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If Ben & Jerry’s Is Progressive, Why Won’t It Protect Its Farmworkers?

Michael Arria In These Times
Vermont farmworkers are escalating their Milk With Dignity campaign, building from years of organizing in an industry fraught with abuses. The Milk with Dignity campaign was birthed after years of movement dialogue and research, including the release of a survey showing that 40 percent of Vermont farmworkers earn less than minimum wage

How Union-Busting Bosses Propel the Right Wing to Power

Shaun Richman In These Times
During modern times, corporations threaten the jobs of pro-union workers in over half of all union elections—and follow through on the threat one-third of the time. In between, bosses have resorted to spies and frame-ups, physical violence, court injunctions, private armies of strikebreakers, racist appeals and immigrant exploitation.

labor

D.C. Charter Schools Get First Union

Kate McGee WAMU American University Radio
Teachers at Cesar Chavez Prep will be the first teachers at a charter school in the District to unionize.

labor

The Conservative Case for Unions

Jonathan Rauch The Atlantic
The decline of the business model of old-style industrial unions may have been economically inevitable, but the lack of any new model to replace it has been socially calamitous. Unions will not be easy to fix, but allowing them to innovate would be a first step, and possibly also a last chance. How a new kind of labor organization could address the grievances underlying populist anger.

labor

Future of Unions in Balance as Trump Prepares to Reshape National Labor Board

Nicole Hallett The Conversation
A new Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board could roll back pro-union decisions dating back decades. This could be devastating to already weakened unions. With private sector union membership hovering at a dismal 6.4 percent – down from about 17 percent in 1983 – nothing short of the end of the labor movement could be at stake.

labor

Philly Teachers Call Off Work In Bottom-Up Campaign

Samantha Winslow Labor Notes
To create pressure on the district, a group of teachers organized their own protest. The 11,000-member Philadelphia Federation of Teachers didn’t authorize the action. Instead it was a rank-and-file group that got the employer's attention.

labor

The Right to Strike

James Gray Pope, Ed Bruno, Peter Kellman Boston Review
Organized labor is being strangled by laws that block workers from exercising the rights to organize, to strike, and to act in solidarity. Unions should respond by building a rights movement, placing the struggle for those rights front and center in all movement activity, including organizing, protest, civil disobedience, political action, administrative advocacy, and litigation.

New Study Finds “More Sweatshops than Starbucks” in Chicago

Jeff Schuhrke In These Times
A bill recently introduced in the state legislature by the Illinois AFL-CIO could address some of the problems around reprisals. The Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act, supported by Raise the Floor Alliance and NESRI, would force employers to provide fired workers with a clear and legitimate reason for the discharge, essentially proving that it was not done in retaliation.

labor

Hacked Records Show Bradley Foundation Taking its Conservative Wisconsin Model National

Daniel Bice 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.
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