Troublemakers Blog
October 13, 2010 /
Striking musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra received an additional bravo after their successful self-produced concert October 10. As they left the stage they learned that their campaign to get internationally acclaimed violin soloist Sarah Chang to cancel management's replacement concert had succeeded.
»
October 12, 2010 /
What are workers to do when, after they file a petition for a union election, the employer declares the entire workforce no longer employed? That’s what happened early this summer to adjunct faculty trying to organize at East-West University in Chicago.
»
October 08, 2010 /
[This article was written for the newsletter of the American Postal Workers Union Greater Seattle Area Local, where David Yao is vice president.]
The following is my own transcribed version of the notorious September 16 episode of a Fox Business Network show that insulted postal workers, called for postal privatization, and said that much of the American »
October 07, 2010 / Jane Slaughter
The United Auto Workers have signed an agreement to let General Motors pay half wages to 40 percent of its employees at a suburban Detroit assembly plant. The “Tier 2” workers would make roughly $14 working alongside so-called “legacy” or Tier 1 workers making the current production wage, about $28.
»
October 05, 2010 / Mark Brenner
Saturday’s One Nation rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C. proved one important point: unions can still turn out. The big question is whether it will be the launching pad for a more challenging relationship with labor's “friends in Washington.”
»
September 30, 2010 / Mark Brenner
Update! Thursday, Sept. 30
Larry Hanley was elected president today of the 190,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union, which organizes bus drivers in cities across the U.S. and Canada, by delegates to the ATU Convention. Hanley helped found the Keep America Moving coalition to build support for mass transit. Labor Notes' Mark Brenner interviewed him this »
September 24, 2010 /
Worker centers in Windsor and Toronto, Ontario, are fighting a proposed bill that would make low-wage workers "self-enforce" their minimum wage and overtime rights, thus making it easier for businesses to break the law and cheat workers through wage theft.
»
September 20, 2010 /
After football players raised an index finger (“one” for unity) in a brief pre-game gesture of union solidarity on the season’s opening day, we hear that ESPN radio says 99 percent of the calls and emails ESPN got were critical of the players. A startling revelation indeed: who »
September 17, 2010 / Mischa Gaus
Not a tea party but a pineapple party: Longshoremen’s (ILA) Local 1291 in Philadelphia dumped pineapples into the Delaware River on Labor Day to protest the Del Monte fruit company’s plans to go non-union.
»
September 15, 2010 /
The UAW International is forcing a mail-in vote on a concessionary contract reopener at a GM local—after the membership there voted overwhelmingly not to reopen.
»