’s the corporation that went belly-up?
It’s Enron-ron-ron, it’s Enron-ron.
Employees and investors all are out of luck,
It’s Enron-ron-ron, it’s Enron-ron.
Yeah, those millionaires
All cashed in their shares.
A real bankrupt affair,
It’s Enron-ron-ron, it’s Enron-ron.
So much comes together in the Enron story--deregulation, New Economy fantasies, the links between business and government, the increased role for the stock market in the running of big corporations, professional corruption. It should be read as the failure not of just one firm, but of a whole set of assumptions about how the economy should be run...
As of October 2001, thousands of poor families were removed from the welfare rolls permanently, to seek economic support on their own. As welfare “reform” moves into its next phase, some unions are seeing opportunities for organizing...
Dissident officers and members of AFSCME Local 420 in New York have come together as the Workers-4-Workers caucus to challenge a leadership they say is guilty of financial irresponsibility and neglect of intolerable working conditions in the city's public hospitals and clinics...
Fifty Delta Airlines flight attendants gathered with members and organizers from the Association of Flight Attendants at the National Mediation Board (NMB) February 1, to witness the vote count for their union representation election. The vote capped a four-year campaign among Delta’s 19,033 flight attendants. It was the largest private sector union election in over 30 years and the largest in the history of the Railway Labor Act (RLA)...
Il y a cinq mois, il semblait possible que le "Mouvement pour un salaire décent" (Living Wage Movement) qui s'est répandu dans le pays au cours de huit dernières années, s'essoufflerait. Dans le monde de l'après-11 septembre, avec une récession frappant les budgets des États et des villes, il apparaissait que les coalitions auraient plus de difficultés à faire voter des législations visant à hausser les salaires...
