posts tagged asbusiness unionism

From Solidarity to Shock Therapy: The AFL-CIO and the Fall of Soviet Communism

by Jeff Schuhrke on November 22, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the death of Mikhail Gorbachev this year have sparked renewed interest in the USSR’s 1991 disintegration, a moment that officially brought an end to the Cold War.

Historians have been prominent in the many recent discussions and debates about how the demise of the Soviet Union thirty years ago set the stage for Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, the controversial expansion of NATO, and the current war in Ukraine.

Stamford Workers Show How to Transform Our Unions and Rebuild the Labor Movement

by Andrew Tillet-Saks, Andrew Tillet-Saks, Chad Pearson on February 15, 2018

Chad Pearson: Andrew Tillett-Saks has given LAWCHA permission to re-publish this inspiring essay from Truthout. It is an excellent reminder of the long history of managerial bullying and the ways expressions of solidarity from below can successfully challenge these thugs.

Michael Sacco on Steve Early’s Save Our Unions

by Michael Sacco on August 28, 2014

Labor law is outdated and rotten in the US, corporations have an inordinate amount of power, so it is rare that unions win or even strike these days. Solid activist leadership in our unions is rare in these last decades of concessionary bargaining and the sustained war on the working class.

US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement 3 years on–the Long Road to Solidarity by Avi Chomsky

by Avi Chomsky on April 15, 2014

When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he told the AFL-CIO convention that he would oppose the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement promoted by then-president Bush “because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.”

A Bright Light in Dark Times: CTU struggle explored in Labor

by Randi Storch, Tom Alter on November 14, 2013

State University of New York employees are reeling from the union contract negotiated between the faculty union (the United University Professions) and the Governor’s office. Behind closed doors and in the post-Scott Walker anti-public employee environment of the day, the union’s negotiations team took a beating. In the end, the largest union that represents faculty in higher education agreed to furlough days (or in Governor Cuomo speak, Deficit Reduction Leave) and a significantly higher individual and family cost to health care. Read more →