The Troublemakers Blog

  • Rap: ‘If we can change the White House, we can change the hog house’
    Gene Bruskin
    March 18, 2010

    The victory was so beautiful it deserved a poem--even a rap.

    In December 2008, just a few weeks after Barack Obama’s election, the United Food and Commercial Workers won one of the largest union elections in decades at the Smithfield Foods pig slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina. The 5,000-worker plant is the largest in the world, killing 32,000 pigs a day. The workers are mostly African Americans and Latino immigrants.

  • Mexico: Union Strikes and Blockages Back Fired Electrical Workers
    Jane Slaughter
    March 17, 2010

    Electrical utility workers in Mexico called for a national strike yesterday to support their fight against the liquidation of their company, and some of the country’s more militant unions responded—including by blocking highways. Police responded with tear gas and violence.

  • Women in the Trades: They've Got Stories
    Jane Slaughter
    March 16, 2010

    It was a day like today—60s and sunny, decades ago—when I swung from the top of a telephone pole and thought I had the best job in the world. A few months earlier, in the Detroit winter, not so much. I remember phoning a customer from the pole behind her house and hearing her tell me she could see a man working on the pole back there. When I visited another customer’s home, climbing boots and tool belt and all, she called me “operator.”

  • Health Care Bill's Hidden Pitfalls
    Peter Knowlton
    March 12, 2010

    The Obama and Congressional versions of health insurance legislation—assuming that a bill will pass—will affect workers in ways both obvious and not so obvious. At the moment, House Democrats are making their last changes to a smaller “reconciliation” bill that they would vote on either at the same time they consider the Senate’s version or separately.

    The bill’s final details aren’t yet known, especially on contentious issues dividing the chambers, such as abortion coverage.

  • 'Toxic' Health Bill or No, Labor's 'Medicare for All' Activists Dig In
    Jane Slaughter
    March 10, 2010

    When I told friends I was on my way to the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference, held last weekend, they all said, “I bet that’ll be a bunch of long faces.” I predicted not—these were people who’d always known the health care reform debate in Congress would come up short. Yet the 124 delegates to the March 5-7 conference in Washington were upbeat.

  • Anger at Insurance Companies Pulls 1000s to Protest
    Paddy Lehane
    March 9, 2010

    As health insurance lobbyists holed up in the Ritz-Carlton behind dozens of police in riot gear, thousands of health care activists surrounded the downtown D.C. hotel in a peaceful but pointed demonstration of anger and support for health care reform.

  • Mourning Students Interrupt Politics as Usual in Washington State
    Evan Rohar
    March 8, 2010

    Picking up on more March 4 creativity: 75 students from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, organized a funeral for public education March 4 in concert with the massive protests in California schools and on other campuses around the country. After the wake, they proceeded into the Capitol building, interrupting the Senate with a protest song to the tune of Amazing Grace (the lyrics are below).

  • New York School Closings Move the Angry to Action
    Megan Behrent
    March 8, 2010

    New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's decision to close at least 19 schools in the city has not been well received. An unprecedented number of schools were slated for “phase-out” in late 2009 by the Department of Education—a gradual closing that takes several years while a school stops accepting new students. Thousands of teachers, parents and students throughout the city have responded by turning anger into action.

  • E-Z Firings of Call Center Unionists
    Mischa Gaus
    March 4, 2010

    “You’re the ringleader—the main problem.” That’s what Frank Buonvicino said managers told him as they fired him Monday. Buonvicino and 13 other union supporters at a Staten Island call center that handles complaints and inquiries for the E-Z Pass toll system were called in one by one and fired. He and his union are calling on you to help.

  • Video: Fighting Wage Theft in New York
    Mischa Gaus
    March 3, 2010
    GritTV reports on the arrest of owner of a New York boutique chain last week, charges that grew from a union-backed drive to remake retail by attacking its worst employers. (See this Labor Notes story for more on that).