Working Life

    I’ve just been told by a usually reliable source that two major unions–Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union–are meeting today to make national endorsements and they will endorse Barack Obama. This is huge in many respects for Sen. Obama’s campaign.     First, the two unions together account for […]

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    Here are a few things that caught my eye.     #1: Good riddance, Tom Tancredo–but do the Democrats understand the political implications of immigration in 2008? So, Tancredo, the odious member of Congress, is apparently dropping out of the presidential race, having registered barely a blip in the pretty weird and crazy Republican field. […]

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    Here are a few things that caught my eye.     #1: Good riddance, Tom Tancredo–but do the Democrats understand the political implications of immigration in 2008? So, Tancredo, the odious member of Congress, is apparently dropping out of the presidential race, having registered barely a blip in the pretty weird and crazy Republican field. […]

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    Yours truly is headed to Bali on Wednesday as part of an international labor delegation to the United Nations climate change summit. The delegation hopes to articulate labor’s position about the threat to the planet. I can’t publish here–yet–the draft version of the statement.  But, will do so when I can and hope to […]

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    Yours truly is headed to Bali on Wednesday as part of an international labor delegation to the United Nations climate change summit. The delegation hopes to articulate labor’s position about the threat to the planet. I can’t publish here–yet–the draft version of the statement.  But, will do so when I can and hope to […]

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    Now, I like this and I get to write about this on my birthday, too. SEIU managed to reach a deal in Philadelphia that…are you ready for this?…increases the health benefits for its members. Most of the time, we read about health care givebacks–health care is always the big issue and has been for […]

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    I’m trying to keep election news t a minimum so we can focus on labor and workers’ issues that get less discussion but, let’s face it, people want to know and politics will dominate even more in 2008. So…though he didn’t get the national union’s endorsement, John Edwards did pretty well yesterday as nine  […]

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    So, as a short follow up to yesterday’s post on the decision by SEIU to be neutral at a national level and let its state-level organizations make up their own minds, here’s some intel on where at least one insider believes states might go. Some of this is probably obvious–and feel free to disagree […]

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  (This is the fourth installment of an occasional update on where the labor movement is ending up in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination)   At this point, this is really not a surprise: the Service Employees International Union has chosen not to endorse, at the national level, any one candidate, freeing up […]

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   The Service Employees International Union will not endorse any candidate in the Democratic primaries–at least until next week. This announcement came just a few minutes ago via  a conference call with SEIU president Andy Stern and Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger.   How did SEIU get to this place? After hearing on Monday from candidates who […]

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