Portside

About 4000 people will be attending this years Labor Notes conference.

One of Mike’s major contributions was a critical examination of closely linked employer strategies that swept the country in the 1980s and 1990s: lean production, the team concept, and labor-management participation schemes.

At the convention, members of the durable reform movement Teamsters for a Democratic Union and their allies achieved constitutional amendments they’ve been seeking for decades.

She sang for steelworkers, carwash workers, miners, strawberry workers, railroad workers, anti-sweatshop activists, homeowners fighting foreclosure, public transit supporters, auto workers opposing NAFTA, and many more.

“If you could see my co-workers walking out of the building at the end of the day. So many of them have been broken down by UPS, and UPS does not care. They just want the packages out.”

Miners and their families have occupied a railroad track, blocking a train that’s loaded up with coal that these workers dug out of the earth and never got paid for.

The tentative agreement also does nothing substantial to address drivers’ other big concerns: excessive forced overtime, technological surveillance, and harassment by supervisors.

For public-employee unions in Wisconsin, an open shop isn’t even the worst of it. The anti-union Act 10, which Governor Scott Walker forced through in 2011, mandated annual recertification votes and all but eliminated collective bargaining.

The majority of the ballots were already in by October 31, the day the union's federally mandated Independent Investigations Officer recommended charges against Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall, who until recently seemed to be 75-year-old Hoffa's heir apparent. Hall was charged with obstructing a corruption investigation by destroying thousands of documents and emails.

In the best cases, unions are taking the urgency of the threats as a motivator--not just to sign up new members, but more importantly, to make members feel the union is theirs, by training more rank-and-file leaders and helping them take on workplace fights.