- How Union-Busting Bosses Propel the Right Wing to Power (6/23/2017) - U.S. bosses fight unions with a ferocity that is unmatched in the so-called free world. In the early days of the republic, master craftsmen prosecuted fledgling unions as criminal conspiracies that aimed to block their consolidation of wealth and property. During modern times, corporations threaten the jobs of pro-union workers in over half of all union elections—and follow through on the threat one-third of the time. In between, bosses have resorted to spies and frame-ups,… …
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- Trump Wants To Privatize Air Traffic Control. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (6/6/2017) - Promising “cheaper, faster and safer travel,” the Trump administration announced a plan this week to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system. The announcement Monday marked the first day of the administration’s “infrastructure week,” a series of publicity events around one of the only areas of the president’s agenda that has intrigued some union leaders and Democratic legislators. What they had hoped for was an increase in public spending to create good jobs and repair… …
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- Republicans Will Turn the NLRB into a Force for Union Busting. We Can Turn It Back. (5/17/2017) - Here comes the anti-union crackdown. According to a recent Bloomberg report, Donald Trump has submitted the names of two anti-union lawyers to the FBI for vetting. This is a precursor to nominating them to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by June to cement a Republican majority that will reverse many of the pro-worker decisions and policies that the federal agency has advanced in recent years. Marvin Kaplan works for the Occupational Safety and Health… …
- What the Big May Day Strike in a Small Pennsylvania City Teaches Us About Organizing (5/5/2017) - The first May Day of the Trump era saw scores of major actions in cities across the United States, but perhaps the most impressive demonstration of worker power took place in the small city of Reading, Pennsylvania. There, 127 stores—about three-quarters of the businesses in the city—shut down in protest, and an additional 500 mostly agricultural and construction workers participated in the general strike, according to organizers. The protest even spread to nearby Allentown, where… …
- When Labor Fought Rock-and-Roll (4/14/2017) - Facing the world ain’t easy when there isn’t anything going Standing at the corner waiting watching time go by Will I go to work today or shall I bide my time So begins the Kinks’ song, “Get Back in Line,” one of the most hauntingly beautiful paeans to the forced idleness and stress of unemployment ever committed to tape. I’ve turned to this song for solace, a little too often for comfort, but I’ve always… …
- Unions Are at Their Lowest Levels in Decades—To Gain Power We Must Stop Following the Rules (2/1/2017) - If Donald Trump’s first week as president wasn’t depressing enough, Thursday brought a report that showed union membership fell in 2016. Union members are now just 10.7% of the overall workforce and only 6.7% of the private sector. Those are the lowest levels since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began tracking them in the early 1980s—and possibly the lowest since the 1920s. Bosses and union haters will crow that unions are dying institutions and… …
- From Company Town to Rebel City: Richmond, California Shows How Progressives Can Win (1/11/2017) - Rebel cities have long been laboratories for progressive policy experimentation. Specifically, the small Bay Area city of Richmond, California has stood out for its boldness. It’s now the subject of a new book by Steve Early, Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City, set to be released next Tuesday by Beacon Press. A long-time labor activist and frequent writer for In These Times, Early moved to Richmond five years… …
- Fighting Trump Isn’t Enough—We Must Also Wage War Within the Democratic Party (11/17/2016) - What reasonable American does not feel some amount of bitterness about the stunning election win of the short-fingered vulgarian scion of an outer borough slumlord, who squandered a billion-dollar casino fortune, and reinvented himself as a reality TV star and racist demagogue? There’s plenty of acrimony to go around. The cadre of technocratic campaigners, pollsters and pundits trained to campaign on promises of “we’re not as awful as the other guys” is already pointing fingers… …
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- Response to Rosenblum, LaLuz and McAlevey (10/25/2016) - [New Labor Forum invited Jonathan Rosenblum, José La Luz and Jane McAlevey to respond to my article, "Two Reasons Why Most Unions Don’t Do Large-Scale Organizing", and then gave me an opportunity to respond back. This is that published response.] The respondents have expanded the discussion far beyond the parameters of my initial article. I have written elsewhere about union structure, strategy, and legal reform, but my preceding article does not purport to offer an… …
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- The Two-Tier Provision in the Chicago Teachers Union’s Tentative Agreement, Explained (10/18/2016) - The tentative agreement that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) struck with district management less than an hour before a midnight October 10 strike deadline has been hailed by many as a victory. Facing another round of concessionary demands, the union managed to extract $88 million from the mayor’s corporate slush fund to restore some badly needed funding to the school system. The union also managed to win an increase in compensation. But the way that… …