Working Life

The Screen Actors Guild just counted the ballots yesterday in a contentious election. The winner is Alan Rosenberg, who succeeds Melissa Gilbert. Rosenberg ran at the head of the ticket for Membership First, a caucus in SAG that has increased its strength over the years, culminating with Rosenberg’s victory. He defeated Morgan Fairchild, who was […]

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As Deep Throat admonished, follow the money: Here’s a small tidbit of the plans shaping for the Change To Win coalition: I’ve been told that the way the new federation is being structured, 75 percent of the dollars paid by the affiliated unions into the new federation will go to organizing. One can conclude from […]

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So, next week, the Change To Win coalition holds its founding convention in St. Louis (it will be a quick one-day affair on Tuesday. Sept. 27th–and yours truly will be there typing away and posting). This past week, the Laborers executive board authorized disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO–with the final decision yet to come on whether […]

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As readers of this blog know, I’ve been holding fast to the belief that everything that can be done must be done to calm the waters between the AFL-CIO and Change To Win coalition. I maintained for a long time and still believe that, once the emotionalism of the AFL-CIO convention in July receded, smart […]

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Late last night, I posted more complete documents from the SEIU-AFSCME no-raid agreements and the deal to work cooperatively on home care and child care worker organizing in California and Pennsylvania. The documents give a rich, complete description of the details of the deal. Might want to check them out. I was wondering: would it […]

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UPDATES: I’ve received all the key documents that relate to what I think is a pretty significant deal between AFSCME and SEIU to cooperate and avoid raiding situations. Here are the documents: The deal covers home care workers in California (as well as side letters to that agreements), child care workers in California and Pennsylvania […]

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Who says Bush and Boeing are all bad for labor? You have to give them credit for this: they are showing that, despite all the huffing and puffing after the AFL-CIO convention, unity is possible between the two national labor federations. Yesterday, three union presidents–Carpenters’ President Doug McCarron, Laborers President Terry O-Sullivan and Operating Engineers […]

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In case you thought I was all wet (and that does happen), as I predicted Monday (and this was not, frankly, a bit lift), UNITE HERE did vote to leave the AFL-CIO yesterday (I was, really, just way too tired to lift another finger on to my computer yesterday to report..). There was a lot […]

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This was my prediction, or maybe it was hope: once everyone started to calm down about the psychology of “the split,” adult behavior would start to come to the surface. Here we have at least one example: The Teamsters and Communications Workers of America have reached a deal to jointly represent workers when the merger […]

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UNITE HERE will officially announce it is pulling out of the AFL-CIO on Wednesday. Yesterday, I spoke with a senior UNITE HERE official who confirmed that a press statement will be released following an official vote of the union’s full executive board on Tuesday. The first step will come today when the Executive Committee convenes […]

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