Hillman Foundation Awards

The Sidney Hillman Foundation, a project of Unite Here, presented their 58th Annual Journalism awards last night. Not only was it at a new location, but it utilized a new technology–a webcast. You can view the event here. It’s a long video, if just want to find out who won, click more.

Victory for CIW Sets Stage for Expanded Campaign for Justice

Stuart Elliott A long, public campaign led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based worker organization, achieved a landmark victory on Friday May 23 when an agreement with fast-food giant Burger King was announced at a Washington, D.C. news conference. The agreement, similar to earlier deals with McDonalds and Yum! Brands, should result in [...]

Young Democratic Socialists and the Student Labor Week of Action

David Duhalde Labor movement solidarity remains at the forefront of Young Democratic Socialists’ (YDS) work. As a socialist organization, we believe organized working people play a central role in movements for progressive change. YDS, however, does not limit our activism solely to trade unionism. For the past two years, as part of our annual Activist [...]

Solidarity Divided

SOLIDARITY DIVIDED: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice is a major new book by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fenando Gapasin. Talking Union will be taking a closer look at in the coming weeks, but we wanted to bring it to our readers attention right away. (It can be ordered [...]

Janitors’ Strike in Silicon Valley

Thousands of Silicon Valley janitors strike at high-tech firms By Mark Gomez At least 100 janitors are walking the picket lines this morning at some of Silicon Valley’s largest high-tech companies – including Cisco Systems and Apple – in protest of a contract offer they are calling “totally unacceptable.” Contract talks for more than 6,000 [...]

China, Wal-Mart and SEIU

As part of its campaign against “SEIU’s Secret Deals,” UHW’s SEIU Voice has criticized SEIU’s engagement with the Chinese labor confederation ACFTU. It features a video made from a talk by Han Dongfeng, editor of the China Labor Bulletin, at a UHW meeting in March 2008. SEIU Voice states that “in 2007, SEIU leaders helped [...]

China: Some Steps Forward, but Trade-Related Worker Exploitation Persists

Released to coincide with China’s trade policy review at the WTO, a new report from the International Trade Union Confederation shows concludes that there remain serious violations of all the core labour standards in the country. The new Labor Contract Law that came into force on 1 January 2008 , with the support of the [...]

How to Support Hunger Strike of Indian Migrant Workers

Five migrant workers from India who are fighting against their exploitation under the H2B program (see May 8 article “Gandhi Joins with Martin Luther King“) have begun a hunger strike. They are demanding: Continued presence in the U.S without the threat of deportation The right to participate in a criminal trafficking investigation into their former [...]

Threatening Phone Call Shows Intimidation of Undocumented Workers

In recent Congressional testimony, Bill Beardell, Director of the Equal Justice Center, discusses a threatening phone call that was made by an employer to an undocumented worker. Before playing the recorded phone message, Bearsdall makes the point that lax enforcement of labor laws creates incentives for employers to prefer higher undocumented workers.

Blowing a Whistle on Negative Campaigning

Although I am nobody’s referee, I know a foul when I see one. Some time ago I called one on national SEIU’s disruption of the Labor Notes Conference. Now I’ve detected another one in one piece of UHW’s negative campaign against Andy Stern. The violation consists of what I consider an imbalanced criticism of an [...]