“In an America...Black people ‘are considered dangerous even when they are in their living rooms eating ice cream, asleep in their beds, playing in the park, standing in the pulpit of their church, birdwatching, exercising in public, or walking..."
Robbing workers’ pension funds has long been central to Wall Street's business model. A recent Supreme Court ruling opened the door for financial managers to take their looting of those pension funds even further.
High-interest loan companies are using Utah’s small claims courts to arrest borrowers and take their bail money. Technically, the warrants are issued for missing court hearings. For many, that’s a distinction without a difference.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was expected to diminish union membership. But so far, many unions have actually increased their numbers since the verdict. Conservative groups are working to reverse that trend in the long run.
“This has been a terrible 18 months-plus for working people in this country,” said Celine McNicholas, director of labor law and policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s an unprecedented attack on workers.”
Although Janus threatens to deal a blow to U.S. unions, the West Virginia teacher strike suggests a way forward for organized labor. The strike effectively used social media as a tool for mass organization, centered on the needs of the community, and linked its cause to issues of social justice.
“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.”
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing workers to refuse to pay the fees would have been the culmination of a decades-long campaign by a group of prominent conservative foundations aimed at weakening unions that represent teachers and other public employees. Tuesday’s deadlock denied them that victory, but it set no precedent and left the door open for further challenges once the Supreme Court is back at full strength.
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