Working Life

Stop the presses!!! Today, John Sweeney announced that he was running for re-election. The press event, organized by his campaign (which, interestingly, is housed at the Firefighters union Building…I guess Harold isn’t pissed off anymore) took place at the Communications Workers of America building in Washington, D.C. Yours truly could not be there so the […]

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A pause today in the saga of the House of Labor (more interesting developments later today or tomorrow) to talk about your own house–or, really, all those houses built of paper profits. I’ve been meaning to say something about this for sometime and two things happened over the weekend that got me off the dime. […]

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On this commercially-driven day of tipping ones hat to dads, why would any father want their kid to work at Wal-Mart? Yet, again, the Beast of Bentonville has been found to be exploiting kids. Not the first time and likely not the last–it’s a continuation of the culture of crime at the Beast. Turns out […]

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Its the weekend so the brain needs some rest from thinking about the hard stuff (okay, real reason is that I was out way too late last night…no, you can’t know why…). So, I’m going to give everyone a little thing to do that will make you feel good. Really. A friend of mine, Mark […]

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It’s kind of a natural thing for union people to stick up for the less powerful and weak. But, I think we shouldn’t extend our kindness to small and increasingly weak or irrelevant national unions. I say this today because a number of people (including AFL-CIO staffers) have written to me or posted comments expressing […]

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A thought to consider for people wringing their hands over the “split” in the labor movement: maybe this will be a really good thing. I’ve been ruminating over this for many weeks, sometimes writing pieces of it here and there. A definition first: reasonable people may disagree but I do not see the creation of […]

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So, folks, the crews have broken down their cameras and the clean-up crews are here at the Laborers International building on 16th Street in Washington, D.C. As I said earlier this morning, the launching of the Change to Win coalition may be a critical moment for the labor movement–or just a modest improvement. At least, […]

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Today may be remembered as a momentous day in labor history–or simply a modest advance in labor organizing. The insurgents will unveil the principles and program for the new coalition at a 12:30 press conference in Washington, D.C, at the Laborers building (conveniently located just across the street from the AFL-CIO…”hey, you, with the lipstick […]

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It wasn’t Las Vegas but yesterday’s Executive *Committee* meeting sure had the same feeling as the Federation’s March Executive Council meeting. The Executive Committee (which is a subset of the full Council and includes the largest unions but not just the largest unions…which has been a bit of a bone of contention, but that’s another […]

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Well, there should be a little flurry of interesting stuff this week in the AFL-CIO back-and-forth. Today, the AFL-CIO Executive Committee meets–the members will get to hear first-hand from Andy Stern what his board decided this past Friday on disaffiliating from the Federation. Then, Wednesday, as first reported here two days ago, the insurgent unions […]

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