SEIU-NUHW conflict moves to Sacramento

By Duane Campbell
After an apparent  narrow defeat in Fresno, the battle between SEIU led by Andy Stern and former SEIU members in the National Union of Health Care Workers, led by Sal Rosselli, moves to Sacramento and the Bay Area.
In the past twelve weeks over 50,000 workers in California healthcare facilities have petitioned to leave [...]

Labor movement backs UNITE HERE

by Randy Shaw
In a dramatic blow to SEIU’s efforts to raid UNITE HERE members and jurisdictions, 15 of the nation’s leading unions pledged Monday to provide UNITE HERE with “material and moral” support. Before a wildly cheering and upbeat crowd of 700, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee denounced SEIU for the “poaching” of UNITE HERE, and [...]

Unions Oppose Taxing of Health Benefits

A majority of international unions have signed on to a letter to all U.S. Senators opposing any health reform proposal that would tax health care benefits saying, “…(W)e wish to express our strong opposition to any proposal that would pay for this reform by altering the tax treatment of employer provided health care.
During the presidential [...]

Steve Early Book Party in Boston

On Monday, June 29, meet Steve Early, the author of Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home.
Steve Early is a labor journalist, lawyer, former CWA organizer, and frequent Boston Globe contributor.
Find out more about workers and the economic crisis, the fight for health care reform, the fate of “Employee [...]

Rite Aid workers charge company officials with abuse at shareholder meeting

New York – Rite Aid workers charged their employer with “abusive, disrespectful, and illegal treatment” at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in New York City on Thursday morning, June 25.
Standing up for employees at the company’s annual meeting was veteran Rite Aid employee Angel Warner, who attended representing 600 of her co-workers at the company’s [...]

Labor leader comes out

In 1999, Pride at Work became a constituency group of the AFL-CIO While  unions have occasionally taken a stand in favor of gay rights (such as the AFL-CIO support for ENDA),  it is probably fair to say that this has not been a top level issue for labor.   Last week gay rights got a human [...]

Unsung Hospital Heroines Finally Carry The Show

By Suzanne Gordon
Since the birth of television, Hollywood has given doctors a permanent starring role in prime-time hospital dramas. But most doctor shows have relegated the nation’s largest healthcare profession – nursing – to the status of bit players. Whether it was “Marcus Welby, M.D.’’ or “St. Elsewhere,’’ TV routinely presented RNs as mere handmaidens [...]

“We Won’t Work For Crumbs”: Stella D’Oro Workers Fight Back!

by Beth Borzone
On Saturday May 30th, striking Stella D’Oro workers and approximately 800 supporters rallied in the Bronx, New York to speak out, not only in support of their striking workers, but for all workers taking a hit in today’s economy. Their goal: to start a new workers’ movement and set a precedent for fighting [...]

Harold Meyerson: Never Ending Labor Wars

Harold Meyerson brings us up-to-date of the wars between SEIU and UNITE HERE on the American Prospect website. After noting that both John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE and Andy Stern of SEIU (joined by Bruce Raynor and Edgar Romney of the UNITE HERE breakaway United Workers) had made favorable reference to an arbitration proposal [...]

Is Fresno SEIU’s Vietnam?

by Randy Shaw
SEIU defeated NUHW by 233 votes in their bitter election over Fresno’s 10,000 home care workers, but now faces a situation analogous to the United States in Vietnam. It took nearly one thousand staffers and an estimated $10 million for SEIU to eke out a victory in Fresno, the labor equivalent of carpet-bombing. [...]