Article

  • Postal Unions Battle Cuts to Jobs, Service
    David Yao
    Nov 3 2009 - 1:13am

    The Postal Service, in a financial crunch that threatens both jobs and service to the public, is looking to Congress for help. If postal unions want to avoid the auto workers’ fate, they need to find allies and make their case publicly.

  • Mexican Electrical Workers Hold Out Against Government Raid
    Labor Notes staff
    Nov 20 2009 - 12:01am

    “The Mexican Government has declared war on the union movement,” according to Margarita de la Cruz, a leader of the Mexican Electrical Workers. Last month, 500 federal police seized 100 power facilities around Mexico City in a move to fire workers, privatize the industry, and outlaw the union that represented 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers.

  • 10-Week Chicago Teamsters Strike Wins Back Health Care
    Enku Ide
    Nov 5 2009 - 4:43pm

    When SK Hand Tools in Chicago unilaterally dropped health insurance and tried to strip pensions and cut pay, workers headed to picket lines. Now they're returning to work after 10 weeks on strike, having saved their health care and pensions.

  • Harvard Workers Fight Layoffs
    Joshua Koritz
    Nov 1 2009 - 1:05am
    ** Print only

    In spite of a massive endowment—still valued at $26 billion despite the stock-market slide—Harvard has laid off between 200 and 500 clerical, technical, and janitorial workers, many of them union members. The school is hinting at another round of layoffs this winter.

  • Kraft Foods Workers in Argentina Occupy Factory
    Daniel Ximenez
    Oct 30 2009 - 3:47pm

    In the Kraft Foods factory north of Buenos Aires, management touched off a firestorm of worker discontent that included a 38-day sit-in, a police attack, and marches of thousands of supporters.

  • "We Had Royal Mail, and We Let It Go"… But Not This Time
    Sheila Cohen
    Oct 30 2009 - 10:19am

    Following strikes in 2007, UK postal workers are walking out again over pay cuts, speed up, and government privatization schemes—77,000 mail carriers will walk out on October 31.

  • Labor Anti-War Group Refocuses on Afghanistan
    Jane Slaughter
    Oct 29 2009 - 1:04am

    U.S. Labor Against the War is preparing for its third national assembly in December as the original motivation for its founding—the Iraq war—is winding down to a more limited but permanent presence. No worries that the nearly seven-year-old USLAW coalition has outlived its usefulness, though: delegates to the Chicago meeting will debate the Afghanistan war.

  • UNITE HERE Won't Concede to Big Hotels
    Paul Abowd
    Oct 28 2009 - 10:22am

    UNITE HERE has launched another round of contract battles with hotel giants. After civil disobedience actions workers in Chicago and San Francisco authorized strikes, escalating a nationally coordinated “bargain to organize” campaign.

  • Philadelphia Museum Guards Finally Win Their Own Union
    Warren Davis
    Oct 27 2009 - 1:00am

    Seventeen years after security guards at Philadelphia’s Museum of Art lost their union in a Democratic mayor’s privatization spree, they joined students and Jobs with Justice to beat long odds and vote in an independent union.

  • Mexican Electrical Union Calls for National Strike
    Dan La Botz
    Oct 24 2009 - 1:12am

    Leaders of the besieged Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) are calling on other unions throughout Mexico to mount a national strike to force the government to revoke its liquidation of the Light and Power Company. The union called for a strike after walking out of negotiations with the government, talks leaders characterized as a “farce.”