Working Life

So, John Sweeney did reply to UFCW President Joe Hansen’s June 3rd letter. Sweeney’s letter came just three days later…can’t let any moss gather under that one. After all, Hansen’s letter did hint that the UFCW was considering leaving the Federation–and his board, as I reported yesterday, will consider that very subject this coming week. […]

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Not a surprise but yesterday the Service Employees Executive Board unanimously approved a resolution taking SEIU one step closer to leaving the AFL-CIO. Without any conditions, the resolution empowered the officers of the union to decide when to leave the Federation. As important, the resolution authorizes allocating additional money–SEIU has already kicked in $100,000–to seed […]

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It never ceases to amaze me how the promoters of so-called “free trade” just keep shoveling out lies and half-truths to keep promoting an ideology that has clearly failed–if you assess failure, as I do so naively, based on how much trade agreements help people. And the bullshit generation is in full tilt as the […]

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My busy fax machine spit out this June 3rd letter from Joe Hansen to John Sweeney. It’s an interesting contrast at least in perception to the AFL-CIO’s comparison of the two competing visions of what needs to be changed in the labor movement. The AFL-CIO comparison states pretty clearly that there is not a lot […]

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The always-helpful Lane Windham sent along a comparison prepared by the AFL-CIO that examines the difference between the AFL-CIO Officers proposals versus the insurgents proposals. I’ve provided it here for people to peruse and appreciate Lane’s response to my request. You can also compare the AFL-CIO officers comparison to a comparison put out by the […]

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Honest, really, I’ll be posting this morning…it’s just that I got back at 2 a.m. from the West Coast so it may take a few more hours to get something up, er, that is, a post. In my hot hands, having greeted me on the fax machine, is a pretty interesting letter from UFCW president […]

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I came out to sunny Los Angeles to take part in a one-day conference on Wal-Mart put on by the UCLA Labor Center (more on that in a future post). But, while I’ve been out here, there’s been a very interesting behind-the-scenes maneuvering at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. The apparent end result […]

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Okay, if you want to read the entire deal, word for word, just click here for a Word document, which was just passed to me late yesterday. It’s basically as I reported on Monday. Apparently, the Federation’s management took a hard line that, in order to take advantage of the incentive package, people had to […]

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One of my pen pals is Michael Murphy, the Washington State treasurer. Mike is currently serving in his third four-year term and has thirty-three years in public treasury management at both the state and local level. He just dropped me this line about a revealing meeting he had with one of the leading privatizers of […]

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After a lot of tension, the Newspaper Guild, which represents the AFL-CIO’s professional staff, has made a deal with the Federation for an incentive package to “encourage” people to leave the AFL-CIO before the announced cuts become official. I guess the more people who leave before the layoffs go into effect in the Fall, the […]

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