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Mad Moneys anti-union tantrum makes me mad
October 05, 2007The end of the historic strike against General Motors by the nation’s autoworkers may well signal the beginning of a fight by all workers against a new level of the corporate offensive against our jobs, our wages, our benefits and our very livelihoods. During the strike, greedy Wall Street fat cats peddled their offensive in the press and on television, and they did it with a sharper-than-ever class edge. It’s...
Read moreThis Week In Labor: September 29
September 28, 2007Labor takes aim at key 2008 races The AFL-CIO executive council has approved a political budget of more than $53 million to educate, mobilize and turn out voters this year and next. The resources will be spent entirely on grassroots mobilization through an ambitious, sophisticated political program. The federation says it will activate and deploy more than 200,000 volunteers in 2008. Volunteers will reach out to members and neighbors by...
Read moreSolidarity and Mexican truckers
September 21, 2007The U.S. Senate voted 75-23 Sept. 11 to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. highways. The vote rejected a Bush administration program that would allow Mexican truck drivers to operate beyond commercial zones near the Mexican border. The Teamsters Union had gone to court in San Francisco Aug. 30, demanding that the judge ban the Bush-run Transportation Department’s “pilot program,” which would let trucks from 38 selected Mexican firms roll unhampered...
Read moreTHIS WEEK IN LABOR: Sept. 8
September 07, 2007American workers most productive and most exploited American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich countries, and they produce more per person over the year. They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a United Nations report released Aug. 27, which said the United States “leads the world in...
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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...
Read moreTHIS 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...
Read moreWHAT'S ON
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...
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This Week In Labor: August 18
August 17, 2007Hog boss fires pro-union worker José Ozorio Figueroa, a worker at the Smithfield meatpacking plant in Tar Heel, N.C., was fired Aug. 6. Company representatives said he was terminated for showing up four minutes late to his shift, but Ozorio and almost all his co-workers believe he was fired for his union activities. Ozorio had actually clocked in a minute earlier than the start time for his shift when he...
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