Troublemakers Blog
June 14, 2010 / Paul Abowd
The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) won Friday's election to lead the Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU's new President Karen Lewis garnered 60 percent of the vote against an incumbent whose caucus has controlled the third largest Teachers (AFT) local in the country for 37 of the last 40 years.
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June 09, 2010 / Jane Slaughter
International union connections are a kick. Within a few hours of my arrival at a union convention in Brazil, I met a copper miner from Chile whose company wants wage cuts, a union doctor from Spain fighting the imposition of co-pays, a Nestle worker from Colombia, and railroad workers from Japan.
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June 07, 2010 / Dan La Botz
As many as 2,000 Mexican Federal Police and Sonora State Police, supported by helicopters, invaded the Cananea copper mine Sunday night around 10 p.m., firing tear gas and attacking and beating miners who were defending the mine, according to news reports.
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June 02, 2010 /
“Our parents have suffered from this cheap labor market and now they are getting old. Do we want to follow in the footstep of our parents?” asks an anonymous Honda worker in China in an internet posting explaining the motivations behind a stunning two-week strike that shut down Honda’s production across the country.
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June 02, 2010 / Tiffany Ten Eyck
Apple's been all over the news these days, and not just because of the iPad. The high number of worker suicides at a supplier factory in Shenzhen, China, has built into a crisis for Apple, one that activists could push to crack the abusive relationship between corporations and their suppliers that drives wages and working conditions ever downward across the »
May 26, 2010 / Mischa Gaus
With huge service cuts and layoffs looming, New York’s transit crisis is the thin edge of a wedge threatening to up-end reliable bus and subway service in communities nationwide.
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May 26, 2010 /
Striking workers at the Supervalu-owned Shaw's Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., have been marching from Methuen to Boston for justice since Sunday, May 23.
The 310 workers, members of UFCW Local 791, have been on strike since March 7 over the company's insistence that the burden of increasing health care costs be borne by workers.
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May 26, 2010 / Dan La Botz
Five thousand members and supporters of the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union blocked a port May 24 to protest the brutal police beating of more than 20 union leaders and activists.
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May 24, 2010 / Paul Abowd
Soon after declaring the first week of May "National Charter School Week," President Obama continued the push to open up public school districts—and their coffers—to non-union, privately run charter schools. Applications are due June »
May 20, 2010 / Paul Abowd
Thirty thousand Chicago teachers and para-professionals will vote for new union leadership May 21. Four slates are challenging the Chicago Teachers Union incumbents, who have come under fire for a lack of transparency and an unwillingness to mobilize against the city’s school privatization plan. Seventy schools have closed in eight years, and the union has lost »