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Trade unions

  • Oh, Those Bad Bosses
    8 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Giving one person power over others is like a giving a 3-year-old a hose: not everyone will get soaked, but the chances of coming out dry are slender.
    By Barbara Ehrenreich
    The AFL-CIO’s Working America project has launched a "bad boss" contest. Unfortunately, the prize is only a free vacation, rather than the opportunity to see your nominee drawn and quartered after a lengthy and humiliating public trial.
    I’ve heard so many bad boss stories that I’d hate to be one of the judges. The (…)

  • Palestinian workers’ organizations appeal
    4 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Palestinian workers’ organizations urgent appeal Take Immediate Action to Save Lives and Protect Human Dignity in Palestine and Lebanon
    The Israeli occupying power is waging a ruthless war on Palestine and Lebanon, which resulted in the killing and injuring of thousands of innocent civilians -among them many women and children- and destruction of houses. Israel is acting with the full support of the current leaders of the United States of America which are trying to impose their (…)

  • THE TRAGIC FATE OF THE DELPHI STRUGGLE
    15 July 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Dave Stratman
    Delphi, General Motors’ largest parts supplier, is in bankruptcy court seeking permission to break labor contracts which run through 2007 with its 33,000 hourly employees. Delphi is demanding a 40% wage cut and reductions in the benefits and pensions of current and retired auto workers. It plans to close 25 plants and fire 23,000 employees. Delphi claims it needs these cuts to become competitive in the global marketplace, the same argument that Ford and GM and countless (…)

  • Nurses protest move to narrow union roles
    15 July 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Sandy Kleffman
    More than 400 nurses rallied Tuesday in downtown Oakland, hoping to prevent a legal decision they said could sharply restrict union membership and limit the power of the influential California Nurses Association and other labor groups.
    This is a fight we’re going to win — they’re not going to bust our union,’’ Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurse’s union, told the crowd.
    The noon event mirrored a rally in downtown Los Angeles that also drew several hundred (…)

  • HOW THE UNIONS KILLED THE WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT
    25 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Dave Stratman
    The US working class has been betrayed by organizations that it thought were its own and by contractual arrangements that it thought were to its benefit. The working class is trapped in a web of organizations and ways of thinking about itself which have stripped it of its power and left it fatally vulnerable to its enemies.
    Beneath the ringing words of the 1908 Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) lay a vision of the working class as (…)

  • Focused only on building workers’ rights
    8 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Han Dongfang
    On April 25, 1989, Deng Xiaoping made a speech to Communist Party leaders urging an immediate government crackdown on any sign of an upsurge in the democratic movement. Party leaders "should learn from the experience of Poland’s Solidarity trade union", and "must not be soft-handed" in dealing with the democratic movement in China, he said. Then on June 4, 1989, the government launched its bloody crackdown on the movement by students and workers. The latter was (…)

  • Teamsters: Changing to Win?
    4 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by WILLIAM JOHNSON
    Chances are you haven’t heard of Silver Capital, a small, now-defunct Chicago-based company that used to manufacture mirrors, frames and glass-cutting boards.
    Silver Capital’s workers were mostly Mexican immigrants, working for substandard wages and zero benefits—no healthcare, no pensions, no sick days. And no matter what the auto companies tell you, manufacturing work is not fun. Silver Capital workers suffered severe injuries (fingers chopped off, limbs gouged) and (…)

  • Black Labor fights "Disorder" of Globalization
    4 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Glen ford and Peter Gamble
    ’Wal-Mart is buying Negro leaders.’ - Rev. Al Sharpton
    ’We will not be passive bystanders to our own demise.’ - CBTU President William Lucy
    ’Economic justice is a part of freedom. We must fight for a people’s economy.’ - Dr. Julianne Malveaux
    Black labor is carefully writing a new page in the book of African American struggle. Despite the loss of 400,000 Black union jobs during the first four years of the Bush administration, and in the face of the U.S. (…)

  • Tesco job ads follow non-union line
    28 May 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
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    By Jonathan Birchall
    Tesco, the world’s third largest grocer, has listed "maintaining union-free status" and "union avoidance activities" among the responsibilities of senior managers of its planned new network of stores on the US west coast.
    Language in two job descriptions indicates that Tesco - which has a close partnership with its UK union - is set to follow the non-union example of Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and others in the US, adding to the pressure on the United Food (…)

  • Blair in Rome: PRODI PROVOKES THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT
    27 May 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
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    WE DON’T WANT BLAIR IN ROME
    In these days we have repeatedly asked the [Romano] Prodi government to abolish the obscene war parade of June 2. Why should the Holiday of the Republic be celebrated with lethal weapons and units of the occupation troops of Iraq and Afghanistan? Why not transform it into a holiday for everyone, eliminating the military presence? No answer: the parade has been confirmed.
    We have then asked the new president of the House, Bertinotti [Fausto Bertinotti, former (…)