Coke Workers Strike to Preserve Jobs

Coke Workers Strike in South Africa by Paul Garver A strike by three thousand workers launched by the Food and Allied Workers’ Union (FAWU) on December 22 at SAB Miller’s ABI Soft Drinks Division has now entered its second month.  ABI is a major bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola products in South Africa The union is [...]

NUHW Wins election over SEIU at Kaiser

by Randy Shaw In a stunning rebuke to SEIU, nurses and health care professionals at Kaiser Hospital voted overwhelmingly yesterday to leave SEIU and join NUHW. Nurses favored NUHW over SEIU 746-36 (95%), one health professional unit went for NUHW 189-26 (86%), and the other went for NUHW 717-192 (78%). The landslide victories likely foreshadow [...]

Wal-Mart Rejected Again in Chicago

by Bob Roman A proposed compromise that would have allowed Wal-Mart to build additional stores in Chicago bit the dust just before a January 11th Chicago City Council Finance Committee meeting .The compromise ordinance would have required a “living wage” of $11.03 an hour for retailers that employ more than 50 and benefit, directly or indirectly, [...]

Democrats Forgot the Working Class in Massachusetts!

by Jeff Crosby Jeff Crosby is President of CWA-IUE Local 201 in Lynn, Massachusetts.  He is also President of the (Boston) North Shore Labor Council.  This article appeared first in the AFL-CIO Now blog, and is printed here by permission of the author.     Hey, Democrats, Remember Us? “Jeff, you guys at the Union [...]

Mexican electrical workers seek solidarity

Humberto Montes de Oca (left) of the Mexican Electrical Workers, spoke to workers in Sacramento and Stockton California on Jan. 24, 2010, as a part of a tour of California unions sponsored by the San Francisco Central labor Council, LACLAA, and endorsed by the Sacramento Central Labor Council. Montes de Oca described how 44,000 electrical [...]

Wake-up call – Fight Back!

Invitation to Home-Based Worker Organizing Forum

[We believe the home-based worker organizing forum, as well as the Labor Notes conference will be of interest to our readers.] Dear Brothers and sisters, We are writing because of our shared interest in the challenge of organizing and representing home-based workers. As labor activists, direct care providers, or academic researchers, we have all been [...]

Vicky Starr: union maid and democratic socialist

by Bob Roman Union organizer, Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner honoree, Democratic Socialists of America member Vicky Starr passed away on Thanksgiving Day in Evanston, Illinois, at the age of 93. Vicky Starr’s long history in labor and progressive movements includes participating in the initial organizing of the United Packinghouse Workers in the 1930s and 1940s, and in [...]

AFL-CIO urges unions to join in disaster reflief

By James Parks AFL-CIO Now Blog The AFL-CIO today called for the United States and the entire international community, including the global union movement, to “do our utmost to aid our Haitian sisters and brothers in their moment of extraordinary need.” You can help Haitian workers in distress by donating tothe AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Earthquake [...]

Join with the labor movement in the fight for a better health care bill.

National Call-in Day Wednesday Jan 13, 2010 DSA is joining with the AFL-CIO on Wednesday January 13th to call members of the House of Representatives to urge them to stand up for provisions in the House health care bill that are superior to the deeply flawed Senate Bill. We also urge members to call the [...]