union democracy

  • After Winning Election, Hoffa Targets Teamsters’ Right to Vote
    Ken Paff
    Dec 28 2011 - 9:56am

    In the wake of the November Teamster election, top officials are calling for stripping members of their right to vote for president and international officers.

  • Cesar Chavez and the Enduring Poverty of Farmworkers

    Frank Bardacke's Trampling Out the Vintage explains better than any other book how the United Farm Workers under the leadership of Cesar Chavez rose in the 1960s to become one of the most remarkable and successful unions in U.S. history but then crashed and burned so breathtakingly fast that by 1990 it had essentially disappeared from the California fields.

  • Union Democracy in Iran: Is It Possible?

    In an eye-opening interview with Labor Notes about assaults on workers in Iran and their efforts to organize free trade unions, an organizer based in Tehran delves into the volatile situation for advocates of union democracy in a closed society.

  • Teamsters Election Supervisor Dings Hoffa for Attempted Bribes
    Jenny Brown
    Jan 26 2011 - 5:42pm

    Teamster officials in the James Hoffa, Jr. administration tried to bribe election opponents into supporting the Hoffa slate, according to the federally appointed supervisor of Teamster elections.

  • Reformers Win Round One in D.C. Teachers Election

    A slate of union reformers won a narrow victory Wednesday in the first round of a teachers’ union election in Washington, D.C. The election has far-reaching implications because the D.C. school district has been celebrated as a national model for the corporate version of school reform being carried out by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

  • Interview: Reformer Challenges Hoffa for Teamster Presidency
    Jane Slaughter
    Oct 11 2010 - 11:39am

    Sandy Pope, a local president in New York, announced she will run against James Hoffa for the presidency of the Teamsters, in a three-way race. Pope criticized Hoffa for bargaining weak contracts, and said the union needs to re-organize trucking.

  • ‘I had to come to California to help’

    Ed Sadlowski came very close to winning the presidency of the Steelworkers in 1977, running a campaign that galvanized rank-and-filers. Now "Oil Can Eddie" is in California, volunteering on the campaign of the National Union of Healthcare Workers to unseat the Service Employees at Kaiser Permanente—an effort to represent more than 43,000 workers.

  • Indianapolis GM Workers Resist Company, Union Pressure to Cut Pay

    What part of “NO” doesn’t Justin Norman understand? The CEO of JD Norman Industries is pleading with GM workers to accept his offer of a 50 percent pay cut—though they'd just booed his buddies off the stage two days before.

  • As NUHW Files For Huge Hospital Election, A Member Reflects on Labor's Civil War in California

    The National Union of Healthcare Workers is filing for an election today for 43,000 workers at the Kaiser Permanente health care system in California to decertify the Service Employees union (SEIU). A recently published book, Labor’s Civil War in California by Cal Winslow, tells the story of the fight between SEIU and NUHW.

  • Auto Workers Convention Fiddles While Union Burns
    Al Benchich
    Jun 18 2010 - 8:28am

    As the United Auto Workers’ Convention unfolds, it's painfully obvious that—despite facing the worst crisis in UAW history—keeping a death grip on power is more important to current leaders than debating the union's future.