Labor Notes #368, November 2009

  • With Members Angry, Unions Sue to Stop Mandatory Vaccinations
    Mischa Gaus
    Nov 11 2009 - 1:17am

    A feverish anger rose this fall among New York's health care workers, the first in the nation required to take a flu shot. Health care union activists said union leaders were too timid responding to the mandate.

  • Classical Musicians Get Their Penguin Suits Dirty
    Barbara Zmich
    Nov 9 2009 - 1:16am

    The on-stage evening dress worn by musicians in unionized symphonies may be more frayed than it looks from far away. Musicians are banding together in a recession that's putting orchestras and union contracts under fire.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Trabajo en el Hotel
    Francisco Herrera
    Nov 1 2009 - 12:01am

    Honor Migrante is a musical narrative that tells the story of a community of proud immigrants whose voices are rarely heard publicly. Francisco Herrera is a soulful border musician/storyteller using the hybrid styles of the Chicano border community, a flexible cultural space that has maintained the spirit of mestizo identity in the midst of global cultural homogenization–further influenced by work in Central and South America.

  • 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.

  • Proving Disparate Treatment
    Robert Schwartz
    Oct 24 2009 - 1:15am

    Claiming “disparate treatment”—imposing harsher punishment on one employee than was imposed on others who committed the same offense—is one of the most effective union defenses against discipline, especially discharges.

  • 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.”