The strike comes as 40,000 Unite Here hotel workers across 20 cities face expiring contracts this year. Negotiations for new four-year contracts have been taking place since May; about 15,000 of those workers have authorized strikes in 12 markets.
The gun control movement has won important legislative and legal victories since the massacre at the Connecticut elementary school a decade ago. But not significant federal legislation.
Reaction to the Republican Supreme Court’s attack on abortion rights, drove high Democratic turnout, especially among women and young voters, saw Democrats overperform polls in many places, just as in summer special elections in New York and Alaska.
In Connecticut, the good news is that anti-labor Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision won’t break the unions, which uphold the middle class at a time when the share of income going to the top 1 percent has doubled in barely more than a generation.
Among the surprises this primary season were several high-profile upsets from the left. The lessons: The right candidate in the right district; Test. Don’t assume you know who the voters are; Go ahead and embrace the left; Redefine voter outreach...
Steve Thornton has been an activist in Hartford since moving there in the 1970's after graduating from the University of Connecticut. He worked for many years for the Hartford-based health care workers union, New England District 1199, and has been involved in many organizations and campaigns there over the last 40 years. He also has a keen interest in local people's history, and some years ago started a website, shoeleatherhistoryproject.com, to popularize that history
Passed into law in 1940, the Smith Act made it illegal to "teach, advocate or encourage the overthrow" of the government and extended to any member of an organization that allegedly did so. The notion that in 1956 the Communist Party was interested in, let alone capable of, overthrowing anything was patently absurd. From a 1940's peak of around 80,000, the CP's national membership had dwindled to perhaps 10,000 by the time of the hearings in Connecticut.
During the 2014 fiscal year, the Connecticut state labor department received 2,776 complaints over unpaid wages and returned $6.5 million in wages to workers, according to the state labor department.
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