Troublemakers Blog
March 28, 2012 /
Three books on the Wisconsin rebellion help us to better understand the 2011 uprising that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets. They also provoke some rethinking of the strategies involved.
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March 27, 2012 / Mark Brenner
The tax compromise made by the California Federation of Teachers resulted in major improvements to the ballot initiative that could be in front of voters in November. But there are compelling reasons why proponents of the millionaires tax should have bucked the governor's deal and continued their struggle to reverse endless austerity.
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March 23, 2012 / Steve Early
From "Jersey Shore" to the short-lived "All-American Muslim" to the glitzier "Shahs of Sunset," there seems to be no ethnic community left untouched by the national carny show known as reality TV. Always dissed or ignored by the mass media, the multi-ethnic enclave of organized labor might have been the last holdout against letting it all hang out in this »
March 21, 2012 /
I’m an elementary school teacher with a crummy evaluation. It’s a testament to the families at my school that I didn't spend my February vacation responding to angry or terrified emails from my students’ parents.
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March 14, 2012 /
Adjunct professors at American University in Washington, D.C., won a union last month, but not before two years of organizing made it possible.
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March 07, 2012 /
Red Cross workers in northeast Ohio remain on strike, with no negotiations in sight. The 200 blood collection technicians and other workers are frustrated because management refuses to come to the table. Working without a contract since May 2011, the Teamsters Local 507 members went on strike February 14 over donor and worker safety, working conditions, pay, »
March 06, 2012 /
It’s a strange disconnect: what union leaders expect from their political allies and what they actually get. The latest example comes from the largest federal workers union, which Democrats just forced to take a pension hit estimated to cost workers $15 billion.
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February 25, 2012 /
After parents occupied Chicago’s Brian Piccolo Elementary School February 17, they won a commitment from the school board to meet and discuss the “turnarounds” at Piccolo and a neighboring school—measures that would mean firing all the staff and handing the schools over to a private operator. The dialogue didn’t change the result.
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February 21, 2012 /
While Catholic bishops are organizing to get religious-affiliated institutions exempted from providing contraceptive coverage, some unions and women’s organizations are counter-mobilizing. They want to defeat a proposal that would allow employers or insurance companies to refuse coverage of any health care service based on undefined “religious beliefs or moral »
February 20, 2012 / Mark Brenner
Hard to believe, but a scrappy rank-and-file magazine and organizing institute, founded in 1979 to bring together leaders from an inspiring string of wildcat strikes and union reform caucuses, turns 33 today.
Labor Notes has grown a lot since then, training thousands of activists at 10 regional Troublemaker Schools »