Labor

Liliany Obando, closely associated with Colombia’s largest rural labor organization, was arrested Aug. 8 in what police called a “preventive” arrest. In the process, officers of Colombia’s National Police Anti-Terrorism Unit and Criminal Investigation Directorate harassed her children, seized her family’s personal documents and removed left publications.

West Coast longshore workers last week ratified a new six-year contract with the Pacific Maritime Association of waterfront employers. The new pact covers some 65,000 longshore workers and marine clerks, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, at 29 West Coast ports. The PMA represents 71 domestic and international carriers, terminal operators and stevedoring companies operating at those ports.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Now that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have begun to implement the nation’s first comprehensive Clean Trucks Program, Oakland’s port truck drivers and their union and community supporters are wondering how much longer it will take before the Port of Oakland follows their example.

SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — While financial calamity and soaring unemployment dominated media headlines last week, a nationwide coalition of labor, environmental, business and community organizations was making news of a different sort with its bold new program to put millions to work at good-paying jobs, “greening” America and fighting global warming.

Leaders of many of the nation’s most powerful unions have joined with heads of dozens of progressive community and political organizations to map out an economic recovery plan for Main Street.

Stacie Burgess, wife of an active-duty sailor in the U.S. Navy, was in the crowd at an Oct. 4 rally of 20,000 in Newport News where Obama urged a last-minute push to register more first-time voters and get them to the polls. She joined a group chanting “O-ba-ma” so loudly it caught his attention. Wading through the crowd after his speech, Obama reached out and shook her hand.

The strike launched Sept. 4 by the Machinists against Boeing, the nation’s largest airplane maker, shows perhaps as well as anything else the rising tide of anger among American workers and their determination to fight.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — At organized labor’s Get Out The Vote mobilization here last week, Ohio AFL-CIO President Joe Rugola announced that he will walk across the state, stopping at shut-down facilities, to publicize the over 122,000 jobs lost in that state due to the policies of the Bush administration. The “Walk for Economic Justice” will kick off Oct. 5 in Youngstown, with a public rally at one of the many closed steel mills in the Mahoning Valley.

First time applications for unemployment benefits skyrocketed to a seven year high in September as more workers lost their jobs in an economy that John McCain described, only two weeks ago, as “basically sound.”

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — As 4,000 workers at Yale University gear up for a contract fight next year, and 2,000 workers at Yale New Haven Hospital continue their organizing drive, the question of who will be president looms large.