I’m a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. I came to the AFL- CIO in 1989 and have written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. When my collar was still blue, I carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. I’ve also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold my blood plasma and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen me at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. I was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still have the shirts, lost the hair.
A bill pushed by the Republican leadership in the U.S. House that will let employers make you work more for less pay will be up for a vote on Wednesday.
Call Congress today and tell your representative to oppose H.R. 1406: 1-888-866-2561.
Today, 150 people will likely be killed on the job or die from job-related illnesses and disease. That deadly toll will continue tomorrow and the next day and the next until the nation “renews the commitment to protect workers from injury, disease and death,” and makes it a high priority, says the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.
Last week, Walmart said it would speed up its plan to hire returning military veterans that it had announced in January. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says Walmart’s latest move “is more about public relations than honoring our heroes.”
We owe it to our returning veterans to make sure they are treated as the heroes they are, rather than as symbols used to ‘greenwash’ Walmart’s eroding brand. After facing enemies abroad, is an $8.81 an hour part-time job the best we can offer returning veterans?
Why does America’s union movement support commonsense immigration reform that includes a road map to citizenship? Because of hardworking people like Neidi Dominguez’s mother. Watch this new ad from the AFL-CIO that is appearing on Univision in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas.
Bucking a trend that has seen private equity firms buy business to bleed then shut down, United Steelworkers (USW) members at three Wisconsin paper mills and KPS Capital Partners have reached a new four-year collective bargaining agreement that workers ratified today.
More than 80 dining hall workers at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., voted on Tuesday to join UNITE HERE Local 11.
Mother’s Day is a little more than a week away (May 12), so you have no excuse for waiting until the last minute to find a nice tribute for Mom that also carries the union label. Our friends at Labor 411, the union business directory from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, can help you out.
The nation’s economy added 165,000 new jobs in April while the jobless rate dropped to 7.5% from March's 7.6%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Not everything is OK in Oklahoma and as far as Sooner State working families are concerned, that includes the extremist and corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This afternoon hundreds of union and community activists will join the Fire Fighters (IAFF) for a rally and march in Oklahoma City to ALEC’s annual meeting at the city’s Cox Convention Center.
A live stream of the rally, which will include IAFF President Harold Schaitberger, will begin at 4 p.m. (CDT).
The teachers and staff in one of Chicago’s largest charter school networks overwhelmingly voted to join the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS), an AFT affiliate. The more than 400 educators work at the 13 schools, with about 6,500 students, that are operated by the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO).
CEOs are trying to get more power by shutting down the National Labor Relations Board. Tell your senators to confirm nominees to the NLRB.
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