Troublemakers Blog
September 14, 2011 /
As United Auto Workers talks with the Detroit 3 go down to the wire—contracts expire at midnight tonight—workers are wondering what hidden surprises may await them in a tentative agreement. At Chrysler, skilled trades workers are finding big problems concealed in the last concessions contract, as management thins their numbers to the bare minimum and gets »
September 09, 2011 / Mark Brenner
In closing his jobs speech last night, President Obama challenged Congress to imagine where the U.S. would be if their predecessors had balked when asked to think big. Unfortunately for the president, the comparisons he made only served to highlight how puny his jobs proposals are.
»
September 08, 2011 / Mischa Gaus
Nursing home workers in the Northeast say the owner of their chain cheated them and used the proceeds to fund an institute of justice at New York University.
»
September 07, 2011 /
Woe’s me. Woe’s us! Things today are going the exact wrong way for working people. So why get up each morning and face another day of the fight? Because we are the living, breathing resistance movement to corporate control and crushing authoritarianism, and we are fighting every day, everywhere.
»
September 01, 2011 /
When I first heard about the new movie “The Help,” I was eager to see how domestic workers would be portrayed. I have never seen a movie, especially not one made in Hollywood, with domestic workers as lead characters.
»
August 31, 2011 /
The brave Walmart workers who belong to OUR Walmart say fear is the main thing stopping their fellow retail workers from organizing. As an assistant store manager at Walmart, I saw how managers were trained to put that fear into hourly workers’ heads.
»
August 19, 2011 /
Locked-out sugar beet workers, their families, and supporters turned out in big numbers August 11 to say they want to work—but not on the terms offered by American Crystal Sugar.
ACS locked out more than 1,300 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco & Grain Millers August 1, two days after they rejected deep concessions by 97 percent.
»
August 15, 2011 /
The right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik is not a “lone madman." He can only be understood in his political context—which includes a union movement that substituted national competition for international solidarity.
»
August 12, 2011 /
In a refreshingly straightforward style, Joe Burns argues persuasively that the cause of union decline is our inability to wage a successful strike. That is, one which shuts down production and compels the employer to accede to union demands.
»
August 10, 2011 /
What is it like to work in an auto plant these days? The company mantra is to do more work with fewer people and less money. My co-workers are less than optimistic about winning back the concessions we all made to keep Chrysler in business.
»