Troublemakers Blog
August 01, 2011 / Mark Brenner
Sotheby’s auction house closed its doors Saturday to its 43 unionized art handlers, members of Teamsters Local 814. The lockout is its second in a decade, but this time, the union (now led by a reform slate) is ready.
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July 28, 2011 /
The attempts to crush teacher unions legislatively in Wisconsin, Indiana, and elsewhere have so far had only limited success. The enemies of teacher unions have been much more effective at weakening unions discreetly, through “education reform.”
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July 25, 2011 / Adrian Montgomery
Outside the McNamara Federal Building in Detroit, a group of angry people stood together to let Senator Carl Levin know he better not vote for the real death panels: cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
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July 21, 2011 /
Longshore workers by the hundreds blocked a mile-long train July 14 to prevent an anti-union company from moving grain through the port of Longview, Washington. Earlier, members used a pickup truck to tear down a fence and then occupied the grain terminal, blocking employees from working. About 100 union members, including leaders, were arrested for criminal »
July 20, 2011 /
“Locked Out” is a fast-paced story of a workers’ victory in the face of what looked like insurmountable odds. It’s exactly the message that should be seen in union halls across the country and abroad.
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July 14, 2011 /
Nine thousand college students, labor activists, and human rights advocates from across South Korea gathered Saturday to support a woman welder who has been staging a lone sit-in since January on top of a 115-foot shipyard crane. But on Tuesday Kim Jin-suk tweeted that security guards had begun to deploy a safety net around her crane, the usual sign of a plan »
July 13, 2011 /
A sunny day on Lansing’s Capitol lawn brought the Michigan Nurses Association out today to hold a soup kitchen serving people left in need by the state’s drastic budget cuts.
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July 12, 2011 / Steve Early
This week in Las Vegas, the Communications Workers (CWA) experienced a rare contested race for a top officer position. For the first time in many decades, a local leader ran against the consensus candidate of the union establishment, garnering a quarter of the vote.
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July 08, 2011 / Mark Brenner
Tired of being scapegoats for all the ills of the public schools, 200 teachers from 15 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico were in Chicago July 6 for the National Conference to Fight Back for Public Education.
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July 02, 2011 /
On June 24 the California Zephyr, Amtrak passenger Train #5, was struck broadside at a Nevada crossing by a tandem gondola truck. Human error played a role, apparently—but what measures could actually help keep workers and passengers safe?
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