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Unrest mounts as China mine death rises

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Manila Times - Nov. 23 (News Report) - Relatives of victims angrily demanded answers Monday as hopes of finding more survivors after China’s worst mining disaster for two years took a blow with the death toll rising to 104. Rescuers recovered 12 more bodies, a spokesman for the mine in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province said, leaving four miners still unaccounted for after the weekend blast.

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State Democrats facing revolt by labor

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Andrew Garber - Nov. 14 (News Report) - The Washington State Labor Council, the Service Employees International Union and unions representing teachers and state workers have either stopped or sharply reduced donations to Democratic caucus political-action committees that back candidates for the state House and Senate.

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Anti-Statism In America

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By John B. Judis - Nov. 11 (News Analysis) - Liberals and progressives have fared poorly in the face of this staunch anti-statist tradition, but there have still been periods when they have broken through and enacted major reforms--during Woodrow Wilson’s first term, Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, Lyndon Johnson’s first two years, and Richard Nixon’s first term. They succeeded for different reasons at different times, but several conditions recur.

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Calderon Tries to Turn Out the Lights on Mexico's Unions

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Michael E. Miller - Oct. 16 (News Report) - Every Monday morning for the last 23 years, Ernesto arrived at Luz y Fuerza del Centro, Mexico City's power and light company, ready to work. This Monday, however, he arrived ready to protest.

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Obama: Health Plan Will Boost Economy - WSJ.com

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 04 (News Analysis) - Obama used his weekly radio address to tout a health-insurance overhaul making its way through Congress, calling it a critical step toward reducing the nation's deficit and boosting an ailing economy.

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Real "Norma Rae" Dies of Cancer After Insurer Delayed Treatment

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Sue Sturgis - Sep. 16 (News Report) - The North Carolina union organizer who was the inspiration for the movie "Norma Rae" died on Friday of brain cancer after a battle with her insurance company, which delayed her treatment. She was 68.

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On Labor Day, support for unions plunges to all-time low

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Examiner.com - By Byron York - Sep. 07 (News Report) - Before this year, American support for unions had remained remarkably stable for nearly four decades. In August 2001, in the first months of George W. Bush's presidency, Gallup's results for the same question were 60 percent approve, 32 percent disapprove. In August 1997, in Bill Clinton's second term, they were 60-31. In 1985, during Ronald Reagan's presidency, the figures were 58-27. In 1978, during Jimmy Carter's time in the White House, they were 59-31. And in 1972, during Richard Nixon's, they were 60-27.

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Party Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Jonathan Cohn - Sep. 04 (News Analysis) - During the past year, Republicans have frequently said they want to work with Democrats. But the real story of the last few months is how unserious those pledges turned out to be. Although you wouldn’t know it from their rhetoric or the media coverage, there are not one but two ostensibly bipartisan proposals out there right now. Either of them could be the template for successful reform if even a few Republicans started pushing them seriously. But, even the ostensibly reasonable Republican senators whom Democrats have tried to engage--Mike Enzi, Charles Grassley, and Hatch--just aren’t interested. And it appears they haven’t been for a while.

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The Courtship

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Gabriel Sherman - Aug. 31 (Special Report) - In the spring of 2005, New York Times columnist David Brooks arrived at then-Senator Barack Obama’s office for a chat. Brooks, a conservative writer who joined the Times in 2003 from The Weekly Standard, had never met Obama before. But, as they chewed over the finer points of Edmund Burke, it didn’t take long for the two men to click. “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging,” Brooks recently told me, “but usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me.”

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There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Terrence McNally - Aug. 25 (Special Report) - One hundred forty-three years after passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 60 years after Article 4 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned slavery and the slave trade worldwide, there are more slaves than at any time in human history -- 27 million. Today’s slavery focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people like before, but about using them as completely disposable tools for making money.

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Labor Warns Dems: We'll Sit Out Election If You Oppose Public Plan

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Aug. 18 (News Report) - "We'll look at every one of their votes," Trumka said after his speech at the Netroots Nation convention. "If they're against the Employee Free Choice Act, if they're against health care for that reason, I think it'll be tough for them to get support from working people."

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Health complaints linked to former NASA site in Downey

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Richard Verrier - Aug. 02 (Investigative Report) - A toxic cleanup paved the way for Downey Studios. But people who worked on films there say they developed conditions from which they haven't recovered. The source of their problems remains a mystery.

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Geithner Says Unemployment May Peak in Second Half of 2010

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Steve Matthews, Sue Decker - Aug. 02 (News Report) - The U.S. unemployment rate may not peak until the second half of 2010, possibly necessitating another extension in unemployment benefits, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said. “I think that is something that the administration and Congress are going to look very carefully at as we get closer to the end of this year,” Geithner said in an interview today on ABC’s “This Week” program. The U.S. economy contracted at a better-than-forecast 1 percent annual pace in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported July 31. Stabilization of housing markets and consumer spending, a lessening of financial turmoil and increased government spending all suggest the longest recession since the 1930s may be close to ending.

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Wall St. Rally Masks Deeper Problems

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Paul Jay, Richard Wolff - Jul. 28 (News Analysis) - Wolff says the improved corporate balance sheets have resulted more from laying off workers and reducing costs than in selling more products and raising revenues. Workers have been forced to make concessions, but that decreases chances for a healthy recovery, he says.

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Conservative group offers to sell endorsement for $2M

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Mike Allen - Jul. 17 (News Report) - The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a $2 million check in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay. In return for the $2 million, ACU offered a range of

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Iraq's Weakened Unions Fight Foreign Oil Firms

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By Aref Mohammed - Jul. 14 (Special Report) - The Federation of Oil Unions of Iraq and the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq have condemned the Oil Ministry's decision to award a foreign consortium the contract to develop Rumaila, the country's largest producing oilfield.

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U.S. Engineers At Record Unemployment

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Investor's Business Daily - By Brian Deagon - Jul. 09 (News Report) - Unemployment for U.S. engineers is at modern-day highs, fueled by the recession, big layoffs at tech firms and more U.S. firms moving operations offshore, according to industry data and analysts. Equally troubling, says Ron Hira, professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, is that unemployment among all computer professionals also is near a high.

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Obama's curiously close labor friendship

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Peter Nicholas - Jun. 28 (News Analysis) - They led the most powerful forces in healthcare -- the trade groups representing doctors, insurance companies, hospitals and drug makers. Any one of them could stall, if not derail, President Obama's hopes of overhauling the U.S. healthcare system. Instead, they stood with Obama before TV cameras at the White House and pledged their cooperation. For Obama, the show of unity gave momentum to perhaps his most ambitious domestic goal.

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G.M., Detroit and the Fall of the Black Middle Class

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jonathan Mahler - Jun. 28 (Special Report) - The Pontiac Assembly Center in Pontiac, Mich., is a massive, low-slung structure of concrete and corrugated green steel that squats conspicuously among the many strip malls that line one of the city’s main thoroughfares, South Opdyke Road. Locals refer to the three-million-square-foot factory, which makes Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, as Plant 6, because when it opened in 1972, it was the sixth General Motors manufacturing facility in this city, 25 miles north of downtown Detroit. At the time, General Motors was the world’s largest automaker. It dominated the American market, manufacturing half of the vehicles sold in the U.S. As recently as 2003, Plant 6 was running three consecutive eight-hour shifts, employing 3,000 people and making 1,300 trucks a day.

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Rite Aid Workers Fight for a Union

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Angel Warner, Ken Silverstein, Amy Goodman - Jun. 25 (Special Report) - Ahead of congressional debates on the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA, we take a look at a long struggle of over 600 Rite Aid workers in California to form a union. The workers are based in Lancaster, California, at the Southwest distribution center for the nation’s third largest drugstore. After a two-year struggle, a majority of Rite Aid workers at the site voted to join the International Longshore Workers Local 26. The story has gained national attention and focused attention in the fight over the Employee Free Choice Act. We speak with a Rite Aid worker and with Ken Silverstein about his article in Harper’s Magazine, “Labor’s Last Stand: The Corporate Campaign to Kill the Employee Free Choice Act.”

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Labor's last stand: The corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Jun. 24 (Special Report) - (subscribers only for full article, see link.) THE BUSINESS LOBBY HAS FRAMED ITS OPPOSITION TO EFCA AROUND THE “SECRET BALLOT” AND LABOR “COERCION.” BUT THE CURRENT RULES GIVE EMPLOYERS A CHOKEHOLD OVER UNION ELECTIONS

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Bill gives in-state tuition to foreign professionals, families in Washington on visa

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Lornet Turnbull - Jun. 22 (News Report) - A little-noticed measure passed by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor will extend in-state tuition rates at Washington colleges and universities to some foreign professionals working at companies like Microsoft and Amazon, as well as to their children and spouses.

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Foreign workers for U.S. are casualties twice over

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By T. Christian Miller - Jun. 21 (Special Report) - Rey Torres dreamed of a better life for his wife and five children when he left a neighborhood of wooden shacks and burning trash piles to drive a bus on a U.S. military base near Baghdad. He hoped to send his children to college and build a new home with the $16,000 a year he earned in Iraq -- four times what he could make in the Philippines. Then, in April 2005, Torres, 31, was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents. His widow and children were supposed to be protected by a war zone insurance system overseen by the U.S. government. They were eligible for about $300,000 in compensation.

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Oceans in Deep Trouble, Congress Told

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

courthousenews.com - Jun. 18 (News Report) - As the globe begins to fry, ocean acidification threatens many of the finned species with extinction along with destruction of the $111 billion in economic trade that comes from the ocean, legislators were told last week by a host of witnesses, including the descendant of famed oceanographer Jaques-Yves Cousteau.

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Unions Embrace Street Corner Solidarity

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Inter Press Service - By Peter Costantini - Jun. 08 (Special Report) - For Pablo Alvarado, the genesis occurred back in 1999 when janitors in Los Angeles were on strike. Some of the cleaning companies came to the corners and workers' centres where day labourers gathered and tried to hire workers to cross the janitors' picket lines, he recounted to IPS. "The workers said 'Thanks, but no thanks, we won't do that.' And instead 260 day labourers joined 2,000 janitors who marched across the landscape of Los Angeles," he said.

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