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Trade unions

  • Teacher Unions Join Boycott of Wal-Mart
    12 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
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    August 11, 2005, Los Angeles Times
    The two largest U.S. teacher unions joined a "back-to-school" boycott against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., targeting one of the year’s busiest shopping seasons to protest the retailer’s labor practices.
    The 2.7-million-member National Education Assn., the biggest U.S. union, and the 1.3-million-member American Federation of Teachers are teaming with the United Food and Commercial Workers in urging shoppers to buy school supplies elsewhere, the UFCW’s Wake-Up (…)

  • AFL-CIO Leader Reaches Out to Affiliates
    12 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By WILL LESTER
    WASHINGTON — AFL-CIO President John Sweeney proposed Wednesday allowing affiliates of several breakaway national unions to continue working with the labor federation locally.
    After the Teamsters and the service workers union split from the AFL-CIO in late July, Sweeney announced that the federation’s constitution would not allow them to have any role in groups like state labor federations and central organizing councils — groups that are key to local unions’ political (…)

  • Subway Automation Threatens Jobs and Safety
    8 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by William Johnson
    Automation is transforming working conditions for the thousands of union members who keep the New York subways running. On June 19, the system’s “L” line between Brooklyn and Manhattan began running trains without conductors, leaving train operators as the only crew on board.
    Currently, One-Person Train Operation (OPTO) is functioning on the L only during weekends and after midnight, but train operator Tim Schermerhorn believes that once New York’s Metropolitan (…)

  • The AFL-CIO and the Iraq war
    3 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by James Petras
    The US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO, is in a deep crisis. Following a recent split, it lost over 3 million members, reducing it to a mere 9% of the labor force and 7% of the private sector.
    The crisis of the AFL-CIO is the result of politics, including the politics of collaboration with employers and opposition to militant “grass-root” organizing. Over the past 50 years the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucrats have intervened against militant local unions, surrendered past (…)

  • Hands Off Venezuela protests the NED at AFL-CIO Convention
    3 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By David May
    Activists of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign, joining over 90 trade unionists, members of Chicago and Cincinnati Bolivarian Circles and Latin American Solidarity Center supporters, marched to demand suspension of AFL-CIO financial support for the NED during the first day of the trade union federation’s national convention in Chicago Sunday. The occasion also marked the introduction of the US Trade Union Appeal for the HOV campaign, which collected 73 signatures from trade (…)

  • AFL-CIO CONVENTION CALLS FOR TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ
    27 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    AFL-CIO CONVENTION CALLS FOR TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ
    By David Bacon
    CHICAGO, IL (7/26/05) - On the second day of its convention in Chicago, the AFL-CIO took an historic step, calling for the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, and an end to the country’s occupation. Public attention has focused largely on the split in US labor, and the decision by two of the federation’s largest unions to leave. Yet the impact of this call will reverberate for years, with as profound effect on (…)

  • The Labor Movement: It’s More than We Bargain for
    25 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    The Labor Movement: It’s More than We Bargain for
    by Kim Fellner
    The battle over labor’s future is heading toward a showdown at the AFL-CIO Convention, beginning Monday July 25th in Chicago. But the confrontation pitting a team of insurgent unions led by the Service Employees International Union against the AFL-CIO establishment is shaping up to be organizationally bloody, but spiritually bloodless. We’re fighting for the heart and soul of the labor movement as though we had neither. (…)

  • Four of Six "Change-to-Win" Unions to Boycott AFL-CIO Convention
    25 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    Big Labor Split Now Seems Certain:
    Four of Six "Change-to-Win" Unions to Boycott AFL-CIO Convention
    by Jerry Tucker
    In a meeting held late Sunday afternoon, the leaders and delegates from the rival "Change-to-Win" (CTW) faction of the ALF-CIO announced their intentions with regard to participation in the AFL-CIO Convention, scheduled to convene tomorrow, Monday July 25 in Chicago.
    The presidents of all six CTW unions, SEIU, Unite-HERE, Teamsters, UFCW, Laborers, and UFW participated (…)

  • US union movement ’faces split’
    25 July 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    US union movement ’faces split’
    Four of the largest trade unions in the US are boycotting a convention by their umbrella organisation, in what is seen as a prelude to pulling out.
    The four unions say the umbrella AFL-CIO has not done enough to halt the decline in union membership in the US.
    They are among seven dissident unions representing a third of the AFL-CIO’s 13 million members - and $35m in dues.
    Experts say a split in US labour could hurt the Democratic party, which generally (…)

  • Iraqi Union Leader Asks For Help To Force U.S. To Withdraw From Iraq
    20 June 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    Hassan Juma’a Awad and Faleh Abbood Umara took a quiet boat tour Friday through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, thousands of miles from the port city where they live and work in Basra, Iraq.
    Less than two weeks after allied forces entered the southern port city of Basra in 2003, Awad, Umara and other labor activists started the General Union of Oil Workers.
    Such unions were outlawed under Saddam Hussein’s rule. And the union still may be illegal, the pair explained after the (…)