If workers keep their mouths shut, their noses clean and stop busting chops and bucking their bosses, they will, if management sees fit, be paid fairly so that, provided they are not ingrates or spendthrifts, they will do just fine being one paycheck ahead of eviction and the need to forage through dumpsters to find sustenance for their sick kid who is medically unattended because his parent’s employer is no believer in investing in cost-ineffective luxuries like health insurance.
That’s the credo of the business community and their shills in the Department of Commerce and the Republican Party. That’s why the American Society of Employers has published a “toolkit” including links on “Warning Signs of Unionization,” and “Strategies to Stay Union Free.” More »
As the United Federation of Teachers heads toward our fiftieth anniversary in 2010, we find ourselves facing a challenge greater than any we confronted in the last half-century of our history. Our union has been tempered by many extraordinary struggles over these last five decades, but never have we seen what we are witnessing today: a direct assault on the public character of American education and on the very right of teachers to organize collectively in unions. While the UFT has withstood these attacks as well as any teacher union in the nation, it would be a serious mistake to look at developments in New Orleans and Washington DC and proclaim “it can not happen here.” If we fail to grasp the critical nature of this moment and mount an appropriate, vigorous response, it can and will happen here.
At the center of this challenge is the charter school movement. More »
United Students Against Sweatshops scored a big victory on behalf of 1200 Honduran workers who lost their jobs when Russell Athletic closed their plant in response to organizing efforts. Russell, owned by Fruit of the Loom, agreed to reopen the factory in Choloma, rehire the workers, recognize their union, and collectively bargain in good faith.
From the time Russell shut the factory last January, the anti-sweatshop coalition orchestrated a nationwide campaign against the company. Most important, the coalition, United Students Against Sweatshops, persuaded the administrations of Boston College, Columbia, Harvard, New York University, Stanford, Michigan, North Carolina and 89 other colleges and universities to sever or suspend their licensing agreements with Russell.
…
“For us, it was very important to receive the support of the universities,” Moises Alvarado, president of the union at the closed plant in Choloma, said by telephone on Tuesday. “We are impressed by the social conscience of the students in the United States.”
The Metro NY Labor Communications Council is sponsoring an “organized conversation” about health care reform tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 17, from 6-8 p.m., at the Center for Worker Education (CWE), CUNY, 25 Broadway, 7th floor auditorium.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is in gridlock. Established to ensure fairness and resolve labor/management disputes in the workplace, it has become just another dysfunctional “political football.” That’s because of a partisan stalemate, hatched by Republican stalwarts, over filling three vacant NLRB seats.
Only two seats are currently occupied, one member each from both major political parties. Federal court decisions are divided as to whether that constitutes a legal quorum.
President George W. Bush had stacked the NLRB with five members, all of whom had passed the Republican litmus test of being rabidly hostile to workers’ rights. Now that a relatively pro-Labor administration has been voted in with the blessing of the electorate, the Grand Old Party (a name that lends itself to its own perfect ridicule) is obstructing efforts to allow the NLRB to be viable again.
Last August President Obama nominated three new members, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in cahoots with the Republicans who have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the altar of decency while fighting tooth and nail against every minimum wage increase, social security benefit and other enlightened idea, have stalled it.
Despite the deadlock, the NLRB continues to do business settling straightforward disputes. But the more complex and consequential ones are snared in indefinite delay.
The feet of the GOP, for a start, need to be put to the fire.
Education knows no bounds and no boundaries. It cannot be contained in the vacuum of a classroom or confined by defined curriculum. Teaching is a futile enterprise unless it breaks down walls of ignorance, not merely in terms of academic deficiencies but also as reckoned by failure to work for justice in all precincts of the world. Learning that doesn’t admit of global perspective and duty is a fraud. More »
President Obama addressed the AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention in Pittsburgh today, Sept. 15.
He spoke about the urgent need for health care reform and reiterated his support for the Employee Free Choice Act.
These are the reforms I’m proposing. These are the reforms labor has been championing. These are the reforms the American people need. And these are the reforms I intend to sign into law.
Quality, affordable health insurance. A world-class education. Good jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced. A strong labor movement. That’s how we’ll lift up hardworking families. That’s how we’ll grow our middle class. That’s how we’ll put opportunity within reach in the United States of America.
The AFL-CIO Now Blog has a recap, and a transcript of the speech is here.
for the 43 members of
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant,
who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center
Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago. More »
Great news! We now have reason to believe that Lance, Inc. has backed out of the deal to buy the Stella D’oro brand from Brynwood Partners!
This is a very important victory, although we cannot claim credit for it. Our efforts to pressure them and their investors probably had some impact, but no one can say for sure why they made their ultimate decision. But, whatever their reasons, it is wonderful news!
Given this recent development, the event at Barclays Capital this Wednesday has been canceled.
Today, the nation’s preeminent charter school organization, Green Dot Public Schools, and its largest teacher union local, the United Federation of Teachers, signed an innovative and pioneering collective bargaining agreement for Green Dot’s New York City charter school. The contract was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Green Dot school on Monday, and was ratified by the UFT Chapter today.
The 29 page agreement breaks vital new ground, and not simply because it brings together leading forces in the ranks of the charter school movement and teacher unionism. Just as importantly, the contract embodies a new model of labor relations in education, based on a disarmingly simple proposition: that a school which respects, nurtures and supports teacher professionalism in all of its work will provide the best education for students. More »
Today’s New York Times has an interesting feature article on teachers fired from New York City public schools during the 1950s for being real and suspected Communists. Be sure to also take a look at the slideshow on the topic.
It’s clearly time to open up the municipal archives on this subject to researchers, so that there can be a full historical accounting of this period.
The following are reflections on the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, the day the Chinese state violently suppressed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. They are written by Han Dongfang, the leader of the independent union formed during the Tiananmen Square protests. After June 4th, Han nearly lost this life when he was jailed in a prison filled with highly contagious tuberculosis patients. He is currently the head of the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), a Hong Kong based organization dedicated to advocacy on behalf of Chinese workers. These reflections originally appeared on the CLB Web site.
Photo by Jeff Widener (Associated Press)
In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, many journalists asked me: “Have you lost hope?” The government has successfully suppressed the truth of what happened that day; young people today do not care as much as the students of 1989 about the fate of their country or their fellow citizens, or set much store by democracy, freedom and political ideals. Instead, they want to find a good, well-paid job, and dream of owning a car and buying a home as soon as possible. As a participant in the democracy movement 20 years ago, these journalists asked me, have you given up on this generation that has abandoned political commitment for the pursuit of material happiness?
The question certainly worries me. But when you think about it, what is wrong with young people trying to raise their living standards? There is no inherent conflict between the pursuit of a comfortable life and the pursuit of democracy and freedom. Democracy is not just a matter of abstract political theory. A democratic system should be able to deliver a better life — decent pay, a good job, a nice car and a place of your own — as a matter of course. It should be a tool for realising dreams. At the moment, how many of the 1.4 billion people living in China are really fulfilling their dreams? Never mind dreams — how many still lack life’s basic necessities?
For the last week, we have been following the debate in conservative educational circles set off by Diane Ravitch’s counterfactual on teacher unions and student achievement. If teacher unions have the negative effect on student achievement that anti-unionists never tire of postulating, Ravitch asked, why is that that the state with the highest academic performance, Massachusetts, is also one of the states with the greatest teacher union density and strength?
Ravitch’s counterfactual was so bedeviling in these circles because it employed an Ockham’s razor on the thicket of prejudices about teacher unions that underlies much of conservative educational discourse on the subject. More »
Corporate mismanagement, predatory private equity, the destruction of an iconic brand and now an attempt to destroy the livelihoods of modest working families, the story at Stella D’oro pretty well sums up all that’s been happening over the past two decades with the financialization of the food and manufacturing sectors generally. The workers and their union, an affiliate of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, AFL-CIO have decided they have had enough.
Today, the nation’s preeminent charter school organization, Green Dot Public Schools, and its largest teacher union local, the United Federation of Teachers, signed an innovative and pioneering collective bargaining agreement for Green Dot’s New York City charter school. The contract was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Green Dot school on Monday, and was ratified by the UFT Chapter today.
