Labor

Wal-Mart is known for the huge profits it has accumulated for the Walton family and its Wall Street backers. It is also known for low pay and savage opposition to workers’ rights.

Bridgestone/Firestone blocks Steelworker solidarity
Wireless workers send strong signal to Cingular
Bay Area coalition says: ‘Wake Up, Wal-Mart!’
UE chemical workers fight back against Stepan
Broadcast employees support single-payer bill

AFL-CIO charts election strategy, forms new partnership with NEA.
SAN DIEGO — A rainbow seemed to appear amid the gloomy clouds of disunity hanging over the U.S. labor movement when the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO announced a new partnership at the federation’s executive council meeting here Feb. 27. The NEA, with 2.8 million members, is the nation’s largest union. It has always been independent of the AFL-CIO.

En español AFL-CIO anuncia nueva unidad laboral

SAN DIEGO, California – En un homenaje aquí se celebró la vida del legendario organizador sindical Clinton Jencks. Jencks falleció en San Diego el 15 de diciembre a los 87 años de edad.

This is a sad time in the mining community, with so many recent tragedies. But it’s not enough to mourn. We also have to act.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Winchester belongs in New Haven,” said toolmaker Larry Edwards at a community meeting here where Winchester workers, elected officials and Newhallville neighborhood residents joined forces to try to save over 140 union jobs.

What’s obscene here?
Six unions split from building trades
Sikorsky aircraft strike
IBEW goes after church arsonists
Pillowtex settlement
Macy’s workers vote to strike
AFL-CIO superblog
Healthy response to HR 676

As if it were a close basketball game, where one team is ahead by two or three points and is trying to run out the clock to keep the other team from scoring, New Mexico’s Republican state senators in cahoots with three southern Democratic state senators managed to stonewall a minimum wage bill as the Legislature’s session came to a halt exactly at 12 noon on Feb. 16.

The “Directive on Services in the Internal Market,” otherwise known as the Bolkestein Directive, passed in a European Parliament vote Feb. 16. Despite mass protest and mobilizations by trade unions and grassroots organizations, the European Union Parliament’s two biggest groups, the EPP-ED (conservatives) and PSE (socialists), collaborated to get an amended version adopted in the EP plenary.

BERKELEY, Calif. — Nat Courtney’s father had worked for the father of longtime Honda dealership owner Jim Doten. The Doten family, he said, had treated the workers with respect. So Courtney, who started there in 1974 and is now shop steward and a Gold-level Honda-certified technician, naturally thought his job was stable and dependable, the kind of work you could raise a family on