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Smithfield workers force company to the table
September 07, 20071,000 rally for union rights and end to immigration raids WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — A thousand workers and activists demanding unionization of Smithfield’s Tar Heel, N.C., plant shook the walls of the Williamsburg Lodge Conference Center here Aug. 29 as they massed outside the annual meeting of the company’s shareholders, shouting slogans, chanting and blowing whistles. Company executives inside agreed to a key union demand, the call for the two sides...
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THIS WEEK IN LABOR: Sept. 1
August 31, 2007Workers ‘very happy’ on their jobs! We were hoping for some good news and that’s just what we got this week from a research outfit that works for some of the nation’s biggest nonunion companies. Just in time for Labor Day, a new survey on American workers finds that most are “very happy” on their jobs, so if you’re not whistling while you work, you better start worrying about what’s...
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August 25, 2007BERKELEY May 3, Sat., café 7 p.m., cabaret 8 p.m. The Bolshevik Café: Music, stand-up comedy, & spoken word plus display: 50 years of political posters, t-shirts & other left memorabilia. Put the social in socialism, the comic in communism & pizza in the proletariat! Sliding scale admission $5 - $15, food sold separately. At Finn Hall, 1819 10th St. Sponsored by Billie Holiday Collective. Info: (415) 863-6637 or staff@ncalofc.org....
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As hog boss goes for the kill, workers unite for the fight
August 24, 2007Smithfield Packing employs 5,500 workers who slaughter and package the meat of 32,000 hogs a day at its sprawling plant in Tar Heel, a tiny town 80 miles south of Raleigh, N.C. The facility has become a rallying point for the nation’s labor movement and for civil rights, immigrant rights, community and human rights groups seeking an end to injustice. On Aug. 29, thousands of supporters of Smithfield workers are...
Read moreFury and grief in Utah mining town
August 24, 2007The same day that Jocka Jones laid to rest her brother, who was killed trying to rescue six trapped Utah miners, officials of the Crandall Canyon Mine said it would soon be back in business. Choking back tears during a phone interview Aug. 22, Jones said her brother, Dale Ray Black, 48, “will have died in vain if one more person is killed in that mine.” With the underground rescue...
Read moreCatholic hospital chain pressed on low wages
August 10, 2007CHICAGO (PAI) — Four years ago, Araceli Romero’s son Julio developed a serious infection. Romero, a laundress at Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago — flagship of one of the nation’s largest Catholic health care medical chains — had no health insurance. On what Resurrection paid, she couldn’t afford it. First, Romero tried to get her teenage son private care by taking him to clinics, but the money soon ran out....
Read moreThis Week In Labor: July 21
July 20, 2007Gov’t agency a union buster A watchdog is needed to keep an eye on the government’s “watchdog.” Mirroring private sector union-busting tactics — but paid for with our tax dollars — the Government Accountability Office has hired a private counsel and a union-busting firm to help the agency fight a unionizing drive by more than 1,400 analysts who want to form a union with the Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE)....
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June 08, 2007A voice for nonunion workers Working America — the AFL-CIO’s influential grassroots organization for people who don’t have a union — is sending an army of activists to the streets this summer to strengthen the voice of working people in nine states. By the end of the summer, Working America will have 180 staff members talking face to face with people around the country, mobilizing them around both local and...
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THIS WEEK IN LABOR
June 01, 2007Security workers march for health care, respectPrivate security officers and their supporters marched May 24 through downtown Oakland, Calif., past the high-rise commercial office buildings they work to protect, to demand decent wages, affordable family health care and respect. A master contract covering 5,000 security officers employed by leading security companies in San Francisco, the East Bay area and Contra Costa County expires June 30. The march was the start...
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May 11, 2007Union membership would double with EFCA Union membership in the U.S. would almost double from the current 12.4 percent of all workers to 22 percent if the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) were to become law, a new report says. Speaking at an April 30 press conference organized by the Institute for America’s Future, Ross Eisenberg of the Economic Policy Institute and Eric Latke, co-author of a report on the...
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