Labor Notes Stewards Corner
‘I had to come to California to help’Ed Sadlowski came very close to winning the presidency of the Steelworkers in 1977, running a campaign that galvanized rank-and-filers. Now "Oil Can Eddie" is in California, volunteering on the campaign of the National Union of Healthcare Workers to unseat the Service Employees at Kaiser Permanente—an effort to represent more than 43,000 workers. Lead image: Lead image caption: Ed Sadlowski (left), veteran labor reformer, is helping the NUHW Organizing Committee at Kaiser Permanente in Antioch, California.Indianapolis GM Workers Resist Company, Union Pressure to Cut PayWhat part of “NO” doesn’t Justin Norman understand? The CEO of JD Norman Industries is pleading with GM workers to accept his offer of a 50 percent pay cut—though they'd just booed his buddies off the stage two days before. Rat Company Routed by New York MoversIt’s 12 feet long, with a tail, claws, and sharp teeth. It’s only a gray balloon, but the rat strikes fear in the hearts of New York City building managers. Lead image: Lead image caption:New York City movers on strike took their friend the giant rat to picket lines where the employer was using scab labor. Photo: Teamsters Local 814. On MLK's Day, Unions, Conservatives Rally for Jobs, Justice—Honor?Forty-seven years after Martin Luther King, Jr. uttered the words “I have a dream” to an overflow crowd on the Washington Mall, August 28 still has resonance for civil rights activists, the union movement, and, now, the Tea Party. Lead image: Lead image caption:5,000 people attended a march and rally organized by the UAW and Rainbow PUSH in Detroit Aug 28 to call for job creation. Photos: Jim West/jimwestphoto.com Workers of the World Awaken / There's Power in a Union
Byline:
Len Wallace
"I consider this to be Joe Hill's greatest song. It's a call for the One Big Union and workers standing together to build a better world. His vision is needed now more that ever. The opening words are from another of his songs noted in artist Carlos Cortez's famous print of Joe Hill." Decisive Showdown: Which Union Will California Health Care Workers Choose?
Byline:
Mark Brenner
After 18 months of legal delays and workplace skirmishes, the stage is set for a decisive confrontation between the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the Service Employees. Lead image: Lead image caption: NUHW activists protest outside the NLRB, demanding the labor board schedule election contests between NUHW and SEIU. Photo: NUHW.Domestic Workers Make History In New YorkDomestic workers gathered at the foot of the Harriet Tubman memorial in Harlem today to celebrate New York’s groundbreaking domestic workers legislation, which the governor signed into law at a nearby community center. Deloris Wright told the crowd of fellow domestic workers, supporters, and reporters, “Today is about generations of domestic workers that came before and those who are still to come.” Lead image: Lead image caption: Domestic Workers in front of the Harriet Tubman memorial in Harlem. The were there to celebrate a new law, signed by the governor August 31, that makes New York the first state in the nation to provide domestic workers with on-the-job protections.Is U.S. Pulling Plug on Iraqi Workers?
Byline:
David Bacon
Early July 21 police stormed the offices of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union in Basra. A shamefaced officer told President Hashmeya Muhsin that they'd come to shut the union down. Lead image: Lead image caption: Hashmeya Muhsin, head of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union, at a Basra union meeting. Photo: David Bacon.NY Taxi Union Battles Anti-Muslim Hatred after Cab Driver Stabbed
Byline:
Mark Brenner
Taxi Workers Alliance member Ahmed Sharif was attacked Tuesday, a tragic sign of anti-Muslim hysteria swelling from the controversial plans to build an Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero.
Lead image:
Lead image caption:
At a City Hall press conference cab driver, and New York Taxi Workers Alliance member, Ahmed Sharif recounts how a passenger tried to cut his throat after asking him whether he was Muslim.
Jail Time for LA Car Wash OwnersTwo brothers who own four LA car washes were sentenced to a year in jail last week and ordered to pay workers $1.25 million. The verdict came after a plea agreement that settled 172 charges of criminal and labor-law violations, and shows the increasing heft of a long-running Steelworkers campaign to organize car-wash workers in the city. Tour Calls on Dems to Get to Work on Climate and JobsA 17-state bus tour is the keystone of “The Job’s Not Done," a ramping up of efforts by the Blue Green Alliance—a coalition of labor and environmental players including the Steelworkers—to get the Senate to take up a comprehensive climate change bill to provide funding for jobs in new energy technologies. Lead image: Lead image caption: Mark Mullholand counts himself one of the lucky few who's “waved off the recession." But he's on a 17-state tour with the Blue Green Alliance to get the Senate to take up a climate change bill to provide funding for jobs in new energy technologies. Photo: Blue Green Alliance.25 Years on, Still P-9 ProudTwenty-five years ago this month, the small town of Austin, Minnesota, captured the national imagination as 1,700 meatpacking workers struck the flagship plant of George A. Hormel and Company. The strike of Food and Commercial Workers Local P-9 touched a raw nerve in communities and workplaces nationwide struggling to confront corporate demands to extract deep concessions or relocate. Who Pays to Save Social Security? Us or Them?
Byline:
Jane Slaughter
Social Security is quite healthy now—but it will need more cash eventually. Who should pony up? The vast majority of working Americans, suddenly forced to work through what they’d been promised would be their golden years? Or the biggest earners, the top 6 percent? Lead image: Lead image caption: PRIVATIZATION? Labor and allies defeated George Bush’s privatization drive in 2005. Today, many Democrats are speaking out boldly against privatization of Social Security—though it’s not even on the table. The pronouncements seem to be a way to sidestep how they’ll vote on the real question coming up in December—whether to raise the retirement age. Photo: Richard Levine/AlamyThe Attack of the Killer Deficit?
Byline:
Mark Brenner
According to politicians and pundits across the spectrum, the biggest economic threat to the country is not the suffering of millions of unemployed people but the specter of ballooning federal debt. (Deficits are the shortfalls in any given year, debt is the grand total.) Why this sudden obsession with government debt? Retirees Rally to Say ‘Hands Off Social Security’
Byline:
Labor Notes Staff
The people most likely to know just how crucial Social Security is—retirees—are holding more than 100 events to celebrate Social Security’s 75th birthday and tell Congress to keep hands off. Chapters of the Alliance for Retired Americans, an AFL-CIO affiliate, are organizing events around the country this month and next. Lead image: Lead image caption: The Alliance for Retired Americans is holding parties celebrating Social Security’s 75th birthday. In South Carolina, IBEW member Jerry White bashed a “Fat Cat” piñata. Becci Robbins/South Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans.Social Security: Bipartisan Fervor to Whack the Old Folks
Byline:
William Greider
An appalling consensus has developed among Washington elites: they tell themselves cutting Social Security is a slam-dunk. We’ll have to learn to live with less, we’re told. But our side can win this fight if we mobilize quickly and smartly. Lead image: Lead image caption: Union members tell Congress to keep hands off Social Security. Photo: Richard Levine/AlamyBehind Closed Doors, An Attack on Social Security
Byline:
Jane Slaughter
When President Obama named his Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform this spring, he chose 18 wealthy members for whom Social Security will make up only a tiny fraction of their retirement income. The commission is charged with reporting back December 1 with recommendations on how to decrease the ballooning federal budget deficit. Lead image: Lead image caption: The Social Security Act of 1935 promised “a monthly check to you for the rest of your life...beginning when you are 65.” Now politicians want to raise the retirement age to 70. Poster: The Art Archive/Alamy‘Social Security Is Going Broke’...and Other Lies
Byline:
Jane Slaughter
The Big Lie technique is working. Polls show that six out of 10 Americans who aren’t yet retired think Social Security won’t be there for them—with the youngest workers the most pessimistic. And more than half of current retirees predict their benefits will be cut. When your co-workers tell you Social Security is a bankrupt lost cause, set them straight. Here are the facts. Lead image: Lead image caption: Social Security is the only income for 14 percent of seniors. For half of elderly unmarried women and widows, it provides more than 90 percent of income. Photo: Jim West.What Brown Does for Turkish Workers
Byline:
Labor Notes Staff
Unlike our Teamster sisters and brothers here, workers for UPS in Turkey have no union. And over the past few months, workers seeking to organize have faced repression. To date more than 120 union members and workers sympathetic to TÜMTIS, a Turkish transport union, have been fired from UPS Turkey. Some have faced violence and intimidation from management. Chamber of Commerce to Women: Don't Worry, Be Happy about Pay GapWednesday’s post over at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog (yes, even the Chamber has a blog these days) opines that the income disparity between women and men has an easy solution. All a woman has to do is make the right choices: pick the “right place to work” and the “right partner.” With a rich hubby, your low pay won’t matter! |
