Employers use lockouts to weaken unions. Lockouts sabotage the functioning of the union-management relationship, and they undermine standard and secure jobs in favour of more precariousness. Lockouts are also sometimes used to shift production from one plant or country to another, as well as to close unionized plants.
Across Long Island and throughout the city, some 120,000 Teamsters are getting prepped to become a “sanctuary union.” In 27 shops, business agents, supervisors and front-line workers are getting schooled on their rights under U.S. law — and when and how to challenge federal immigration agents who show up to search their work sites. In fundamental labor terms, it follows one simple rule: Union solidarity first, immigration status second.
Back in September, the International Association of Machinists and United Steelworkers ended their labor-management partnership with Harley-Davidson over the company’s plan to build a plant in Thailand. The partnership agreement, two decades old and praised as a model by some, is the latest iteration of the ‘jointness’ trend first pioneered by UAW and General Motors in the 1980s.
“The Catholic bishops of the United States have long and consistently supported the right of workers to organize for purposes of collective bargaining,” a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says.brief says. “Because this right is substantially weakened by so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws, many bishops - in their dioceses, through their state conferences, and through their national conference - have opposed or cast doubt on such laws, and no U.S. bishop has expressed support for them.”
Just as enthusiasm for collective bargaining grows, labor’s political power and influence wane toward a historic nadir.
Landing on the “of the World” part of its (Industrial Workers of the World) name in 1905 was a conscious act of internationalism by a founding convention delegation that contained no small number of immigrants.
The demand for fewer working hours is about liberation — both individual and collective.
It ain't about negotiating union collective bargaining agreements and resolving grievances any more (Actually, militant unions never were about such goals!)! Conservative campaign aims to strike ‘mortal blow’ on government unions. This is ‘A once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left’.
One consequence of the rough times unions are facing today is a loss of institutional memory and history. This new book seeks to preserve that memory, and the how-to-be-a-militant-union knowledge that goes with it, by focusing on how one United Electrical Workers local union was built, and how it fared during the McCarthy years and afterwards.
Spread the word