Working Life

Over the wire came this short message from a president of an AFL-CIO state federation who asked that I not use any name when posting this–but did give me permission to post. “CTW” refers to the Change To Win Coalition, in case anyone was still wondering, and “JwJ” stands for Jobs With Justice… “Your blog […]

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As a bookend to Bob Welsh’s missive, which is posted just below this post, here’s a note from Deborah Weinstock, who is the Newspaper Guild’s unit chair at the AFL-CIO. I don’t envy her right now–it can’t be pretty trying to reassure your members while facing a $25-27 million hole in the budget. For many […]

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Bob Welsh sent out a note to the AFL-CIO staff yesterday to give them his take on the convention. A few observations: Bob overstates the enthusiasm and excitement he says delegates left with. No question many did. But, the fact is a sizable number of delegates–particularly from Central Labor Councils–left fairly discouraged; some even left […]

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This is not shocking news–on July 29th, the head of the Building and Construction Trades Department, Ed Sullivan, sent a letter to all its affiliated councils in the U.S. and Canada in which he gives the heave-ho to the Teamsters and Carpenters. It’s not shocking in that everyone knew it was coming and it’s consistent […]

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Well, I’ve decided to make the CAFTA 15 a regular project of this blog for as long as it takes. Nothing has gotten people more riled up–for good reason. So, I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve which I’ll talk about in the next few days. First off, let’s start gathering as much info […]

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By popular demand…a thread on raiding. What seems to have sparked the particular interest is the battle between AFSCME and SEIU out in Riverside County, California so I’ve collected and posted a few documents on the subject below. A few thoughts. Because of the large recent influx of readers, I want to assume that not […]

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With all the hoo-hah inside the labor movement, I’ve left my favorite Beast of Bentonville alone for a couple of weeks. Well, praise be, it never ceases to feed the machine…The Beast has now made a motion in court to throw out the huge class action discrimination case filed against it–that case could cover more […]

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Back in May, I argued that neither side in the internal debate over the future of labor had the answers for key questions, chief among them: what to do about China? We need a strategy that, on the one hand, recognizes that we’re dealing with an authoritarian regime that still waves the banner of communism […]

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A friend, deeply involved in the issue of CAFTA (who can’t be named because of the very senior position this person holds in the labor movement), writes: “just so you have some perspective here: about 100 Dems voted for NAFTA, about 70 on PNTR [Permanent Normal Trading Relations, for China], about 23 on fast track […]

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Still trying to catch up the brain from a week of not enough sleep so this weekend my ramblings might come a little later in the a.m.–and, if that isn’t enough, I have to crank out a little opus on the convention for New Labor Forum…by Monday… First, a welcome to Reece–I’m always encouraging new […]

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