Do you find the tax proposal on the Michigan primary election ballot as confusing as I do? Even after reading the ballot language, I find it hard to understand the whole proposal. It’s clear that it would cut taxes for businesses (again.) But it also rearranges how tax revenues is distributed to communities, and it…
Public sector workers are under attack in Michigan, around the nation, and around the globe. But in the U.K. last week, several hundred thousand public employees participated in a one-day strike action. Here in the U.S., we didn’t see much news coverage of their strike. So, here’s a link to the The Guardian newspaper with…
American workers and their unions were dealt major losses by the U.S. Supreme Court today. The court ruled against workers in two cases, both of which have special relevance for women workers. 1. Hobby Lobby ruling: Certain corporations can have religious beliefs and use them to deny workers health care coverage The court ruled that…
Wal-Mart is getting a lot of critical attention this holiday shopping season. Some of it is as a result of labor activism, and some of it is just more of the insensitive missteps we’ve come to expect from Wal-Mart. I’ll mention four things here: 1. This graphic comes from AFSCME. The more people shop at…
Last month I was invited to speak at a conference on Supporting Women’s Economic Empowerment in Amman, Jordan. Sponsored by Oxfam-Quebec, the conference focused on women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). They asked me to speak about what unions can do for women in the region, and what obstacles they might face.…
So much has been said about Right to Work (RTW), that it’s challenging to add anything new to the debate. I’m sure you all know that Right to Work states have • Lower wages and household income • Higher infant mortality rates • 36 percent higher on-the-job fatality rate Economic impact: The Oklahoma story Before…
We’ve had a lot of attention placed on school bullying recently, and rightly so. But, unfortunately, bullying doesn’t stop when people leave school. It’s found in the workplace as well. It’s a surprise to a lot of people, but almost half the workforce has been affected by bullying at some point in their work life — 37…
Why is there a disconnect between women’s rights and worker’s rights? Most women in the U.S. work. And both the women’s movement and the labor movement have done a great deal to give women more economic independence and security than they had in my grandmother’s – and even my mother’s – day. My own experience as a labor educator who teaches in a lot of women’s programs tells me that many union women are uncomfortable calling themselves feminists. I often wonder why that is.
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