Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that businesses can force workers to settle disputes with arbitration and virtually shuts workers out of the courtroom banning class action lawsuits. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 allows employers to require one-on-one arbitration hearings. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Gorsuch’s …
Tag: Workers’ Rights
May 16 2011
An Executive Order to Stop Union Busting?
Posted earlier at both Progressive Blue and DailyKos.
The headline on this video page that has a transcript is White House could use power of federal contracting to enforce labor laws, but has no plans to do so. The Executive Order in question that would force large corporations into behaving responsibly toward workers is about laws that already exist but are not enforced, about an executive order that was signed by President Bill Clinton and then squashed by George W. Bush.
ELK: So there are currently laws on the book that say that if a company breaks the law, they can be debarred from bidding on federal contracts, meaning they can’t get federal contracts. It’s currently in this country illegal to fire a worker from their job for joining a union, but 20,000 workers a year are either fired or disciplined for trying to join a union, both of which are illegal. One-third of all, you know, union organizing drives, somebody gets fired from their job. Over 130,000 companies are federal contractors. All the big companies get some type of federal contract. If you say–if you enforce these laws, these laws about how to debar companies, these companies wouldn’t get contracts anymore.
It is the type of executive order that could get Union workers back in the mood for volunteering and getting active in supporting all the other Democrats who will be running in 2012.
The interview came after Tuesday May 10 when Mike Elk wrote Obama Has Power to Stop Unionbusting With a Stroke of His Pen
In the last part of the Clinton administration, when Podesta was White House Chief of Staff, the government issued executive orders to implement “high road” contracting practices that would have enforced laws on the books barring companies that broke labor, safety, and environmental laws from receiving federal contracts. President Bill Clinton’s “contractor responsibility rule” would have created guidelines, a centralized database and data standards to prevent bad actor corporations from receiving government contracts. (The George W. Bush administration ended up blocking implementation of the orders.)
But just a few days later and the enthusiasm seems to be already gone. How can you support such an executive order?
Feb 22 2011
On the Ground in Ohio
cross-posted from Sum of Change
COLUMBUS, OH: I am on the ground in Ohio, here to cover the protests for the couple days that I can afford to be away from DC. Today, despite a persistent rain, demonstrators lined the sidewalk outside of the Capitol Building in Columbus to voice their opposition to Senate Bill 5 which threatens state employees’ bargaining rights. Today’s protest was a lead up to tomorrow, when thousands are expected to descend on Columbus.
Jun 24 2009
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers
Original article, by David Lindorff and subtitled How the Bosses are Undermining the Stimulus Program, via counterpunch.com:
Reports are starting to appear suggesting that laid-off or underemployed Americans, and the long-term unemployed, are losing patience with the Obama administration’s and Congress’ economic stimulus plan, which thus far has not done anything to arrest the growth of unemployment, now at close to 20 percent of the US workforce, at least as unemployment used to honestly be counted in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Feb 21 2009
The reactionary politics of economic nationalism
Original article, by Ulrich Rippert subheaded German union seeks to divide European and North American GM workers, via World Socialist Web Site:
On Tuesday, General Motors announced plans to cut its workforce world-wide by 47,000, with 26,000 jobs to be slashed in Europe alone. The main German engineering union, IG Metall, and its shop stewards organized in works councils at GM’s German subsidiary Opel, reacted to the announcement by rejecting any joint struggle by GM workers in Europe and North America.
Feb 14 2009
Gutter press campaign aims to distort union demands
Original article, By Rob Sewell (vice-chair, London Central, National Union of Journalists), via Socialist Appeal (UK):
The present struggle of construction workers in defence of their national agreement on terms and conditions has been deliberately distorted by the British media and press. One not unexpected aspect of the recent wave of wildcat strikes in the construction industry has been the way that the media has reported them.
Feb 01 2009
A Shift Toward Worker Power?
Original article, by Allan Nairn and subtitled The Time is Ripe to Tip the System, Now, via Dissidentvoice:
In bad situations, people lower their standards for what it is that constitutes good news.
Jan 26 2009
A power greater than their hoarded gold
Original article, by Adam Turl, via socialistworker.org:
IT ISN’T often that a member of the U.S. Congress acknowledges that the source of wealth in modern society is labor. But there was Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) at a rally outside the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago in December, as workers inside occupied the plant.
Jan 05 2009
Greece rises in rebellion
Original article, an editorial subtitled The Greek socialist newspaper Workers’ Left looks in this editorial at the roots of the revolt that began with the killing of a teenage student by police in Athens–and what the protests mean for the future, via socialistworker.org:
THE WAVE of struggle that has burst out after the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos has been justly characterized as a social rebellion by youth in Greece.
Nov 08 2008
Europe’s growing wave of resistance to the crisis
Original article, a series of news reports, via Socialist Worker (UK):
Here’s the subtitle:
Across Europe there is a growing rebellion against attempts to make ordinary people pay for the economic crisis. Socialist Worker reports on the protests that have swept Greece, Italy and Germany in the past week