Cleveland, a small town with less than 1,000 residents in western North Carolina, is an unlikely home for an active autoworkers’ union. . . .

TV lovers get ready for more re-runs ahead. On November 5 more than 12,000 television and screenwriters, members of the Writers Guild of America, traded in their pens for picket signs. Industry insiders predict the strike could last well into 2008, and writers are preparing for a long battle. . . .

In mid-November Teamsters at United Parcel Service approved a controversial five-year agreement, more than eight months before the expiration of their current contract. . . .

The Canadian Auto Workers unveiled a plan in mid-October for organizing Magna, the largest automotive employer north of the border and a notoriously anti-union company. . . .

Tripping up an insurgent campaign among school aides, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 372 disqualified in mid-November a dissident candidate for the union’s executive board. . . .

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in August a policy that gave employers a freer hand to punish workers with mismatched social security numbers, a committee of unions, workers’ centers, and immigrant rights groups in Chicago swung into action. . . .

Mike Konopacki. Click for pop-up.

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in August a policy that gave employers a freer hand to punish workers with mismatched social security numbers, a committee of unions, workers’ centers, and immigrant rights groups in Chicago swung into action.

North Carolina is under new scrutiny for its poor labor standards, this time from a foreign government. Under a side accord in NAFTA called the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, the Mexican government is challenging the state to implement collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. It has also requested a progress report on a recent inquiry by the International Labor Organization (ILO) into the state’s prohibition against bargaining.

Earlier this year, the ILO ruled that North Carolina’s failure to comply with “freedom of association principles...has resulted in grievous working conditions for many public sector workers.” It called on the U.S. to ratify and adhere to the ILO’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which includes collective bargaining.

Thousands of Pakistani citizens have been arrested for joining widespread protests against the declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan. When President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution, fired supreme court judges, and enacted martial law in early November, crackdowns on labor ensued as well.

Two days after the decree, outspoken union leader Rana Ayub Aki was arrested and jailed. Aki is the leader of the 130,000-strong union inside the Pakistani Water and Development Authority. In the wake of these crackdowns, many labor leaders are being forced into hiding.

Union members and other activists organized a protest in early November at the Karachi Press Club, where police violently disrupted the gathering and arrested journalists, lawyers, and two labor leaders. One, Liaqat Ali Sahi, a leader at the State Bank of Pakistan and in the Hotel Workers Solidarity Committee, has been charged with treason for calling for the return of democracy at the November 5 rally. Musharraf’s emergency rule has given military courts the power to try civilians, and Sahi and three others face the death penalty.