Troublemakers Blog
January 03, 2011 / Dan La Botz
Mexico’s drug war—with a total of 31,000 deaths since December 2006—has wreaked havoc on workers, their communities, and their workplaces. While the victims are principally drug dealers, police, and soldiers, others include farmers, factory workers, migrant workers, teachers, doctors, and reporters.
»
December 30, 2010 / Steve Early
In 1968 women auto workers in their own sex-segregated department at Ford's Dagenham, England, plant shut down their sewing machines and showed the lads how union solidarity was done. "Made in Dagenham" is their story.
»
December 23, 2010 /
During this holiday break it’s inspiring to remember that sometimes it’s those with least who are doing the most to fight for the ideals that many of us will celebrate in the coming days.
»
December 21, 2010 /
A billionaire gang headed by Bill Gates and Eli Broad wants to convert America’s public schools, with its $600 billion in annual public expenditures according to the Department of Education, into a corporate-owned test-score factory. Their plan faces teacher resistance, and nowhere more so than in Chicago, where a feisty new leadership is making the Chicago »
December 17, 2010 / Jenny Brown
In what advocates called “a stunning win” for workers across New York state, outgoing Governor David Paterson has signed a law that escalates penalties against thieving employers and protects workers who stand up against wage theft at their jobs.
»
December 10, 2010 /
Threatened with pay cuts, tax increases, and a higher retirement age, unions in Portugal called a 24-hour general strike. Two transit workers from New York were there to see the shutdown.
»
December 08, 2010 / Jane Slaughter
Would you give up a piece of your pension for a signing bonus? That’s just what President Obama’s proposed “payroll tax holiday” is like (such a jolly name—and just in time for the holidays, too). But the long-term effect is to beggar Social Security, and eventually cut benefits. That $15-a-week bonus now may end up costing you far more in the future.
»
December 08, 2010 /
Last month United Electrical Workers Local 204 in Taunton, Massachusetts, called for mass picketing and blockading of entrances to a shuttered factory to stop the auction of its machines. In response, the company has postponed the auction, in a »
December 06, 2010 /
Nearly 4,000 graduate students in the 10-campus University of California system voted to approve a three-year contract with the university last week. This landmark turnout was due primarily to a campaign organized by dozens of rank-and-file members across the state urging their co-workers to reject the contract and send United Auto Workers Local 2865 back to »
December 03, 2010 /
Worker centers and health and safety advocates joined forces on the national level for the first time last month. The Denver gathering brought together worker centers from the Interfaith Worker Justice national network and local coalitions for occupational safety and »