Advocates for Workers Raise the Ire of Business

Steven Greenhouse The New York Times
As America’s labor unions have lost members and clout, new types of worker advocacy groups have sprouted nationwide, and they have started to get on businesses’ nerves — protesting low wages at Capital Grille restaurants and demonstrating outside Austin City Hall in Texas against giving Apple tax breaks. Now, business groups and powerful lobbyists, heavily backed by the restaurant industry, are mounting an aggressive campaign against them.

For de Blasio, Contract Talks Offer Problem

Steven Greenhouse The New York Times
New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and municipal unions have a major problem. After going 4 years without a contract under Mayor Bloomberg the question of a new contract and how much retroactive pay is included is front and center for the incoming Mayor and the municipal unions.

UAW and Volkswagen

STEVEN GREENHOUSE The New York Times
Volkswagen is working with the United Automobile Workers at its Chattanooga, Tenn., assembly plant on how to unionize the plant and create a German-style works council there, the president of the labor union said on Friday.

Strike For Day Seeks To Raise Fast-Food Pay

Steven Greenhouse The New York Times
Fast-food workers one day strike spreads to many cities. Workers at MacDonald's, Taco Bell, Popeye's, Long John Silver's and other restaurants hold one day strike demanding higher wages.

Tackling Concerns of Independent Workers

STEVEN GREENHOUSE The New York Times
Today, the Freelancers Union is one of the nation’s fastest-growing labor organizations, with more than 200,000 members, over half of them in New York State. Ms. Horowitz, who has never lacked audacity, says she expects to expand the organization to one million members within three years.

AFL-CIO Executive Council Backs Keystone XL Pipeline

Steven Greenhouse The New York Times
"The A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions, has issued an apparent endorsement of the Keystone XL oil pipeline," writes Steven Greenhouse in the NY Times. Following the NY Times' article, Portside gives you the federation's official statement followed by the official AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department's unequivocal interpretation of the AFL-CIO Executive Council's decision.