Labor

GARY, Ind. — Meeting at the city’s largest high school on Sept. 1, 1,500 members of American Federation of Teachers Local 4 loudly and unanimously approved a new one-year contract that everyone agreed was a tremendous victory for the union

For the last five months, job creation has failed to keep up with demand. But you’d never know that from most news stories.

This week’s clips are a brief roundup of a few of the hundreds of Labor Day parades, marches and picnics around the country.
DALLAS: Labor breakfast, immigrant rights march
PITTSBURGH: Workers demand change in Washington
DETROIT: Flight attendants lead 50,000 marchers
LORAIN, Ohio: ‘The air was electric’
LOS ANGELES: ‘We’re building power’

After a brutal police attack against a radio and television station, a tense standoff continues in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where striking teachers and popular organizations are demanding that right-wing Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz resign.

Anyone who feels that getting protection from their employers is taking away their “rights” will be relieved to learn that the United States Department of Labor, George W. Bush in charge, is racing to the rescue.

Is Andy Stern right that class struggle trade unionism is outdated and a leftover from the heyday of industrial unionism? Is he right that corporate globalization is inevitable and all that unions can do is go along to get along? I think not.

Today the labor movement has joined with millions of immigrant workers and social justice advocates in a united struggle for labor and human rights.

A couple of economic reports grimly confirm what workers across the U.S. already know from their own experience.

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Joint organizing drives involving two or three unions, some of them in notoriously anti-union “right to work” states, will lead to wins for organized labor, says AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff.

Dave Pavlick took his vacation from his job as a staff representative for the UAW in Cleveland so that he could walk 600 miles across the entire state of Ohio. He stopped at community after community to hold press conferences and talk with regular folks, supporting the Health Care for All Ohioans Act.