French protesters are furious with EU champion Emmanuel Macron while Rome battles Brussels over its budget. Amid all this, Andrew Spannaus discusses why organized labor isn’t seizing the moment. Yellow Vests, Italian Budget Battles & Silent Labor Unions By Andrew…Read more →
Unlike the U.S., Europe has strong, influential labor unions; yet they have been unable, or unwilling, to stop the austerity-based policies demanded by European institutions, reports Andrew Spannaus. By Andrew Spannaus Special to Consortium News in Milan, Italy Railway workers…Read more →
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — “C’mon people, what are some more nurses values?”
I was nearly four months into my stint in the communications office at the California Nurses Association, or CNA, when I found myself in a half-lit, mildewed, second-floor conference room in the union’s downtown Oakland office, seated among a clutch of maybe seven or eight other communications staffers, all white with the exception of myself and an Asian woman.
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the University of Michigan have had a well-established working relationship with each other for years, largely because the union holds a contract with the school barring any non-union members from certain jobs, including landscaping. That goodwill ended this summer when the school decided to use a new method of removing poisonous vegetation.
Modern America’s obsession with self and success has killed off what once was an honorable American archetype, the Common Man, who was the nation’s backbone for generations, writes Michael Brenner. By Michael Brenner America’s Common Man exists no more –…Read more →
Should anyone be forced to accept representation from a private entity against his or her will? In the US, if a union gets at least 50 percent plus one of the workers in an enterprise to vote in favor of the union’s representation, then all workers must be represented by the union – even those who abstained and who voted against being represented by the union.
"As private sector unions were largely replaced with public sector unions, union financial support more closely resembled the soviet model: public funds for political action."
Britain’s history shows that private companies can and have run railways successfully. The partial privatization seen since 1995 could undoubtedly be improved upon, especially by allowing businesses to own the tracks and have greater freedom in setting prices.
The New York Times has issued a major blast against the gig economy, and it has all the features of this genre of writing: find anything in the sector that might be improved, or is improving, and treat it as something government should crush immediately, regardless of the results for people who are actually choosing in favor of this form of market participation. An editorial as bad as this calls for a good fisking.
