The Troublemakers Blog

  • Labor Board Puts NY Call Center Workers on Hold
    Kate Doehring
    February 8, 2010
    Call center workers in New York overcame a brutal yet predictable anti-union campaign, but are stuck as management stalls first-contract talks. The National Labor Relations Board, with only two of five seats filled as the Senate dithers, is painfully slow to respond to workers' pleas. They and their union, the Communications Workers, aren't waiting, and took the fight directly to management Friday.
  • Pro Football’s Scrambled Brains Throw Egg on the Superbowl
    David Finkel
    February 5, 2010

    I can remember it like yesterday, one of the great thrills of my sports-watching life. Tragically, Larry Morris, now living in a nursing home with dementia, can’t remember it at all. Absent a union that puts health and safety first for active and retired players, the NFL has discarded its injured performers.

  • How Could Little NUHW Beat Giant SEIU? Stewards.
    Paul Krehbiel
    February 4, 2010

    Here’s my 2 cents on the NUHW win among the Kaiser Permanente professionals. In my view, it was the result of several key ingredients—but especially the existence of stewards councils that continued on their own even under the SEIU trusteeship:

  • Asbestos Rains Down on Chilly Delphi Workers, but UAW's in a Deep Freeze
    Gregg Shotwell
    February 3, 2010

    The slumlord at the GM-owned Delphi plant in Lockport, New York, turns off the heat every day between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. "Little Hitler," as the general foreman is known, thinks his dial-down saves GM money. Hammering pipes and raining asbestos may ring a different tune on the company cash register, but Little Hitler can’t see the dollars wasted for the pennies he’s counting.

  • Unable to Cut Hourly Wages to $8, Hugo Boss Tries to Flee Overseas
    Debbie Kline
    February 1, 2010
    After unsuccessfully demanding workers take a 33 percent pay cut, Hugo Boss gave notice of their intent to shutter their plant and lay off 400 workers. Cleveland Jobs with Justice is standing with the workers and their union in a fight to save the last clothing manufacturer in the city.
  • Labor Needs a New Survival Plan—Now
    Steve Early
    January 29, 2010
    For trade unionists already frustrated and disappointed with Obama, the collateral damage of the Democrat's defeat in Massachusetts is far worse than giving up on the unworkable mess of his health plan. As one dismayed union official in Washington, D.C., told me: “It’s the end of labor law reform for another generation.” There's no time to waste: We need a “Plan B” for more “bargaining to organize” that would better use remaining pockets of union strength before they disappear.
  • Auto Worker Activists Regroup, Prepare to Fight Anew
    Tiffany Ten Eyck
    January 29, 2010

    “A job is a right, we’re going to fight, fight, fight!” The chant filled the cavernous hotel conference room with anger and enthusiasm as the largest rank-and-file auto worker meeting in many years came to a close. Nearly 100 retired and active workers from the Big 3 and a dozen parts suppliers met outside of Detroit last weekend to discuss strategies for rank-and-file organizing after months of concessions and plant closings agreed to by the UAW.

  • Race to the Top: Unions Asked to Play Ball for Education Dollars
    Paul Abowd
    January 28, 2010

    With all eyes on Obama’s fraught health care push, his plans to overhaul public education have sped along with relative ease. The first leg of the federal "Race to the Top" competition finished January 19 when 40 states sent applications for a piece of the $4.35 billion in stimulus funds.

  • Cameras on Trains Have Big Blind Spots
    Ron Kaminkow and Ed Michael
    January 26, 2010

    Besides raising basic constitutional issues with the regard to the right to privacy, it is highly debatable whether a safety board's ruling to put video cameras in locomotives will diminish the likelihood of railroad accidents. But what it will do is place blame for accidents squarely on individual worker behavior, giving little incentive for the company to make the necessary investment to address systemic factors that are the real underlying causes of most workplace accidents and injuries.

  • One of Us: A Professor Who Knows Which Side He’s On
    Joshua DeVries
    January 20, 2010

    Book Review: In and Out of the Working Class by Michael D. Yates.

    A memoir blending real and created stories, and one that never loses sight of where the author stands as he turns his back on fellow economists who believed “they were learning the secrets of God himself” and navigates the minefields of a dangerous economic system while attempting to remain true to his working class roots.