The labor movement’s decline started 61 years ago with Taft-Hartley, but the movement’s current state is in dire straits.

In 2002, Bush appointed three Republican members to the five-member National Labor Relations Board. This past September, the Board passed sixty-one sweeping decisions that impaled all working Americans; the AFL-CIO labeled these decisions “the September massacre.”

How can the movement be revitalized?

Max Fraser in last week’s Nation argued for increased lobbying efforts around a little known interpretation of the thirteenth amendment which bans "slavery and involuntary servitude" in an effort to legitimize workers' rights to organize and strike.


Another hopeful catalyst is the The Employee Free Choice Act. The Act would amend the NLR Act and “assist in labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts”.

The bill doesn't stand a chance against the Republican filibuster and Bush's veto threat.

The current state of unions in the US gives too much discretion and power to businesses and leaves the workers out of the equation; it behooves the Democractic Congress to lobby enough Republicans to overturn Bush's inevitable veto--workers' rights depend on it.

Today less than 8 percent of private-sector workers belong to a union.

The American federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union went on strike this morning at the University of Minnesota. The local newspaper reports that the workers feel the standard annual pay raises given by the university do not compensate for a rising cost of living. Included in the union are health care and technical workers, and while the University insists that emergency health services will still be available, this is concerning. 

The university is located over a broad stretch of the city, on the east side of downtown, bordering neighborhoods that are generally lower income than the rest of the city. The U of M medical clinics, in their varying locations and purposes, serve not only the students, faculty and the surrounding neighborhoods that need them, but also the Twin Cities area and suburbs. 

From the above linked article: 

"Because health care and technical workers are also involved, this strike may limit the number of non-emergency services provided by Boynton Health Service, the Community-University Health Care Center in the Phillips neighborhood, the university's dental clinic and its veterinary medical clinic."

The clinic available to students will be limited as well as the care center in Phillips, a neighborhood with 31.9% families below the poverty line, including 40.6% of children (according to the 2000 census) and a median family income that is 46% lower than that of the city of Minneapolis as a whole. This area deserves to continue to have access to regular medical care, and I have no problem with a marginal rise in my tuition in order to help provide that (as a rise in worker compensation will likely contribute to this).

There will still be ambulances and emergency services, but how long will the university allow the cities to go without every day care available? Dental and veterinary clinics might seem marginal in comparison, but what about your grandmother's scheduled root canal or your dog's injuries that need attending to? 

I can understand the administration trying to save a little money here and there, but I believe that these workers are a vital part of the community and the university as a whole, and are well worth paying a more generous wage for the crucial services they provide.

As Michigan is in a full-blown budget crisis, the Department of Corrections and Governor Granholm proposed yesterday that Camp Manistique, a prison labor camp in the Upper Peninsula, be shut down.  Closing Camp Manistique, which is a minimum-security facility, would save the state $4.5 million per year.  It would also cost 45 prison employees their jobs (although according to The Mining Journal, both prisoners and employees would be transferred to other facilities).

The prison employees are unionized, and they tend to vote Democrat, therefore the Dems have undertaken a full-blown campaign to keep the prison open.  Prisoners currently incarcerated in Michigan, of course, cannot vote.  Although shutting down Camp Manistique would not actually reduce the number of prisoners in the state, Michigan, like other states, has a detention and corrections budget spiraling out of control.  Michigan’s annual prison budget is $1.9 billion, a fifth of the state’s general fund.  Tom Clay from Citizens Research Council of Michigan says that if Michigan didn’t have such high rates of incarceration compared to other Great Lakes states, the prison budget would be closer to $1.4 billion.  According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, “States such as Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania have more residents than Michigan but incarcerate fewer inmates. Michigan's per-capita incarceration rate is the country's 11th-highest, ranks higher than seven other Great Lakes states and is fourth-highest among the 11 most populous states.”

Back for more at here at Take Back America. It's my second day so I figure I'm over the whole star-struck open-mouthed staring thing. I walk by Ned Lamont and calmly urge him to run again. I check my pulse...still relaxed and good to go. Run into my congresswoman (from September through May minus breaks), Rosa DeLauro. Hey, ain’t no thang. My Old Spice is living up to its guarantee. (I always wondered if they would really "buy me a stick of [my] own" if I was "not satisfied.")

Today is May 1st, recognized in all but a handful of countries in the world as “International Workers’ Day.”  The U.S. is one of those handful, that does not commemorate the struggles of working people on the first of this month.  But in fact, May Day originated in the U.S in the late 19th century.

The demand for safe conditions at work places, the right of workers to organize, and above all an eight-hour work day was at the forefront of the burgeoning workers’ rights movement of the 1800s.  In Chicago, the movement culminated with a rally at Haymarket Square that ended violently, with a bomb thrown into the crowd and police opening fire on the marchers.  Subsequently, a group of eight anarchist men were scapegoated for the bombing.  All were convicted, some of them even hanged, and 3 eventually pardoned.

The (organized) labor movement in the U.S. has a history of classism, racism and gender discrimination.  Strides made in the 20th century often came with a price—most notably, in the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from the union-affirming Wagner Act of 1935.  Agricultural and domestic workers also happened to be overwhelmingly either people of color, women, or immigrants.  This continues today, as our most vulnerable workers, especially undocumented migrants, are still not protected from exploitation.

Let today’s May Day be about confronting what has and continues to divide workers, and affirming the right to dignity and economic security that all people deserve.

You cheered with them when they took on Taco Bell and Yum Brands.  Now, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has done it again!  For the past 2 years, the CIW has run a campaign to expose the dismal conditions and treatment farmworkers who supply McDonald's receive.  Today, McD's and suppliers have agreed to the following as a result of the campaign:

1. A penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for McDonald's;
2. A stronger code of conduct based on the principle of worker participation;
3. And a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields and investigating workers' complaints of abuse.

Yay CIW!  And we can't forget the important role students played in supporting the campaign, through the spearheading organization Student/Farmworker Alliance, that works in solidarity with the CIW.

The Truth Tour is still on though!  This weekend, organizers, students, workers, and even some celebs will gather in Chicago to demand the dignity and just treatment of farmworkers.

Right now, University of Michigan students are staging a sit-in to end the use of sweatshop labor for university licensed apparel.  The students are demanding that the administration accept a Designated Suppliers Program and Code of Conduct for its licensees, that will actually reward factories for adopting fair and humane labor standards for its workers—thus reversing the “race to the bottom” trend, into a “race to the top.”  The best part of this plan, developed largely by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), is that the Workers’ Rights Consortium, in cooperation with the local union or union-like entity, monitors and evaluates their places of employment for compliance with the Code of Conduct.  Workers can request that the factory be taken off the list of Code-compliant factories if violations occur.

Call, e-mail or fax the University of Michigan president, Mary Sue Coleman, now!  Tell her that you support the students sitting in and want the University of Michigan to be an example to other schools committed to the dignity of workers everywhere.  College apparel is a multi-billion dollar industry, and this plan has the potential to make real change.

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, Signal International hired hundreds of guest laborers in India, promising them greencards and permanent residency, along with well-paying jobs.  Many of the workers spent their life savings or even sold their houses to pay the fee for H2-B visas, but upon arriving here, were only given the temporary visas, paid half of what they were promised, and found their living conditions squalid.

About a week ago, company representatives and armed security guards raided the workers’ camp, took 6 workers, and locked them in a room, saying they would be deported to India.  One of the workers, Sabu Lal, even slit his wrists hoping that his self-mutilation would keep him from deportation.  He was recently interviewed on Democracy Now: 

“How I can go back to India? There is nothing. My family is waiting for me to fulfill their wishes by earning something from America. They are dreaming to come to America. These guys cheated me. From India, for ’til I come here, they cheated me, and family is cheated…They are treating us like slaves. And whenever we making some comments, they are saying that ‘Just shut your mouth.’”