Working Life

Yesterday, I was out and about in the city trying to lend support to the strike. Sure, it was inconvenient, as I’ve heard many New Yorkers say, to get around. But, the strike is about a lot more than inconvenience. I want to start by repeating some thoughts expressed by Roger Toussaint, the leader of […]

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So, now we know, thanks to Steve Greenhouse’s analytical story about the fight over the pension issue, that the entire savings to the MTA–an authority that has a surplus of at least $1 billion–if it got its pension demand (which both sides agree triggereed the strike) would be a whopping $20 million over the next […]

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Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, appeared before the microphones at the union hall last night almost three hours after the strike deadline of midnight (which means that all the newspapers are out of date today in terms of info–you’re best bet is to go to New York 1). In […]

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A lot of attention has been paid to the impending strike of the transit workers here in NYC (and we will see what happens today as the new strike deadline approaches at midnight tonight). But, in the meantime, I’m going to make a holiday pitch for some other strikers. Graduate students at New York University […]

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[First a note–for those of you, like me, who thought you were experiencing Groundhog Day (seeing only post up to December 10th), no, it was just that the blog service had either crashed for a day or shut down without warning. I wasn’t loafing Friday but simply could not post]. I’ve often written here about […]

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The transit workers are still locked in negotiations with the Wal-Mart-like Metropolitan Transit Authority (like Wal-Mart, the MTA is bulging in surpluse but doesn’t think the workers should get a fari shake) and I don’t have any idea insight so…I came across some new information on the campaign to organize FedEx parcel delivery workers. The […]

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In New York City, we can see the crumbling of democracy before our eyes, assisted by the legal system. If a working person can’t have a legitimate right to strike, we do not live in a democratic society. Yesterday, a judge issued an injunction preventing the transit workers from walking out if there is no […]

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I hope that every New York labor person comes out today for the big demonstration in support of the transit workers. The demo is taking place at 4:00 p.m. in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42nd Street near Lexington Avenue. That’s the location of the around-the-clock negotiations (the contract expires at 12:01 a.m. […]

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By catching up, I mean both that the piece below was in the recent Daily Labor Report (by its always-on-the-case reporter Michelle Amber) and that, whew, CWA is definitely racking up the numbers. And it shows what we’ve known all along: when companies agree to be neutral in organizing campaigns and pledge not to beat […]

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Steve Greenhouse has a front-page story in The New York Times today (registration required) reporting on the success of SEIU’s organizing drive among janitors in Houston. What’s interesting about the victory–other than the fact that it brings in 5,000 new members in the hard-to-organize South–is the way the victory was pulled off. Check out these […]

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