The latest issue of Labor:Studies of Working Class History of the Americas has an excellent forum (available on the right side of this screen, courtesy of Duke University Press) on the legacy of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Read more →Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued two 5-4 decisions. The first, Harris v. Quinn, ruled that home health care workers are partial state employees and thus do not have to pay union dues, effectively creating right to work for a specific type of public employees.
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For years, the labor movement has talked of the need to build coalitions with other social movements. During the Trumka presdiency, the AFL-CIO has become more serious about alliance building. At the recent AFL-CIO convention, alliances with the NAACP and Sierra Club were heavily promoted.
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June’s LAWCHA conference was my first. I had an excellent time, presented my work on a successful panel about blue-green alliances, and a chaired a really great panel on the 100th anniversary of the Paterson textile strike of 1913. But the most important panel I attended was on the Chicago Teachers Union struggle.
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On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO Executive Council approved a Statement on Energy and Jobs that effectively endorsed the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Technically, the resolution supported expanding the nation’s pipeline infrastructure, but this was an attempt to bypass outright support of a project that has attracted great criticism from the environmental community while dividing the federation’s constituent unions.
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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to check out Cape Cod in the winter. It was pretty great, even if cold. On my way to the Cape, I drove past a Wendy’s. They were offering a fish sandwich–made with North Pacific cod.
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Labor Notes conducted an informal survey of labor activists, asking them about their favorite class-conscious novels. The range of works was pretty interesting (and gave me a good reading list as well). It got me thinking about teaching working-class literature in history courses.
Read more →In 1958, an Indianapolis woman named Patricia Bolen wrote a letter to the Indianapolis Star about how Indiana’s right-to-work law affected her husband:
“I pooh-poohed when the right-to-work was first called a mankiller. But it is. The man I love is being killed by it.
Read more →Driving across western Pennsylvania recently, I was struck by the number of yard signs decrying President Obama’s “War on Coal.” The Appalachian coal country has swung hard to the right in recent years; whereas not long ago West Virginia was a reliably Democratic state, last week Mitt Romney carried it with 62% of the vote.
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