Jenny Brown

Paid Sick Leave, At Last?

Momentum is building as four cities and one state have passed paid sick leave provisions, with New York City passing a bill May 8. Still, the benefits are skimpy by international standards.

Supply Chain Workers Tell Walmart’s Dirty Secrets

Walmart has cut store staffing so severely that in some cases workers have no time to stock shelves, and the few remaining checkers face customers who’ve been waiting in line for 30 minutes.

That’s just the newest symptom of Walmart’s profit-at-any-cost policies, which create miserable conditions along the company’s whole supply chain, said Walmart workers who compared notes Thursday in New York.

Student Guestworkers Pressure McDonald's

Foreign students on cultural exchange visas walked off the job again, this time from three McDonald’s restaurants. Can guestworker programs incorporate labor rights?

Boeing’s ‘Angry Nerds’ Reject Contract as Dreamliner Crisis Continues

Seven thousand technical workers at Boeing narrowly rejected the aircraft company’s final contract offer on Tuesday and authorized a strike.

Climate Change Is Drowning Out ‘Jobs vs. Environment’ Debate

The old argument that unions must choose between jobs and the environment is losing its grip, as climate change becomes more evident and more urgent.

In Walmart and Fast Food, Unions Scaling Up a Strike-First Strategy

Small but highly publicized strikes by Walmart retail and warehouse workers last fall set the labor movement abuzz and gained new respect for organizing methods once regarded skeptically.

“The labor movement is all about results,” says Dan Schlademan, who directs the Making Change at Walmart project of the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). “The results are creating the energy.”

Walmart is a particularly rich target because the company is so large that it sets wages and prices among suppliers and competitors.

In a Year of Politicians and Bad News, Surprising Stories of Resistance

After a slog of an election season, workers braved high unemployment rates to strike their low-wage jobs in 2012.

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