labor

Construction Booming In Texas, But Many Workers Pay Dearly

Wade Goodwyn NPR
One in thirteen workers in the Lone Star State - nearly one million - are employed in the booming construction industry. But large numbers of these workers are undocumented and unorganized, and employers are taking advantage.

labor

NYC Fast-Food Workers Fight Back Against Super-Sized Corporations

Peter Rugh The Indypendent
The ongoing organizing effort of fast-food workers has highlighted the highly exploitative conditions faced by those at the deep fryers and cash registers of America’s most profitable fast food outlets, which include Burger King, McDonald’s, Dominos, Pizza Hut and KFC. The actions and considerable media attention has also begun to chip away at the conventional image of a fast-food worker as someone who bears her servitude with a youthful grin.

What Immigration Reform Could Mean for American Workers, and Why the AFL-CIO Is Embracing It

Robert Reich Robert Reich
Employers hope the guest-worker program will prevent low-wage Americans from getting a raise. With any increase in demand, employers can claim a "labor shortage" allowing in more guest workers, driving wages down. Because some 11 million undocumented workers are here, doing much of this work, the only way these undocumented workers can become organized -- and not undercut attempts to unionize legal workers -- is if the undocumented workers also become legal.

labor

Can Worker-Owners Make a Big Factory Run?

Jane Slaughter Labor Notes
How does a worker cooperative with 1,050 members function? It’s hard enough for worker ownership to succeed at any size, because any company that competes in a market is subject to the same cost-cutting rat race as a capitalist firm. Yet the TRADOC co-op—translation: Democratic Workers of the West—is thriving.

labor

Unions Focus Organizing Efforts on Service Sector Workplaces

Lorraine Mirabella The Baltimore Sun
Labor experts say unions are focusing on the hospitality field and less traditionally unionized workplaces - car washes, retailers, taxi and limo companies - as membership rolls have decreased. The percentage of private sector workers represented by unions has fallen from a peak of about 35 percent in the mid 1950s to about 7 percent, said Fred Feinstein, a former general counsel with the National Labor Relations Board who now works as a union.

Now What? Labor Unions and the Inevitability of Class Struggle

Bill Fletcher, Jr. Logos
There are those who suggest that the current union movement cannot sustain itself and that out of its ashes will arise something new and better. Such views are at best wishful thinking and at worst irresponsible . . . Unions, as they are currently constituted, organized and theorized, are not up to the challenges of the 21st century. The existing union movement, however, can play a role in the building of that new labor movement for the not-so-new 21st century.

Tidbits - March 28, 2013

Portside
Reader Comments on: Lean In and One Percent Feminism; Marx's Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World; BRICS; Dues Check-Off; Obama's Cyber-War; Internet Privacy; Social Security; Independent Worker Unions; Minimum Wage; Detroit; NCAA; Announcements - Fair Elections Rally in NYC - Apr 3; Delegation to Venezuela - Witness the Elections; NYC People's Jazz; Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Peter Seeger - Lessons from the Cultural Front

labor

AFL-CIO’s Trumka Looks to Remake U.S. Labor Movement

Peter Wallsten The Washington Post
In an interview taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, Richard Trumka said he was seeking a more formal alliance with key elements of the Democratic Party’s liberal base, including civil rights organizations and women’s rights groups. The hope, he said, is to broaden union membership beyond the traditional realm of workplace-based organizing. The full interview is scheduled to air on C-SPAN Sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
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