Troublemakers Blog

March 18, 2010 /
The victory was so beautiful it deserved a poem--even a rap. In December 2008, just a few weeks after Barack Obama’s election, the United Food and Commercial Workers won one of the largest union elections in decades at the Smithfield Foods pig slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North »
March 17, 2010 / Jane Slaughter
Electrical utility workers in Mexico called for a national strike yesterday to support their fight against the liquidation of their company, and some of the country’s more militant unions responded—including by blocking highways. Police responded with tear gas and »
March 16, 2010 / Jane Slaughter
It was a day like today—60s and sunny, decades ago—when I swung from the top of a telephone pole and thought I had the best job in the world. A few months earlier, in the Detroit winter, not so much. I remember phoning a customer from the pole behind her house and hearing her tell me she could see a man working on the pole back there. When I visited another »
March 10, 2010 / Jane Slaughter
When I told friends I was on my way to the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference, held last weekend, they all said, “I bet that’ll be a bunch of long faces.” I predicted not—these were people who’d always known the health care reform debate in Congress would come up short. Yet the 124 »
March 09, 2010 /
As health insurance lobbyists holed up in the Ritz-Carlton behind dozens of police in riot gear, thousands of health care activists surrounded the downtown D.C. hotel in a peaceful but pointed demonstration of anger and support for health care reform. »
March 08, 2010 /
Picking up on more March 4 creativity: 75 students from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, organized a funeral for public education March 4 in concert with the massive protests in California schools and on other campuses around the country. After the wake, they »
March 08, 2010 /
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's decision to close at least 19 schools in the city has not been well received. An unprecedented number of schools were slated for “phase-out” in late 2009 by the Department of Education—a gradual closing that takes several years while a school stops accepting new students. Thousands of »
March 04, 2010 / Mischa Gaus
“You’re the ringleader—the main problem.” That’s what Frank Buonvicino said managers told him as they fired him Monday. Buonvicino and 13 other union supporters at a Staten Island call center that handles complaints and inquiries for the E-Z Pass toll system were called in one by one and fired. He and his union are calling on you to help. »
March 03, 2010 / Mischa Gaus
GritTV reports on the arrest of owner of a New York boutique chain last week, charges that grew from a union-backed drive to remake retail by attacking its worst employers. (See this Labor Notes story for more on that). »
March 03, 2010 /
It is true what they say: no words or photos can describe the enormity of what we saw in Haiti. Nine of us nurses, eight from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, just spent 10 days here volunteering at the public hospital in Port au Prince, working the night shifts. »

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