legislation and politics

  • Labor Needs a New Survival Plan—Now
    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.
  • Labor Rallies for Health Care Reform, but Keeps it Vague
    Jane Slaughter
    Jul 15 2009 - 1:56pm

    It’s no secret that the union movement is divided on health care reform. Resolutions favoring “Medicare for All,” a single-payer system, have been passed by 558 unions, central labor councils, state federations, and other union organizations. Yet in practice leaders of many of those same unions have acted as if actual single-payer legislation (Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703) didn’t exist.

  • Viewpoint: What Way Forward for Immigration Reform?

    Christine Neumann-Ortiz

    Labor's new position on immigration is a step forward, although some details are problematic. The bigger questions are whether a legalization will be tied to citizenship, and whether labor and immigrant coalitions can force the administration to rethink our disastrous trade policies.

    Yes
  • Despite Layoffs, Bailed-Out Banks Hire Contractors on Visas

    Mischa Gaus

    Bailed-out banks are driving down tech workers’ wages and stoking anti-immigrant hostilities by replacing entire departments of local techies with foreign-born workers on visas—all while laying off tens of thousands of workers. . . .


    Yes
  • Can Unions Win Without the Employee Free Choice Act?

    Labor Notes Staff

    Majority sign-up ("card check") would have sped the UFCW's 15-year organizing drive at Smithfield. But they won without it--in an election run under even better rules than EFCA would provide. . . .


    Yes
  • Employee Free Choice Act: Fight of a Lifetime?

    Jane Slaughter

    Nobody wants to say it on the record, but the buzz is we won’t get the Employee Free Choice Act in its current form. It’s possible to admire labor’s efforts for two million petition signatures for EFCA and still ask, if this is the fight of a lifetime, why aren’t we acting like it? Could the energy unions channeled for Obama last fall be reawakened for creative actions in 2009? . . .


    Yes
  • District of Columbia Nears Vote Requiring Employers To Provide Paid Sick Leave

    Karen Minatelli, Ruth Castel-Branco

    It could have been an episode of “ER” or “House”: a popular patient battles against the odds, survives a near-death experience to triumph in the end, but still faces challenges in the next episode. . . .


    Yes
  • GOP Election Victory Opens Door for Intensified Anti-Worker Offensive

    Justin Jackson and Chris Kutalik

    This fall the AFL-CIO kicked its election strategy into full gear. Promising “No More Business As Usual” for candidates who refused to embrace labor’s issues, the federation committed massive amounts of cash and manpower to mostly Democratic Party candidates.

    That support failed to push the Democrats to victory on Election Day. Reports from Washington indicate that GOP leaders are planning new attacks on unions and a revival of old anti-labor legislative assaults either delayed or partially implemented in the past decade.


    Yes
  • What If Citizens Got To Decide the City Budget? Brazil’s Workers Party Tries "Participatory Budgeting"

    Micah Maidenberg

    Brazil will vote for a new president October 6. If the Workers Party (or PT, for Partido dos Trabahadores) wins, South America’s largest country will be governed by a party that was created by the labor movement and dedicated to building movements of workers and the poor...

    Yes
  • Politically-Connected Businessman Profits from ‘Guest Worker’ Program Braceros in Detroit?

    Elena Herrada

    We should never be surprised by what campaign contributions and political connections can accomplish. In Detroit, they allowed a company to fire union workers and replace them with immigrants brought into this country under false pretenses-and then subject the new workers to horrible living conditions...

    Yes