unions

Kashana Cauley writes comedic bits for Trevor Noah. And yesterday, he wrote a decidedly not comedic OpEd for the NY Times, Why Millennials Should Lead the Next Labor Movement. When he was growing up, his dad was a union guy on the assembly line at an auto factory down in what is now Paul Ryan's congressional district. Cauley recalls that his dad's work "regularly sent him to the hospital for surgeries to drain extra fluid from his knees.

Sgt. James Locke, center, inspects recruits, many of them high school juniors and seniors, as they stand at attention in the concrete barracks at the Army National Guard complex in Marseilles, Ill. (AP/Jeff Roberson)
(Opinion) — Chicago, Illinois, has a chronic inflated state problem disguised as a schooling problem. In order to eradicate the symptom, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has decided to attack those who suffer from it and not the actual root of the problem — adopting a classic “more of the same” approach.

It’s always fascinating to observe ruling classes seemingly willfully destroying the conditions for their own future rule. History is black with the ashes of self-immolated wealthy classes, grim reminders of the autosarcophagous nature of infinite greed. In eighteenth-century France there was the parasitic aristocracy that shunted all responsibility for the kingdom’s finances onto the lower classes, thus setting the stage for the French Revolution.

Shockingly, the DCCC doesn't recruit union activists to run for Congress any longer; quite the contrary. They have demonstrated for over a decade that they would rather recruit an "ex"-Republican or a wealthy self-funding careerist than someone who understands the concept of worker solidarity.

Question:  What do the most “successful” countries in the world—i.e., the “happiest,” fairest, most enlightened, most optimistic, and most generous—have in common?  Answer:  The majority of them have quasi-socialist governments/economies, and highly unionized labor forces.

Lies, distortions and self-serving obfuscations are to be expected when political and business leaders discuss far away places.
In a recent Toronto Star column Rick Salutin observed that “foreign policy is a truth-free, fact-free zone. When leaders speak on domestic issues, citizens at least have points of reference to check them against. On foreign affairs they blather freely.”

An early sign that Trump’s cabinet appointments reeked of unprofessionalism was when organized labor and congressional Democrats gave tentative approval to naming Elaine Chao (former Secretary of Labor under George W. Bush) as President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation.  The Senate confirmed her by a vote of 93-6.

The Supreme Court will soon be ruling on the question of whether union contracts can legally include provisions where employees waive the right to join in class-action lawsuits.  While unions and the NLRB argue that this provision violates an employee’s inherent right to “collective action,” management argues that all disputes should be settled individually, by way of binding arbitration, a method that has proven quicker and less expensive.

By now most labor union officials in the country have heard about and are rejoicing over the “grammatical” U.S. Appellate Court ruling that favored dairy drivers in Maine.
Given how rare it is for unions to win anything these days—whether in federal court, at the bargaining table, or in the court of public opinion—this ruling, minor as it was, counted as a significant victory.  We’ll take it.

Why is the reparations movement in the Anglophone Caribbean not putting capitalism on trial in its campaign to force British imperialism to provide financial compensation for its industrial and agricultural capitalists’ enslavement of Africans? To what extent is capitalism such a sacred spirit or god whose name should not be publicly called in order to avoid attracting its vindictive and punishing rebuke?