Troublemakers Blog
March 08, 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 »
March 04, 2010 / Mischa Gaus
“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.
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March 03, 2010 / Mischa Gaus
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).
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March 03, 2010 /
It is true what they say: no words or photos can describe the enormity of what we saw in Haiti. Nine of us nurses, eight from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, just spent 10 days here volunteering at the public hospital in Port au Prince, working the night shifts.
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March 01, 2010 /
The student-worker movement that’s emerged in California over the past five months is gearing up for a strike and day of action. On March 4 students all over the state will strike, march, and occupy buildings to keep education accessible to all—and ensure sustainable jobs for those working in education.
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February 26, 2010 / Tiffany Ten Eyck
Get ready for a really big show—the 2010 Labor Notes Conference is on track to be the biggest ever! It’s got to be a sign that more and more people are fed up with strategies that don’t work. Come find out what it feels like to be together with more than 1,000 other troublemakers who are searching, like you, for a way to light some fires.
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February 25, 2010 /
Book Review: Healing Together: The Labor-Management Partnership at Kaiser Permanente, by Tom Kochan, Robert McKersie, Adrienne Eaton, and Paul Adler (Cornell ILR Press, 2009)
Most labor relations academics are unabashedly anti-union, reflecting the influence of business and the decline of organized labor. The authors of Healing Together are pro- »
February 24, 2010 / Paul Abowd
Charter school companies in Los Angeles were licking their chops last summer when the school board gave outside managers a chance to operate 36 schools next year. After yesterday’s packed board meeting where officials voted to award »
February 24, 2010 /
Contract lecturers at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti are fighting a hostile administration over the right for part-time adjunct lecturers to join the lecturers' union. They're part of one-third of teachers not on the tenure track nationally who've been on the job at least five years but are treated like short-term employees just seeking "a little »
February 22, 2010 /
The “reinvention” of the “New GM” has begun with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event was remarkable not only because the Brownstown plant signals GM’s return to the production of an electric vehicle but also because, for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S.
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