Working Life

There’s another contribution to the analysis of why it’s so hard to form a union. The folks at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have produced a paper analyzing data from the National Labor Relations Board. None of this should be a surprise and it reaffirms the overall atmosphere depicted in Kate Bronfenbrenner’s work […]

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You have to laugh every day at least once, a deep belly laugh, just to keep sane. So, yesterday, the Associated Press had a story reporting on a sighting of a UFO by United Airlines employees at O’Hare airport. Apparently, the disc hovered over the airport before shooting back up into the clouds. But, my […]

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The Wall StreeT Journal was reporting in yesterday’s edition that the Steelworkers and Goodyear Tire would be restarting negotiations tomorrow to try to end a 10-week old strike. I’ll post picture, if anyone has any, of the demos that took place around the country at Goodyear stores. Here’s the press release from the Steelworkers which […]

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What a day it was for Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. First, Roger Toussaint, the president of the union who lead the local out on strike last December, was re-elected after a very bitter campaign. Toussaint apparently received under 50 percent but because he was running against four other opponents, he easily won […]

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I was just lamenting the other day that, too often, there are not young people–I maintain we are all young but I’m talking people south of their early 20s–involved in the labor movement. But, here you go, something to point out as a positive, if perhaps isolated, exception to the rule. Meat-packing firm is target […]

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I just spent a couple of days inside the Beltway at the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Summit. I’d guess there were 500 people there and there was a lot of enthusiasm and optimism because of the recent Congressional elections. John Edwards got an award Friday night and the crowd was chanting, “Run, John, Run.” A heavy emphasis […]

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[Note: This is Stef Cannon posting here today, as guest-blogger for the week while Tasini finally takes a vacation.] And the good news keeps rolling in. Today the NY Times reports that the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, with its 7,000 members, will join the New York City Central Labor Council The taxi drivers, who […]

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This is an interesting approach taken by the AFL-CIO. Immigrant Workers’ Rights Violated, A.C.L.U. ChargesBy NINA BERNSTEIN On behalf of six illegal immigrant workers, including the widow of a Mexican killed on a Brooklyn demolition site, the American Civil Liberties Union and other law and labor groups charged yesterday that the United States has failed […]

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This is a scary report. Maybe I lasered in on it because my late father worked for IBM years ago. This comes to us from the hardworking folks at Alliance@IBM CWA Local 1701. A study by Dr. Richard Clapp an epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public health, and published in Environmental Health Journal has […]

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So, maybe it’s because I was born in Houston that I have a particular interest in the janitors who are trying to kick some serious ass down in Texas. It’s the typical story: poor people working their tails off for $20 a day. Last December, more than five thousand janitors in Houston won the right […]

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