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Interview: The Pitfalls of 'Buy American'

Chris Brooks Labor Notes
What is the impact of “Buy American” fervor? Chris Brooks interviews Dana Frank, author of Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism, about the history and impact of these campaigns.

Face It: We are All Sickened by Inequality at Work

Sharan Burrow Hazards Magazine
Job insecurity or job discrimination based on class, gender or race, is bad for your health. It is a perversity of work that the language of ‘risks and rewards’ is used to justify soaring boardroom pay packets and the growing income inequality at work. But the workers most frequently compelled to take genuine risks – to life, to limb, to health – are those who receive the lowest financial rewards.

Hacked Records Show Bradley Foundation Taking its Conservative Wisconsin Model National

Daniel Bice The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
Records make clear the Bradley Foundation no longer simply favors groups promoting its signature issues: taxpayer-funded school choice and increased work requirements for welfare recipients. It now regularly funds nonprofits that are, among other things, hostile to labor unions, skeptical of climate change or critical of the loosening of sexual mores in American culture.

The NC Legislature's Curious Anti-Union Project

Rob Christensen The News & Observer
The advantages for Republicans to weaken labor are obvious. Not only are they disarming a political adversary, but they are helping their business donor base in a state that already has some of the stingiest unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, one of the lowest minimum wages, and so forth.

Iranian workers continue to struggle for independent trade unions

Mehrnoush Cheragh Abadi Equal Times
During Iran’s post-revolution reform era (1997-2005), a new wave of trade unionism began in the country. However, this spring of unionism quickly turned to winter, and most union leaders were arrested when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005. Nowadays, any attempts by workers to organise strikes are met with severe repercussions by security agents. Nonetheless union resistance is growing.