Flowers for Mom,Yes! Colombia Free Trade Agreement, No!

If you bought your Mom flowers for Mothers Day, chances are that they arrived on one of the 28 daily cargo flights into Miami from Colombia, where over 100,000 mainly female workers pick and process flowers for the U.S. market. They earn a minimal wage, are exposed to numerous toxins from pesticides and fungicides, [...]

Splits in the Labor Movement, Then and Now: C.I.O. - Change to Win

Rough economic times, changing demographics, the reinvention of work and workplaces, conflicting models for moving forward - both in the 1930s and the 2000s one result has been to split the labor movement.
AFL vs. CIO — AFL-CIO vs. Change to Win, how far do the parallels hold up?

Gandhi Joins with Martin Luther King: Jobs with Justice National Conference

Here is one ongoing story of struggle by workers against exploitative corporate globalization. It is part of the rich tapestry presented at the Jobs with Justice National Conference in Providence, which assembled several hundred activists from forty local coalitions that campaign for workers’ rights. These delegates, diverse in age, race and culture, shared [...]

We are workers, not criminals

By David Bacon
May 1, 2008
In the big immigrant marches that swept the country on May Day in 2006 and 2007, one sign said it all: “We are Workers, not Criminals!” Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they’d just come from work in a factory, cleaning [...]

The importance of understanding private equity

Stuart Elliott
Our friends at Dissent have made available on-line a very important article from their Winter 2008 issue–Stephen F. Diamond’s “Private Equity and the Public Good.” (It’s a reminder that subscribers get to read many articles before they’re on-line. I’m looking forward to getting the Spring issue in the mailbox to read “Show Me [...]

Labor scholars, writers, Challenge SEIU

In May Day Letter To SEIU President Andy Stern, 100 Scholars, Artists and Writers Defend Right to “Principled Dissent” and Caution Against UHW Trusteeship
“We are writing to express our deep concern about SEIU’s threatened trusteeship over its third largest local, United Healthcare Workers (UHW). We believe that there must always be room within organized labor [...]

May Day!

ITUC May Day Manifesto
Brussels, 29 April 2008 (ITUC OnLine): On this day, the 1st of May, millions of working people across the world join together to celebrate the achievements of more than a century of trade unionism. The high principles of equality, justice, human dignity and peace which have found expression through the trade union [...]

Harold Meyerson on why the Democrats need unions

In his latest op-ed, the astute Harold Meyerson gives some advice to the Democrats about attracting white working class voters. The key is union. In the electoral long run, the Employee Free Choice Act and, this November, labor’s secret weapon–Working America.