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Reader Responses to Grocery Unions and Obamacare; Freelancers; Better Unions

Thousands of Medi-Cal medical interpreters would have the right to join a public employees union and collectively bargain with the state under a legislative push to regulate that profession.

Some 40,000 workers at more than 250 New England supermarkets approved new collective bargaining agreements this month in an uneasy embrace by their union of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as Obamacare.

In an interview taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, Richard Trumka said he was seeking a more formal alliance with key elements of the Democratic Party’s liberal base, including civil rights organizations and women’s rights groups. The hope, he said, is to broaden union membership beyond the traditional realm of workplace-based organizing. The full interview is scheduled to air on C-SPAN Sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The Freelancers Union is using healthcare benefits as an organizing tool. So far it has been quite successful.

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.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has sued a major grocery workers union and others who have protested at its Florida stores, the latest salvo in its legal fight to stop "disruptive" rallies in and around its stores by groups seeking better pay and working conditions.

Workers at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, have been working without a first contract for 2 years, and bargaining for 18 months. The property is one of only a handful on the Las Vegas Strip that does not have Culinary Union 226 union standards in place, including employer paid healthcare, pension, and housekeeping workload provisions. Over 2,000 workers have picketed the Cosmo 3 times in 2 months.

How would a German-style labor organization work in the United States? For more than a year, leaders with the United Auto Workers Union have been eyeing Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant, and reports this week that the organization has talked with Volkswagen AG executives about a German-style labor board at the local plant have raised a number of questions.

When organizing drives prove unsuccessful, some groups of low-wage workers are using ballot initiatives to take their case to the voters. And they've been winning.