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Trade unions

  • Even Without a Union, Florida Wal-Mart Workers Use Collective Action to Enforce Rights
    20 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Nick Robinson
    Workers at Wal-Mart and other big-box retail chains-like workers in any mostly nonunion industry with low pay and tense, dreary working conditions-are generally a disgruntled lot. In central Florida, Wal-Mart workers are fighting and sometimes winning campaigns using collective action to solve both shop floor and larger industry-wide problems.
    In one rural Florida town, over 20 percent of workers in the local Wal-Mart had their hours cut. In response, workers went into (…)

  • A Joint Statement Concerning the Programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Iraq
    19 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Iraqi Trade Unions
    The Iraqi economy has been severely affected by decades of sanctions, wars and occupation. The Iraqi trade unions and federations believe in the capacity of the country with all its oil and mineral resources to provide a decent living standard for Iraqis.
    The federations and unions consider that the wars and occupation have caused a dramatic decrease in the living and social standards of Iraqis and especially of workers.
    The federations and unions stress the (…)

  • GM, the Delphi Concessions, and North American Workers: Round Two?
    16 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Sam Gindin
    It is important to recall that, until the 1970s, collective bargaining in the United States and Canada was largely about workers demanding improvements from their employers. But a new era in collective bargaining erupted at the end of the 1970s that was soon dubbed "concessionary bargaining." Corporations were now the ones making the demands. Tensions had been building through the decade, with corporations increasingly asserting that they could no longer both maintain profit (…)

  • Working-Class Hero
    14 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by WILLIAM P. JONES
    The recent transit workers’ strike in New York City was a vivid reminder that unions maintain considerable leverage despite their shrinking numbers. Buried beneath the stories about tense negotiations, holiday shopping disruptions and commuters hoofing it over the Brooklyn Bridge was one of labor’s past glories—the creation of Martin Luther King Day. When Transport Workers’ Union president Roger Toussaint demanded recognition of the holiday, he cited the Metropolitan (…)

  • Transit strike may embolden unions nationwide
    4 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By LARRY McSHANE
    NEW YORK - The three-day walkout by city transit workers, while a hassle for millions of New Yorkers, was a boost for unions from coast to coast as they face negotiations where management calls for health care and pension givebacks are almost inevitable, labor experts say.
    “This was a very important stand for those workers to have made,” said Ron Blackwell, chief economist for the AFL-CIO. “It will resonate nationally.”
    ADVERTISEMENT The 33,000 members of Transport (…)

  • Is The Strike Dead? Not According to Bob Schwartz...
    4 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Steve Early
    Three years ago in Boston, downtown streets and office buildings were the scene of inspiring immigrant worker activism during an unprecedented strike by local janitors. Their walk-out was backed by other union members, community activists, students and professors, public officials, religious leaders, and even a few "socially-minded" businessmen. The janitors had long been invisible, mistreated by management and, until recently, ignored by their own SEIU local union. (…)

  • WHAT LABOR CAN’T SAY
    3 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    by Aldon Morris and Dan Clawson
    What kind of labor writing gets suppressed in the U.S. today? Apparently it doesn’t take much.
    We wrote an article on "Lessons of the Civil Rights Movement for Building a Worker Rights Movement" whose last paragraph said:
    Finally, a fundamental question faces workers today: do they have the courage to get up off their knees and confront powerful employers and corporations? A movement requires moral authority and enormous sacrifices by its participants (…)

  • Leaders of Tehran Bus Company Arrested, The Union Dissolved
    28 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Safa Haeri
    PARIS, 24 Dec. (IPS) In its first major social challenge and in continuation of the crackdown of all freedoms in Iran, the new Government under the Islamo-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has arrested at least 14 members of the Single Bus Company of Tehran and Suburbs (SBCTS), informed sources reported on Saturday.
    The order for the arrest, detention and seizure of all documents of the arrested men was issued by Judge Sa’id Mortazavi, the Prosecutor for Tehran and (…)

  • Both sides did what they had to
    25 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Juan Gonzalez
    For three days, their transit strike had paralyzed America’s greatest city, and now it was time to go back to work.
    The 33,700 members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 were exhausted. They had incurred the wrath of millions of transit riders, of Mayor Bloomberg, of Gov. Pataki, of the city’s entire business establishment, even of their own parent union in Washington. For violating the Taylor Law, the local and each individual striker still face huge fines.
    Still, (…)

  • It’s clear Bloomberg just didn’t get it
    25 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Errol Louis
    Mayor Bloomberg yesterday confirmed that he stood by every word of his televised outburst against the Transport Workers Union’s leadership at the height of this week’s strike. He called them "thuggish," "selfish," "frauds" and the like. A host of critics, such as state Sen. Kevin Parker of Brooklyn, now accuse the mayor of being racially divisive.
    "We only need to look back to the day and time when MTA workers first gained the kind of pension and benefits which are now (…)