Labor

In response to a comment about the beauty of Colombia, 7-year-old Daniela said, “Yes, but it is so violent.” Daniela should know. She has seen the violence up close. Her father, a left-wing city council member, was murdered by right-wing paramilitaries when he answered the door to their home one day.

NEW YORK — Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents this city’s bus and subway workers, has been ordered by a state agency into binding arbitration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but the union plans to fight the order.

ATHENS, Greece — Several months of intensified trade union activity in Greece culminated in a nationwide strike March 15 where thousands upon thousands of working people, the unemployed, university and high school students and pensioners flooded the streets in more than 60 cities in a defiant stand against the repressive, anti-worker measures of the Greek government and the European Union.

PARIS (AP) — At least 1 million of protesters poured onto France’s streets and absent workers hobbled transport services March 28 in the first nationwide strike against a new labor law for youths, increasing pressure on the embattled prime minister to withdraw the contested measure.

Ah, the corporate right has launched a new anti-labor front group called UnionFacts.org, dealing in dark tales of union corruption. Of course, you can judge the likely accuracy of the site by the fact that its been set up by the professional lobbyist who helped found the Beverage Institute, the nice folks who tell the public soda pop has no role in childhood obesity and that Mothers Against Drunk Driving are radical ideologues.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The struggle to save unionized manufacturing jobs and continue the 140-year production of Winchester sporting arms in New Haven has attracted national and international attention as the Belgian Herstal Group prepares to close its US Repeating Arms Company (USRAC) factory doors on March 31.

Some time ago this paper surveyed the approach of a “perfect storm” of economic assaults on the U.S. private pension system. Not entirely unmindful of the weather, the U.S. Republican-controlled Congress, under the leadership of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and new House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), constructed companion bills promising to restore the U.S. pension system to stability.

After a weekend of protests in which 1.5 million people took to the streets, French labor unions are preparing for a general strike in response to what they call a dangerous and disturbing new law.

When the people of White Salmon, Wash., stepped into their community library last fall, they probably didn’t think they’d be leaving without the labels on their clothing. That is unless they knew they were going to encounter Janet Essley’s interactive painting exhibit titled “Presente: She is Here With Us.”

Equality has become an unmentionable word in Congress. It doesn’t come even once in the 300-page omnibus immigration bill introduced last week by Senator Arlen Specter, nor in any of the others Congress is considering. They all deny equality to millions of people. In the testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, no one even dares to advocate it.