Remember the phrase "good union job"? Living wages, basic safety protections, and guaranteed quality healthcare for life. Today Peabody Coal is taking away retiree health care and pensions, yet they have record profits. Why the fight for retiree pensions at Peabody Coal is in everyone's interest.
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The strike has long been labor's most powerful weapon. Strikes put pressure on the employer - which needs the employees' labor to run the business. Congress understood the importance of the strike to labor unions, so it protected strikes in two ways in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Although Congress made it clear that it viewed the strike as a right of utmost importance, the Supreme Court wasted no time in limiting and weakening the right to strike.
Faced with the very real threat of extinction, unions have largely put collective bargaining on the back burner, and instead must try to remind American workers of the basic concept of worker solidarity. “We start from the point of view that, because so few people are in unions these days, very few people have personal experience with collective power,” explains Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America.
The potential Tribune sale would be a high-profile litmus test of the unions' financial self-awareness. Public-sector workers from Massachusetts to California can force their investment managers to make a choice: sell to the Kochs, or keep managing their retirement billions. If the Kochs want to buy newspapers, this is a free country, and nobody can stop them. But the people whose benefits they want to slash don't have to help them get there.
The New Era Windows Cooperative opens its doors (and windows) for business. The workers know launching and running a company won't be easy, but given their deep knowledge of the industry and their personal investment in the project, they are confident they can do it.
Reader's Comments - End of the War in Viet Nam; Paid Sick Leave Law in New York; Guantanamo; Dodging Corporate Taxes; Working Class; Education; Health Care; Songs for May Day; Interview with Rene Gonzalez;
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Announcement - New York City Troublemakers School, May 18; International Forum on Globalization - Peoples of the Pacific - Berkeley Teach-In - June 1 & 2
Appeals Court rules NLRB cannot require employers to post notices informing employees of their labor rights. The decision, which comes less than three weeks after lack of regulatory enforcement led to a fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas that killed 14 and left about 200 injured, opens the door for businesses to challenge requirements that workers be informed of their health, safety and employment rights.
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