outsourcing

  • Living Wage Laws: Worth the Effort?
    Stephanie Luce
    Feb 27 2012 - 9:41am

    Activists have won more than 125 living wage ordinances in cities and counties, and state and federal minimum wage increases. Yet the number of workers earning poverty wages remains as high as ever. Are the laws worth the effort?

  • Koreans Brave Pepper Spray, Thugs to Rally at Crane Sit-In

    About 15,000 rallied in the South Korean port city of Busan last weekend to support a woman welder whose lone sit-in atop a shipyard crane has lasted 208 days.

  • New York’s $600 Million Fraud Shows Privatization Doesn’t Pay
    Mischa Gaus
    Jul 27 2011 - 12:09pm

    How did New York City plan to prevent time theft by city workers? By hiring contractors who would, it turns out, steal $600 million. One of their crimes, prosecutors allege, was to file bogus timesheets.

  • VIDEO: NLRB Slaps Boeing for Punishing Strikers

    The National Labor Relations Board told Boeing this week that it can’t retaliate against workers who exercise their right to strike, a fundamental right guaranteed by labor law for 80 years. The airplane manufacturer took work away from union shops in Washington state, shifting its production to right-to-work South Carolina, where executives had already crushed the Machinists union.

  • Bus Drivers Win First Contract After Strike and Lockout at University of Alabama
    By Jake DaSilva
    Mar 9 2010 - 6:40pm

    Bus drivers at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa won a first contract after they were locked out last week following a one-day strike. The deal secures a $1.50 an hour raise and employment security, key sticking points that led to the strike. The drivers endured nine months of bargaining where their employer—a contractor—demanded at-will employment and frozen wages.

  • Machinists Size Up Boeing's No-Strike Demand
    Tiffany Ten Eyck
    Oct 27 2009 - 10:26pm
    ** Print only

    After years of struggling to get its new 787 Dreamliner aloft, Boeing Co. is still mired in malfunction. Company execs are using their missteps as an excuse to seek a no-strike clause and to move some production out of Washington state, where the Machinists union (IAM) represents the workforce.

  • Boston-area Workers to March and Rally against "Jobless Recovery"
    Rand Wilson
    Sep 26 2009 - 10:44pm

    With the Massachusetts jobless rate now at 9.1 percent and rising, workers are increasingly frustrated by employers exploiting the recession to attack them, and the failure of politicians and policy makers to address the growing jobs crisis.

  • Despite Layoffs, Bailed-Out Banks Hire Contractors on Visas

    Mischa Gaus

    Bailed-out banks are driving down tech workers’ wages and stoking anti-immigrant hostilities by replacing entire departments of local techies with foreign-born workers on visas—all while laying off tens of thousands of workers. . . .


    Yes
  • 'Why Privatize? We Can Run It Better!'

    Author(s):
    Dave Cohen

    Excerpt:

    That’s the question United Electrical Workers Local 274 and the Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) asked when their wastewater treatment plant was threatened with privatization....

    Body:

    “Why privatize? We can run it better!” That’s the question United Electrical Workers Local 274 and the Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) asked when their wastewater treatment plant was threatened with privatization.

    The city council—called a Selectboard—in Montague, Massachusetts, a town of 8,500 in the western part of the state, was concerned about the treatment plant because it had lost a large industrial customer. But the Selectboard never thought to ask the people who worked there what to do.

    Instead, it solicited bids to privatize the plant in hopes of saving the town money. Soon four companies had handed in proposals, most of which promised big savings. Because of intense pressure from union members, none of the proposals called for layoffs or wage cuts (except, perhaps, cuts in management).

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • GE Workers Strike Against Globalization

    Alexandra Brown Executive Board, IUE-CWA Local 201

    In the latest skirmish in its battle against General Electric’s globalization strategy and destruction of members’ jobs, for four days in late October Local 201 of the International Electronic Workers-Communications Workers struck GE’s Lynn, Massachusetts plant, which makes engines for jet fighters.


    Yes