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National Strategy Conference Calls for Labor to Continue the Fight for Healthcare Justice

January 21, 2013 in Headline, Occupy, Politics

zcommunications.org

Health-Care-Reform-interests-killing-it-07-27-091More than two hundred union leaders and activists gathered in Chicago for the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare’s fourth national conference to strategize about next steps for labor in the movement to win universal health care. With government officials from both major parties contemplating cuts in Medicare as part of a “grand bargain,” delegates resolved to stand up to any cuts in this cornerstone social insurance program.

Conferees were welcomed and inspired by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who shared lessons of her union’s recent successful strike. Lewis drew important parallels between the struggles for quality public education and quality universal health care.

A second inspiring keynote came from Nicole Bernard representing the French CGT Federation of Social Security and Health Care Workers who described the struggle by French workers to defend their national health care plan and pledged strong support for American efforts to win single payer.

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) brought delegates to their feet as he described his plan to resubmit legislation and hold hearings on Improved and Expanded Medicare for All, House Bill 676. “Health care is a right, not a privilege,” said Conyers.

Workshops were held on the anticipated impact of the Affordable Care Act on joint labor-management health and welfare funds and on already contentious collective bargaining on health care benefits with employers. Read the rest of this entry →

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Getting Members Involved in Occupy ’s Next Phase

March 5, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics

Joe Berry and Helena Worthen  –  labornotes.org

The idea that the 99% can actually stand up to the 1% is contagious. How can stewards build on this moment of opportunity? Several unions are drawing members into home defense actions. Photo: mpeake.

Every steward in North America must have members who are talking about the Occupy movement. Maybe your union has endorsed Occupy officially. Perhaps you have participated in some Occupy action yourself.

Certainly the rapid spread of the movement made many union members optimistic in a way that we haven’t been for a long time. The idea that the 99% can actually stand up to the 1% is contagious.

How can stewards build on this moment of opportunity to strengthen the union? After all, the issues Occupy has been raising—economic inequality, thievery by the banks, failure of the corporations and rich to pay their share in taxes, increasing unemployment and insecure employment—are the same issues the unions have always fought.

As the encampments have mostly been destroyed across the country, the movement has morphed into thousands of actions pursuing the same general goals. Some places are focusing on protecting residents from foreclosure and evictions, some are holding actions at banks, and some, like Occupy Education or Occupy Post Office, take the Occupy idea back to where people work or need services. Read the rest of this entry →

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Free Trade or Democracy, Can’t Have Both

March 4, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Politics, World News

by: Dave Johnson, Campaign for America’s Future | Op-Ed

Recent stories about the conditions of Apple’s contractors in China have opened many people’s eyes about where our jobs, factories, industries and economy have been going, and why. The stories exposed that workers live 6-to-12-to-a-room in dormitories, get rousted at midnight to work surprise 12-hour shifts, get paid very little, use toxic chemicals, suffer extreme pollution of the environment, etc. Is this “trade?” Or is it something else?

Is This “Trade?”

“Trade” means to exchange, to buy and sell, you buy from me and I buy from you. I have something you want and you have something I want, and we exchange. We both end up better off than where we started. Read the rest of this entry →

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The Empire Strikes Back – Against Labor

February 16, 2012 in Uncategorized

This type of bounty hunter, or private military agent might not be as far in the future as we might have thought

If you’re looking for evidence of just how confident, militant, and insufferably arrogant companies have become in recent years, look no further than the phenomenon of the lockout.  A lockout is where a company closes its doors, refusing to allow its union employees to return to work until they accede to company demands—demands that typically call for staggering cuts in wages and benefits.

Unlike strikes—which, as the ultimate manifestation of employee dissatisfaction with management, are a universally recognized form of protest—lockouts are a form of extortion.  A lockout represents an unambiguous threat, an ultimatum.  Management figuratively places a gun to the employees’ heads and says take it or leave it.

There was a time not long ago when strikes were a regular part of the American economic landscape, and when, conversely, lockouts were about as scarce as hen’s teeth.  In fact, lockouts were practically unheard of.  But given that the business world has been recalibrated—and given the availability of replacement workers, part-timers and temps, coupled with the weakening of state and federal labor laws—strikes are now relatively uncommon, and, in a reversal, lockouts have become management’s new weapon of choice.

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The Labor Movement and the Democrats

February 16, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics

by Jack A. Smith

New anti-union legislation was passed by Congress earlier this month despite a Democratic majority in the Senate and Barack Obama in the White House.

It’s one more indication that America’s unions are over a barrel. The leadership of the Democratic Party — which is dependent on union support and money, especially this presidential election year — knows of labor’s plight, says it sympathizes, and goes off whistling an idle tune.

President Obama and the Democratic House and Senate leadership nod with compassion but do virtually nothing when the unions seek support or removal of decades of anti-union legislation.

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