My first union job was as a cashier at a New Jersey supermarket when I was 17, where I fell in love with the labor movement. My journalism career began at Ms. magazine (where, in the 1990s, I represented freelancers on an NWU arbitration team). I’ve covered the right wing of American politics for Mother Jones, The Nation, The American Prospect and, currently, for AlterNet, where I report on the tea party movement and cover the presidential campaign. I also served as a communications specialist for AFGE, 2001-2005.
With the graduation of seven newly certified weatherization technicians from its Eastern New York Laborers Training Center, the New York State Laborers’ Union ( NYSLIUNA ) is blowing holes in several right-wing myths all at once, proving that jobless people do want to work, government programs can spur the creation of good jobs and labor unions can lead the way to prosperity.
In response to protests by foreign students exploited in a factory subcontracted by the Hershey Company and advocacy by the AFL-CIO and our allies, this week the U.S. State Department announced that it will make major revisions to a guest-worker and cultural exchange visa program and barred participation by a major player in the program, the Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA).
Today, nearly three-fourths of children live in homes where the adults who care for them work outside the home. Workers in jobs that have paid holidays and vacation time often cobble together those benefits in order to take care of a newborn or other family members. But low-wage workers whose employers don’t offer any paid leave, say the study’s authors, are at risk for falling out of the workforce and onto public assistance rolls when family members require their care.
Even in the labor movement, the path for women is not always smooth or obvious. With its call for applications for grants, the Berger-Marks Foundation aims to open new doors to women and is looking to help a few good organizations fund their efforts to develop and serve women in the labor movement.
Billionaire Warren Buffett is a thorn in the side of Republicans. This pillar of the capitalist community and CEO of the corporate conglomerate Berkshire Hathway, continues to press Congress to raise taxes wealthy people like him. When congressional Republicans answered him by proposing a voluntary check-off box on tax-filing forms for people who want to pay more taxes, Buffet threw down a gauntlet. He’d happily match the voluntary tax contributions made by GOP lawmakers, he said—and he’d even triple-match those made by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Today in Lawrence, Mass., union members and their allies will gather at a historic mill building for a re-enactment of the historic Bread and Roses strike that moved the conscience of the nation, bringing national attention to the plight of the families, including young children, who toiled in the dirty and dangerous factories of Lawrence and throughout the country.
When House Republicans left town for the holidays Wednesday, they didn’t even leave behind a piece of coal in the stockings of some 2.8 million jobless workers whose unemployment benefits are about to expire over the course of the next two months. At least a piece of coal can be burned for heat.
It’s tough these days being a member of the top 1 percent, what with all the complaints about the widening income gap and tax breaks for billionaires, not to mention the demands of the 99 percent for a little accountability. “It feels lonely…,” said John A. Allison IV, former CEO of BB&T, one of the nation’s top 10 banks, to Bloomberg News.
Pacific Rim Cayman LLC, the mining company determined to extract gold along the banks of El Salvador’s Lempa River, is seeking to use the Central American Free Trade Agreement ( CAFTA ) to force the Salvadoran government to allow it to have its environmentally disastrous, gold-digging way. Since 2009, four activists opposed to Pacific Rim’s mining plans have been killed .
Listen to the conventional wisdom, and you’ll hear that women have fared better than men in the recent recession. In reality, women are not only shouldering the burden of being the sole breadwinner in more families than ever before, they also account for the majority of public-sector layoffs. Single mothers and women in communities of color continue to suffer rising unemployment of more than 12 percent.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
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