Unions help build a better life for working people, but outdated laws have hampered our basic right to join together and negotiate for better pay, benefits and working conditions. A new bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, would modernize our nation's labor laws.
After a quarter century of suffering under the failed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and 18 months of hard-fought negotiations, the American Federation of Labor and
Benjamin Romano
on Thursday, September 6 2018 - 1:48pm
As Labor Day approached, the movement that created the holiday flexed its muscle in Seattle, where the landscape has been transformed in the last few years by labor-backed measures protecting and compensating people like in few other places across the country.
For generations America’s promise has been that opportunity to create a better life for your family awaits if you work hard and play by the rules. But this Labor Day, that promise is more out of reach than ever for an increasing number of people.
Courtney Mihocik
on Tuesday, September 4 2018 - 2:36pm
It's 1929, and workers in the Loray Mill in Gastonia have unanimously decided to strike after work conditions in the mill have gotten worse over time, thanks to management's efforts to reduce operating costs.
Wanting livable wages, better hours, union recognition and to rid the mill of the stretch-out system that was crushing their ability to effectively complete their jobs, 1,800 workers walked out on their jobs on April 1.
Gebre was still a boy when he was forced to flee Ethiopia, a country that suffered political turmoil and famine during the 1980s. “People were getting murdered on the streets by the government,” Gebre says. “They were just grabbing kids and torturing them if they were suspected of being an anarchist or aiding the opposition. That's when I knew I had to find a way to get out.”
One of Washingon’s largest licensed marijuana retailers has inked a union contract to cover 134 workers at five locations, helping it provide employee benefits while navigating the difficult waters of federal law.
Ryan Kunkel, CEO and founder of Have a Heart, said the agreement with the United Food & Commercial Workers union Local 21 solves a problem for the company, which has ambitious plans to grow in a half-dozen other states.
“For better part of 3 years we have been trying to figure out how to provide basic things like health care benefits,” he said in an interview.
Officials in the building trades say their members, who take physically demanding jobs and risk serious injuries that often require pain medication, are uniquely predisposed to addiction.
