Fixing Old Markets With New Markets; America's Descent Into Madness; Rotting Entrails of the Intellectual Right; Elysium - Just Flip the Switch; Hardhats and Hippies
The AFL-CIO is discussing “the next stage” in alternate formations and there “will be some limited, thoughtful experiments in different places through various affiliates.” The AFL-CIO also plans to support an ambitious multi-union effort to organize in Texas. “The AFT has come to us and said, ‘We want you to convene other unions to make a long-term investment in Texas and we’re going to do it.”
Unions are strongly backing march in Washington, DC this Saturday to mark 50th anniversary of 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. March is supported by wide array of civil rights, religious organizations, women's groups, and others. Read how different unions are mobilizing; radio interview with William P. Jones - Fifty Years Later, Commemorating and Learning from One of the Great Moments in History; 1963 March Organizing Manual.
Reader comments: Prisons; Labor Unions; Banning Russia from the Olympics - a Very Bad Idea; Remembering Viola Liuzzo; Bayard Rustin & '63 March on Washington; American Jews & Israeli Racism; Student Debt;
Announcements: FREEDOM '63 REMIXED - Legacies of the March on Washington - Aug 16 -New York; The Forgotten History of the March on Washington, Aug 22 -Washington, DC - two events; Walmart Workers are Standing Up!; CCDS 7th Convention; Useful graphic on Climate Change
Today, the AFL-CIO is seeking to arrest labor's decline through its Working America affiliate, which is a groundbreaking effort at large-scale community organizing, and has some as yet undefined alliance with such other progressive groups as the Sierra Club and the NAACP.
Negotiations between BART and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and Service Employees International Union Local 1021 began months ago, but the two sides remained tens of millions of dollars apart on wages, pensions and health care benefits last week.
The Workers Defense Project, founded in 2002, has emerged as one of the nation's most creative organizations for immigrant workers. Its focus is the Texas construction industry, which employs more than 600,000 workers. It is one of 225 worker centers nationwide, aiding immigrant workers. Workers Centers show what is possible, and may help infuse new life into the labor movement.
In the face of a steadily declining labor movement, unions are increasingly battling one another, devoting resources to gaining members from rivals rather than focusing on the 88.2% of the workforce that is not unionized. Recent "raids"have been especially big with tens of thousands of members at stake. They've become easier to carry off because many unions don't just represent one profession anymore, and can rationalize expanding into rival turf.
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