On the top floor of AFL-CIO headquarters, overlooking the White House, a new union was born this afternoon. Or more accurately, it was given an official blessing. Taxi workers in New York had built their union for 15 years at the city’s airport taxi stands, restaurants, and kitchen tables, but today they became the first new union chartered by the AFL-CIO in five years.
Nursing home workers in the Northeast say the owner of their chain cheated them and used the proceeds to fund an institute of justice at New York University.
Ohioans needed 231,000 signatures to put a repeal of their state’s union-busting bill before voters this fall. They blew away expectations this week, filing a record-breaking 1.3 million signatures.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance released a groundbreaking plan yesterday to win health care for drivers. Classified as independent contractors, the city’s 50,000 licensed cabbies are uninsured at twice the rate of other New Yorkers—52 percent lack coverage, according to a city councilman’s 2009 survey.
The National Labor Relations Board told Boeing this week that it can’t retaliate against workers who exercise their right to strike, a fundamental right guaranteed by labor law for 80 years. The airplane manufacturer took work away from union shops in Washington state, shifting its production to right-to-work South Carolina, where executives had already crushed the Machinists union.
The U.S. Trade Representative announced a new “action plan” Wednesday to improve Colombia’s horrific history of thousands of unpunished murders of union activists. The Steelworkers and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka opposed the deal, saying the “situation in Colombia remains unacceptably violent.”
Thousands rallied at the Georgia state Capitol last week, protesting anti-immigrant legislation. While Arizona-like bills are advancing in other Southern states, Georgia was the first to have a big show of opposition. Adelina Nicholls, executive director of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, explained why.
A New York City telephone workers local will be overseen by a monitor, after a union investigation revealed top leaders engaged in “a number of highly questionable practices involving compensation.”
Honeywell International pleaded guilty in federal court March 11 to knowingly storing hazardous waste without a permit at its southern Illinois facility, a felony. For locked-out Steelworkers at the plant, the episode reinforced their belief that the best defense they and their communities have is a vigilant union.
