Working Life

Okay, my friends, here’s a report from the Change To Win coalition rally. Let’s start up front–it confirms what I reported earlier today: the Teamsters, UNITE HERE, UFCW and SEIU will not attend the convention that begins tomorrow. Tomorrow, they will meet as a coalition to begin to some more meat on the bones of […]

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I’ll put up more reporting from the Change To Win Coalition rally in a bit. But, first, tomorrow SEIU is going to announce it’s disaffilating from the AFL-CIO. There is a press conference scheduled for tomorrow. Andy Stern said that the union will make its final determination over the next few hours and make an […]

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John Sweeney and his supporters just wrapped up a very spirited and rocking rally in the Sheraton ballroom. I’m going to bring you details here in the next hour as I unwind the tape (digitally speaking) and give you some pics. You would have to describe the mood of the Sweeney team as confident, upbeat […]

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Yup. The four unions–UFCW (as I reported just a few minutes ago), Teamsters, UNITE HERE and SEIU–will not attend the convention that opens tomorrow. The Laborers will likely stay at the convention–but, as I said, there is a very contentious building trades meeting going on now. This was pretty clear this morning: as one person […]

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The United Food and Commercial Workers will not attend the AFL-CIO convention which begins tomorrow. I just learned that from a UFCW board member in the midst of the union’s executive board meeting which began about one hour ago. However, the UFCW will announce later today that it is not yet made a decision to […]

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Hey, this is for real…it’s got to be 90 degrees out at 7:30 a.m. Supposed to get up to 110 heat index. People are already gearing up for what might come here Sunday. In the Sheraton Hotel lobby, I got stopped, already this early, by a series of people who asked, “what are you hearing?” […]

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It’s getting close to dark in Chicago. The folks are scattering to a variety of dinners and meetings. There are still phone calls going back and forth between the principals here to see if a deal can be struck. Like I’ve said from the start, all these guys–and this is, after all, guys doing the […]

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Well, well…turns out my posting from yesterday about the International Labor Communications Association caused a bit of a stir. I talked about the ILCA’s decision to pass a constitutional amendment that now allows non-affiliated unions to have full membership in the ILCA. There was a little bit of heat about the decision. And the ILCA […]

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So, I don’t think the diversity issue has been resolved. Today, the Federation is hosting a diversity summit–about 800 people are up (that would be above the dungeon I’m writing in) in the grand ballroom and it”s quite heartening to see such a broad range of unions represented. John Sweeney opened the summit with a […]

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Well, I’m down here in the bowels of the Sheraton where the Federation has its convention operations–very “attractive” temporary offices made up of steeel poles draped with beige curtains…some one get a stylist in here. Anyway, today the big public event is a diversity summit. It will be interesting to see whether the issue of […]

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