legislation and politics

  • Labor Rallies for Health Care Reform, but Keeps it Vague
    Jane Slaughter
    Jul 15 2009 - 1:56pm

    It’s no secret that the union movement is divided on health care reform. Resolutions favoring “Medicare for All,” a single-payer system, have been passed by 558 unions, central labor councils, state federations, and other union organizations. Yet in practice leaders of many of those same unions have acted as if actual single-payer legislation (Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703) didn’t exist.

  • Viewpoint: What Way Forward for Immigration Reform?

    Author(s):
    Christine Neumann-Ortiz

    Excerpt:
    Labor's new position on immigration is a step forward, although some details are problematic. The bigger questions are whether a legalization will be tied to citizenship, and whether labor and immigrant coalitions can force the administration to rethink our disastrous trade policies.

    Available Online:
    Yes

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

    Author(s):
    Mischa Gaus

    Excerpt:
    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. . . .

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • Can Unions Win Without the Employee Free Choice Act?

    Author(s):
    Labor Notes Staff

    Excerpt:
    Majority sign-up ("card check") would have sped the UFCW's 15-year organizing drive at Smithfield. But they won without it--in an election run under even better rules than EFCA would provide. . . .

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • Employee Free Choice Act: Fight of a Lifetime?

    Author(s):
    Jane Slaughter

    Excerpt:
    Nobody wants to say it on the record, but the buzz is we won’t get the Employee Free Choice Act in its current form. It’s possible to admire labor’s efforts for two million petition signatures for EFCA and still ask, if this is the fight of a lifetime, why aren’t we acting like it? Could the energy unions channeled for Obama last fall be reawakened for creative actions in 2009? . . .

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • District of Columbia Nears Vote Requiring Employers To Provide Paid Sick Leave

    Author(s):
    Karen Minatelli, Ruth Castel-Branco

    Excerpt:
    It could have been an episode of “ER” or “House”: a popular patient battles against the odds, survives a near-death experience to triumph in the end, but still faces challenges in the next episode. . . .

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • GOP Election Victory Opens Door for Intensified Anti-Worker Offensive

    Author(s):
    Justin Jackson and Chris Kutalik

    Excerpt:
    This fall the AFL-CIO kicked its election strategy into full gear. Promising “No More Business As Usual” for candidates who refused to embrace labor’s issues, the federation committed massive amounts of cash and manpower to mostly Democratic Party candidates.
    That support failed to push the Democrats to victory on Election Day. Reports from Washington indicate that GOP leaders are planning new attacks on unions and a revival of old anti-labor legislative assaults either delayed or partially implemented in the past decade.

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • What If Citizens Got To Decide the City Budget? Brazil’s Workers Party Tries "Participatory Budgeting"

    Author(s):
    Micah Maidenberg

    Excerpt:
    Brazil will vote for a new president October 6. If the Workers Party (or PT, for Partido dos Trabahadores) wins, South America’s largest country will be governed by a party that was created by the labor movement and dedicated to building movements of workers and the poor...

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • Politically-Connected Businessman Profits from ‘Guest Worker’ Program Braceros in Detroit?

    Author(s):
    Elena Herrada

    Excerpt:
    We should never be surprised by what campaign contributions and political connections can accomplish. In Detroit, they allowed a company to fire union workers and replace them with immigrants brought into this country under false pretenses-and then subject the new workers to horrible living conditions...

    Available Online:
    Yes

  • NAFTA Labor Black Hole Lessons for the Fast Track Debate

    Author(s):
    by Sarah Anderson

    Excerpt:
    Five years ago, Mexican workers at two factories in Tamaulipas state owned by U.S.-based Breed Technologies initiated a work stoppage to protest unsafe working conditions. Workers in these two plants, called Customtrim and Autotrim, glue and sew leather around automobile steering wheels and gear shifts. As a result of poor ventilation and the fast pace of work, illnesses and injuries are extremely common. Plant managers, however, tell disabled employees, known as "jonkeados" (junked workers), that their problems are merely psychological...

    Available Online:
    Yes