Jerry Wurf, the national president of the public workers union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, considered the Memphis sanitation workers’ protest more than a strike; it became a social struggle, a battle for dignity. Wurf called the strike a “race conflict and a rights conflict.”
"Women's Work? Voices of Vermont Educators" details the reality of work for teachers and paraeducators in Vermont. These workers are putting in long hours to meet growing student needs, as the opioid epidemic is on the rise, and child poverty grows. They are spending their own money to buy food and clothes for students. They are supporting their families as the primary breadwinner, and paying off high levels of loan debt. And they feel disrespected because they work in a female-dominated profession.
On February 26, with a pro-corporate majority Supreme Court, a single case threatens to unravel the protections public sector nurses have fought so hard to secure for their patients over the years. “Janus v. AFSCME” is intended to weaken public sector unions by encouraging employees in unionized public sector workplaces to refuse to pay dues — while they enjoy the rights and benefits of a union contract and representation.
Skeptics worry about traffic, crowded trains, scarce housing. Economists question whether tax breaks yield promised jobs
The recent split in the Canadian Labour Congress over organizational issues will inhibit the search to renew trade unions. A vision of a powerful, effective, inclusive union movement of the future needs to be developed. If leaders let personal grievances or institutional rivalry dominate the discussion, we will fail, and it may take years to heal the damage.
New Labor Forum’s “Working-Class Voices” columnist Kressent Pottenger interviewed Narbada Chhetri, former nail salon worker and director of Organizing and Advocacy at Adhikaar (a social justice organization based in New York City with approximately eight hundred members serving the Nepalese and Tibetan community), and Pabitra Dash, nail salon worker and organizer at Adhikaar, about the poor working conditions of nail salon workers in the United States. Highlights of the interview follow.
“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.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union membership on January 19th, 2018. There were several spots of bright news for unions.
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