What Have the Unions Ever Done for Us?

Via Eric Lee of LabourStart, a hilarious and very educational You Tube video from Australia.  This is the kind of creative messaging the union movement and progressives need to use.  And it’s a reminder of why union activists should sign up for the weekly LabourStart email list. It’s the largest international labor list promoting campaigns [...]

Global Labor Organizing in Theory and Practice

by Paul Garver updated from Democratic Left Fall 2007 The need to organize workers on the global scale is now widely recognized among labor leaders and activists. But the actual practice lags behind. A successful BCTGM organizing drive at an Ohio yogurt plant demonstrates one way it can be done.

Economic Policy Institute Criticizes Stimulus Deal

With news media reporting that the administration and Congress have reached agreement on an economic stimulus package, Economic Policy Institute President Lawrence Mishel issued a statement sharply critical of the contents of that deal. The real test of any anti-recession plan is whether it helps working Americans to keep earning their paychecks and paying their [...]

Where is the labor-intellectual alliance?

Herman Benson has a piece worth discussing in the current issue of New Politics. (It’s not available on-line yet there, but you should subscribe. It can be found on-line on Benson’s blog. Cheerleading is not enough. It’s time for those scholars, artists, and writers to take another look at what’s happening in our labor movement.When [...]

Organized Labor and the Presidential Candidates

by Bill Fletcher I would have hoped that with the explosive expansion of the Internet and the Web that there would have been greater debate within the ranks. Yet it reminds one that technology is only an instrument. In order to move a debate, there must be organized forces which help to advance a position [...]

Defeat the U.S.- Colombia Free Trade Agreement!

by Paul Garver The impending legislative battle over implementation of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement provides an unsual opportunity to defeat the pro-corporate “free trade” agenda while promoting the rights of Colombian and American workers. On 17thJanuary U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab spoke to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, promising that the Bush Administration would [...]

Is NCLB dead? Should it be?

by Duane Campbell Both major teachers’ unions, the National Educational Association and the American Federation of Teachers have made changing or amending the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 as a top priority in this election year. Each of the major Democratic Party candidates call for substantive change – and this debate will be [...]

Thoughts on Labor Day 2007

Melvyn Dubofsky Democratic Left Fall 2007 Now that another Labor Day has come and gone, it seems a good time to assess the state of workers and unions in the twenty-first century United States. Any such assessment must register greater liabilities than assets. Union membership as a proportion of the employed labor force has fallen [...]

Choices for Black Labor

As we enter the 21st ststst century, Black labor is in disarray. Within the ranks of organized labor, the various institutions that have often spoken on its behalf have ossified. Black caucuses in various unions have stepped back from challenging and pushing the union leaderships and instead have in all too many cases degenerated into social clubs or step-ladders for individuals to get positions in the union structure. While there are greater numbers of Black staff and, in some cases, elected leaders, there is an emphasis on acceptability – to the leadership of organized labor – within the ranks of the movement, rather than an emphasis on challenge and struggle.