Richard D.Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit —
September 4, 2012— The Washington Post
To revive itself, labor must rediscover its roots as an early civil rights movement for workers, the authors state, and lay out three strategies for unions to emulate.
This don't-miss music video comes from CWA's new members at Brooklyn Cablevision who "saw through the corporate lies, organized to join CWA and immortalized the experience," with a song, "We Are the Union," that will inspire both smiles and tears.
While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project.
For seven years, the Erie-Crawford Central Labor Council in Pennsylvania has helped sponsor a "Back to School Free Haircut Day" for students. In 2006, fewer than 40 showed up; this year, more than 700 turned out to get a free haircut and a backpack full of school supplies from unions and other community volunteers.
Fifty years ago, Canada and the United States had roughly the same rate of unionization. Today it's vastly differenty, with 11.8 percent of U.S. workers in unions, compared to nearly 30 percent in Canada. What happened? A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research says it boils down to U.S. employers blocking the rights of their workers to form and join unions.
The AFL-CIO is compiling videos of gratitude from one worker to another, such as Gabrielle Carteris, an actor, expressing thanks to the grocery workers who make her life easier. Watch the videos, add your own and/or send a card online by clicking on the AFL-CIO "Share Thanks" page.
NewsGuild's fellow media sector members at WHUT-TV in Washington, D.C., are having a tough time. Four of the six members of the NABET-CWA Local 52031 unit were abruptly fired July 3 after rejecting the public TV station's latest contract offer. The workers and supporters are turning out for weekly pickets outside the Howard University-based station, where passersby are eagerly taking leaflets and pledging to email management on the workers' behalf.
Responsibility for Employees' Health and Safety Doesn't End at U.S. Borders
Janelle Hartman —
August 21, 2012— NewsGuild-CWA
NABET-CWA members seeking information about their exposure to radiation while covering the Japanese tsunami for ABC have helped set a clear precedent for U.S. journalists and other workers assigned to duties outside the country: U.S. employers' responsibility for workers health and safety doesn't end at the border, OSHA says.
A Financial Times article accessing court records and other federal documents reports that Key Airlines, controlled by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital at the time, ran an unlawful campaign to stop pilots who tried to organize a union in the 1980s. A federal judge in 1992 said, "The anti-union activities in this case are not merely unfair labor practices as Key argues, but blatant, grievous, willful, deliberate and repeated violations of the Railway Labor Act."
In the spirit of CWA's own efforts to build broad coalitions of allies, Truthout interviews legendary LGBTQ activist Cleve Jones about the campaign to boycott Hyatt hotels. The campaign is pressuring Hyatt to vastly improve its treatment of its housekeepers and other workers. UNITE HERE says, "Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst employer in the hotel industry. Hyatt has abused its housekeepers and other hotel workers, replacing longtime employees with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on those who remain." Jones says bringing in outside allies is "how we win.... I've never been involved in a struggle that my friends and I could win on our own." Photo credit: Eric Wagner/Flickr.
