How Big Banks Shortchange Their Workers


The Committee for Better Banks protests outsourcing of teller jobs at a rally outside Bank of America on November 21.   (Sarah Jaffe) We've talked a lot about the finance industry since it nearly destroyed the economy back in 2008. (By “we” here I mean the American public, though it’s just as true of progressive communities and the world at large.) We’ve discussed pay for those who work at the top...
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Unions Furious with Illinois Democrats Over Pension Cuts

Illinois legislators, facing the deepest pension funding shortfall of any state—a gap of $100 billion and growing—voted on Tuesday to fill the hole by cutting $160 billion over the next 30 years in pension payments that the state had promised to current and future state employees. The decision by the solidly Democratic state government strongly rebuffed the public employee unions that played a maj...
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Spy vs. Spy at Walmart


Two apparent Walmart employees monitoring protesters during OUR Walmart's Black Friday campaign.   (Frank Leonardo) I took part in one of the hundreds of Walmart protests this past Black Friday. It gave me a new perspective on NSA surveillance. Well before noon, my husband and I were sitting on a sunny bench in front of the Secaucus, N.J., Walmart. To the Walmart security agents, conferring with g...
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Wait for Medical Relief Drags on for Last of Ground Zero Victims


More than a decade after the attacks on the World Trade Center, cleanup workers suffering from 9/11-related illnesses are still waiting for federal compensation. (USACE / Flickr / Creative Commons)   More than twelve years after the attack on the World Trade Center, thousands of people who inhaled toxic air at the site of Ground Zero are still awaiting government help for the medical problems they...
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How Chicago Whole Foods Workers Won Back Thanksgiving

On Wednesday around 5 p.m., half an hour into a rally to support striking Chicago Whole Foods workers, striker Matthew Camp took up the bullhorn and announced: "We got news that our company will now allow anyone who wants Thanksgiving off to have the day off." The assembly of about 100 demonstrators let out a cheer and quickly began chanting, "When we fight, we win!" The so-called “Strikesgiving” ...
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Secondhand Store Workers Push for First-Rate Treatment

CHICAGO—Ana Laura Lopez has working at Unique Thrift Store in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood down to a science. She’s sorted through loads of donated goods to determine what is sellable, priced the merchandise, put it out for customers and worked the cash register. But after eight years of working at the store, Lopez, a 38-year-old mother of six, earns just $9 per hour—75 cents more than Illinois’ ...
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A New Day, A New Danger: Temporary Workers Face Safety Hazards at Work


Representatives from the advocacy group Chicago Workers' Collaborative are taking OSHA to task for historically failing to protect temporary low-wage workers. (Chicago Workers' Collaborative)   Rosa Ramirez, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant and mother in Illinois, knew something was odd about the plastics factory where her temporary-labor agency had sent her. "From the minute one walks into that fa...
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Ten Arrested at Chicago Wal-Mart in Black Friday Civil Disobedience


Cameras click as Chicago police arrest Myron Byrd for blocking the street outside of the Lakeview Wal-Mart where he works.   (Amien Essif) Around 7:30 a.m. on November 29, the day of the annual “Black Friday” shopping frenzy, demonstrators massed in front of the large Wal-Mart Supercenter on Chicago’s North Avenue, where steel crowd-control fences stood as remnants of one of the busiest shopping n...
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This Thanksgiving, Spare a Moment to Consider Turkey Plant Workers


A proposed poultry inspection privatization plan isn't good for workers or consumers, advocates say. (USDAgov / Flickr / Creative Commons)   With Thanksgiving Day nearly upon us, government officials are moving forward with plans to privatize some poultry inspections at chicken and turkey slaughter plants in a manner that could compromise worker and consumer safety. The poultry privatization plan ...
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Boeing Holds Jobs Hostage in Two-Pronged Fight With State Government and Machinists


Boeing has threatened to move the production of the 777X airliner, a hotly anticipated variant of the 777, out of Washington state. (Boeing Dreamscape / Wikimedia Commons)   For much of the last few years, Boeing has been soaring. In 2012, the aircraft-manufacturing corporation raked in $3.9 billion in net income; it’s projected to earn at least $4.2 billion this year. And thanks to the $95 billio...
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UC Berkeley Professor Sends Heartfelt Anti-Union E-mail To Students on Eve of Strike

The union representing 22,000 service workers across the University of California system went out on a one-day unfair labor practices strike this Wednesday, joined by 15,000 graduate student employees. The action was particularly notable because of its use of a rare sympathy strike and the sight of academic workers standing in solidarity with service workers, as I reported last week. Alongside the...
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The Union President Who’s Helping Put Filibuster Reform in Motion


Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen, pictured here at an October march for immigrant rights, has been fighting for filibuster reform for four years. ( CWA )   Since 2009, Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen has been pushing to eliminate the filibuster in Congress. Earlier this year, Cohen’s union, CWA, worked with the Sierra Club, NAACP and Greenpeace to con...
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Bosch Engineering to Guest Workers: Hand Over Tax Refunds or Go Back to India


'Though the government has plenty of measures in place to oversee corporate finances, Hira points out, there’s almost nothing being done to prevent employers’ questionable treatment of workers.'   (DennisM2/Flickr/Creative Commons) In 2005, Suraj Kamath began working for Bosch Engineering in India as an automotive engineer. In March of 2009, Bosch moved him to its test facility in Santa Barbara, C...
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Qatar’s World Cup Spectacle Brought to You by Slavery


Migrants laboring in Qatar. Most are underpaid and face torture or abuse. (Photo by WBUR/ Flickr)   The big controversies surrounding Qatar as the site of the 2022 World Cup have been the shady bidding process and fears that the desert heat will ruin the soccer games. But in the past few days, the spotlight has finally begun to move to longstanding concerns over the treatment of the migrant worker...
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Maryland’s Keystone Pipeline Lite Reignites Green vs. Blue Fight


A landscape in Odessa, TX transformed by hydraulic fracturing.   (ddimick/Flickr/Creative Commons) BALTIMORE—The continuing drama of organized labor's conflict with the environmental movement, especially notable in the controversy surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline project , is readying for another round as a coalition of green groups launches a campaign to stop the proposed construction of a Ma...
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