Working Life

Today’s a day when I’m worried about the tone of the debate inside the labor movement (maybe because it’s my sister’s birthday and I’m feeling touchy-feely). Mind you, I’m glad there is a debate about how to save a movement that is on life support. Until the Service Employees International Union kicked the can last […]

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Here’s a wacky, radical idea: why not let the 13 million members of the affiliated unions of the AFL-CIO vote on the competing proposals put out by the two main camps in the past couple of weeks? There’s a debate going on about which side has the best ideas or strategies—but it’s a debate within […]

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Okay, folks, here it is: Restoring the American Dream: Building a 21st Century Labor Movement That Can Win (The final version is now posted. Apologies for confusion). I’m going to do a more detailed side-by-side comparison of this proposal versus the AFL-CIO officers proposal released a couple of weeks ago (by the way, I’ll just […]

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The new salvo from the insurgents will be available for your reading pleasure at 1 p.m. today!!! A few tidbits ’til then: All five of the insurgent unions (Laborers, SEIU, UNITE-HERE, UFCW and Teamsters) are on-board for the program; the UFCW will put out a letter of support pending approval of its Executive Board. At […]

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Today is going to be a wild, red-hot day in the debate over the future of labor—and there is new movement to report in the forces at play here. The insurgents (UNITE-HERE, Teamsters, Laborers, SEIU and UFCW) will be releasing a new set of proposals and initiatives today that was hammered out at the recent […]

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Freddy Ferrer may be tanking and it may be too late but he just got a small lifeline by netting the endorsement of the Transport Workers Union in NYC. I’m not going to give the whole history here but, for those of you outside NYC, Ferrer is the former Bronx borough president who ran in […]

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I’ve been writing about labor rights and the world economy for so long that I was a bit suspicious after first reading Elizabeth Becker’s May 12th piece in The New York Times entitled “Low Cost and Sweatshop-Free.” (a side note: the web version of this article does not carry that headline but only the sub-head: […]

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So, what would you do if you were, along with your mommy, the richest woman in the world, but your workers either can’t afford health insurance or have to pay through the nose to get pathetic insurance and, as a matter of policy, your CEO tells the world that your company doesn’t expect its pay […]

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You want an obscene contrast between the absolute flogging American workers are getting versus how big corporations are getting off? Compare the scandalous termination of the pension plans for 134,000 United Airlines workers, on the one hand, to the passage of the bankruptcy bill (with Democratic Party support), on the other hand. On the one […]

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So, late last night I got a report from the Teamsters big conference in Vegas, where the heads of the five unions composing the “insurgent caucus”— the Teamsters, SEIU, Laborers, UNITE-HERE and UFCW—came together in front of a raucous crowd composed mainly of Teamsters but also including rank-and-file members from each union scattered through the […]

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