Labor and Politics

  • 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.

  • Mexican Government Prepares to Seize Power Stations and Break Electrical Workers Union
    Dan LaBotz
    Sep 29 2009 - 4:56pm

    The Mexican Preventive Police are preparing to occupy the facilities of the Central Light and Power Company in Mexico City in an attempt to break the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union.

  • Rallying for "Medicare for All," Union Activists Shift Focus to States
    Chris Garlock and Mischa Gaus
    Jul 31 2009 - 5:33pm

    In blazing midday heat in Upper Senate Park, a small but vocal crowd of about 1,000 sweated it out Thursday for single-payer health care. The rally was organized by Healthcare NOW to celebrate the 44th birthday of Medicare, the federally administered system of health insurance for the elderly.

  • 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.