- Usher in a new day for labor: The courts can’t be counted on to protect workers anymore; Congress needs to pass new laws (10/11/2019) - As the Supreme Court prepares to decide whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination, it seems, at least to me, unlikely that a bench dominated by five very conservative men will protect gay employees. This should be a wake-up call: We cannot count on the courts to protect our rights in the workplace. We need a Congress that will actually pass laws, and high on the list of… …
- The Powerful New Idea in Elizabeth Warren’s Labor Platform (10/4/2019) - On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren released her long-awaited labor platform, titled “Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages.” The plan provides unions with a long wish list of badly needed reforms and new powers. It also makes a solid case that, like Bernie Sanders, she would be the labor movement’s biggest booster in the White House in generations. Several other candidates, including Julián Castro, Beto O’Rourke and Amy Klobuchar, have also recently put out lengthy labor plans,… …
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- Bernie Sanders’ Labor Plan Could Put a Union in Every Workplace in America (8/22/2019) - Bernie Sanders released his Workplace Democracy Plan on Wednesday. His campaign’s labor platform makes the strongest case of any of the candidates so farthat he would be unions’ best ally in the White House in generations. At a time when the Democrats’ official labor law reform proposal, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, would essentially overturn the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, the race to the left for labor’s support in the primaries demands bolder… …
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- On Labor, a Tale of Two Cities’ Mayors (with Presidential Ambitions) (7/26/2019) - It was a tale of two cities’ mayors (with presidential ambitions) this week. South Bend, Indiana’s Pete Buttigieg and New York’s Bill de Blasio—the two active-duty mayors among the 20 Democratic presidential candidates still on the debate stage—released their labor and workers’ rights platforms. Both mayors include fairly robust proposals to overhaul and modernize our nation’s main labor law, the National Labor Relations Act. But that should no longer be considered good enough. Given that… …
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- Rats have speech rights, too: Unions, protests and balloons (7/8/2019) - Outside a strip mall on Staten Island, a giant balloon rat lies deflated. I can’t imagine a less auspicious scene for the free-speech fight of the century. But it’s here the Trump administration has chosen to argue that free speech is for corporations — and not for workers. And it’s here that unions have an opportunity to reverse decades of anti-union legal dogma. Last month, the National Labor Relations Board sought an unprecedented injunction against… …
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- The de Blasio Paradox (5/24/2019) - New York Mayor Bill de Blasio launched his bid for president last week, amidst protests and jeers. On Good Morning America, where he was having what should have been his first softball interview as a candidate, chants of “LIAR” could be heard from a rally outside the Times Square studio. The anti–de Blasio protest somehow united the local cop union and Black Lives Matter protestors, along with housing advocates and anti-poverty activists. While New Yorkers greet de… …
- This May Day, It’s Time to Cut Work Down to Size (5/1/2019) - [This article was co-authored by Leo Gertner.] Every year, the rest of the world marks the first of May with worker celebration and protest. American unions that sprung up in the years after the Civil War picked the day to launch their inspirational campaign for a better balance between work and life, captured in their slogan: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what you will.” Back then, the average… …
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- Fighting Against Racism—And For a Better Paycheck—On the Docks (4/3/2019) - “Dockworkers have power.” With that simple statement, Western Illinois University professor and In These Times contributor Peter Cole kicks off his compelling new history, Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press). The story of the west coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), its legendary founder Harry Bridges, and the 1934 San Francisco general strike he led is broadly familiar to Americans who enjoy romantic stories of derring do from the labor… …
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- “The Class Idea” (And How to Get It) (3/29/2019) - Many progressives in the United States are prone to making gloomy jokes about moving North whenever conservative forces grip our national institutions. After all: Canadians have unions! They have health care! They don’t pretend that everyone’s middle class! Why, people wonder, are the politics and labor movements of the two countries so different? In his new book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada, sociology professor Barry Eidlin grapples with this… …
- Can the Courts Strike Down Right-to-Work? (3/5/2019) - Last week, in a move that’s as likely to baffle union activists as it is to encourage them, a West Virginia judge struck down key portions of the state’s “right-to-work” law. The Kenawha County judge’s ruling may amount to no more than a temporary hiccup in West Virginia Republicans’ war to destroy unions. But it’s another example of how hotly provisions of the 1947 federal Taft-Hartley Act are being contested in the courts as it becomes clearer… …
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