Working Life

(ALERT, ALERT, ALERT, ALERT, ALERT, ALERT: SEE UPDATES BELOW) It will not be a happy day at 16th Street and its satellite offices. I’ll be posting whatever information comes my way about the massive layoffs expected to be announced this morning. NOON UPDATE!!! Looks like, from first sketchy reports, that field staff are almost all […]

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Tomorrow, the word will come down on who will lose their jobs in the previously-reported cuts at 16th Street. All managers have been told to be in their offices nationwide and there’s a conference call scheduled tomorrow morning with Sweeney’s executive assistant, Bob Welch. One AFL-CIO staffer just sent me this missive from the Newspaper […]

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I’m troubled after the teleconference John Sweeney held yesterday with the press. It’s not that the whole affair lasted just 30 minutes (and we had to provide our own coffee, doughnuts and Scotch), which included John’s opening statement and, then, a rush to squeeze in questions before, poof, he had to run before anyone really […]

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Right after my previous report on the AFL-CIO’s finances, I got a call from Joe Hill (uh, yeah, a pseudonym), an AFL-CIO insider who told me “it’s quite worse than what you wrote.” Hill pointed out that when John Sweeney took over, the AFL-CIO had no debt; now the debt stands at $28.5 million dollars. […]

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A review of AFL-CIO audited statements for 1996 and 2004 by the coalition pushing for changes inside the labor movement shows some fairly interesting trends. I offer them as they are, with some comment: Under John Sweeney: AFL-CIO Income has grown dramatically, and AFL-CIO Expenses have grown far more dramatically. AFL-CIO income has increased by […]

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I was just rereading the AFL-CIO’s petition, filed almost a year ago, with the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office that sought to force the U.S. to hold China accountable for its repressive labor practices. It’s a startling story of the challenge Chinese workers face—and, by extension, what labor faces in the U.S. in trying to grapple […]

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I think you can get a feel for the different approaches in the debate about the future of labor. I don’t agree with every piece of anyone’s proposal but having open debate is essential. SEIU’s website (www.unitedtowin.org) is freewheeling–it lets anyone post a comment and go on for as long as they wish…though that’s not […]

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You remember the Administration’s Iraq “Coalition of the Willing,” which was a sham from the start, including such important military powers as Poland. It was a title for a coalition with no real meaning. Labor has its version. Just picked up the AFL-CIO magazine, which notes, as has been noted elsewhere in labor’s propoganda, that […]

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