Honor Migrante is a musical narrative that tells the story of a community of proud immigrants whose voices are rarely heard publicly. Francisco Herrera is a soulful border musician/storyteller using the hybrid styles of the Chicano border community, a flexible cultural space that has maintained the spirit of mestizo identity in the midst of global cultural homogenization–further influenced by work in Central and South America.
A delegation of U.S. food service workers flew to the Paris headquarters of their employer Sodexo last winter, delivering petitions against the company’s anti-union practices. They also took to the streets, joining the French general strike.
The UNITE HERE secessionists have not exactly made a clean break. Their founding convention took place in Philadelphia, but not all of the union's members in the city — much less the country — were on board. . . .
It’s April Fool’s day, plus one, in what Bob Dylan once called "the green pastures of Harvard University." What does the guest, Andy Stern, think makes for a good union? “If I was being hypothetical, I’d say democracy" . . . .
UNITE HERE had a lot to resolve at the three-day meeting of its General Executive Board in February—namely, the fate of the union. Two presidents, UNITE’s Bruce Raynor and HERE’s John Wilhelm, forged an alliance in 2004, but as the union’s first convention approaches, the relationship has dissolved into out-and-out civil war. . . .
Detroit’s UNITE HERE Local 24 was padlocked in January after the union’s regional board took over the local’s office and removed the appointed state director. The takeover was the opening salvo in a leadership struggle developing ahead of the national union’s June convention...
It’s been a few months now since we heard anything from the New Unity Partnership (NUP), the coalition first described here in October 2003. This coalition-composed of the presidents of the Service Employees (SEIU), Hotel and Restaurant Employees (HERE), Garment and Textile Workers (UNITE), Carpenters, and Laborers unions-planned to strengthen the U.S. labor movement by increasing union density sector by sector.
In my workplace, discussions about the war in Afghanistan vary from comments that acknowledge the complexities and causes of this war to "bomb the shit out of them" to no opinion at all. Our members for the most part are reluctant to talk about sensitive issues at work because they want to protect the long-term relationships that we have with each other. The employer already divides us along many lines; care needs to be taken in discussing this issue, as we want to come together, not further divide ourselves.