unions

I just got off the phone with David Brian Brown, the St. Louis, Mo., lawyer who has appeared with Kenneth Gladney, the black man who claims he was beaten up by a bunch of Service Employees International Union members outside a town hall meeting in St. Louis. Gladney says he was just there  innocently selling [...]

If anyone thought that a liberal President Obama, backed by large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, was just going to write his way through Washington this year — think again.
It’s a moderate’s world on Capitol Hill right now, and the latest evidence arrived yesterday when the Democratic sponsors of a controversial labor-friendly proposal [...]

Specifically, Chapter 11. General Motors’ creditors have rejected the latest offer extended to them to facilitate an out-of-court restructuring — a swap of some $27 billion in GM debt for a 10 percent equity stake in the new, reorganized company. Creditors are complaining that union stakeholders were offered a much better deal than they were [...]

Here’s an interesting tip I just got from American Rights At Work about the Republican’s vociferous opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, based on its oft-stated desire to protect employees’ rights to vote in secret ballots. (Contrary to Republican claims, the EFCA does not take away that right, but merely supplements it with the [...]

The nonpartisan money-in-politics-tracking Website, OpenSecrets.org, has an eye-opening roundup of the money spent in support or opposition the Employee Free Choice Act, introduced in Congress yesterday.
The bill, which would allow employees to form a union if they can gather signatures from a majority of workers, rather than being required also to hold a formal election [...]

Unmentioned in President Obama’s speech to Congress last night was the impending battle over “card check,” which promises to be anything but post-partisan. As conservatives debate how to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act — which, if passed, proponents argue would make it easier for workers to form unions — advocates of the law have [...]

While opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act will be well-funded, a strategy division, and the size of the Democrats’ majorities in Congress, are making life difficult for the anti-labor side of the debate.

Are we making up for our DOT pick?
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Rep. Hilda Solis to head the Dept. of Labor, according to reports. The California Democrat has a long record supporting workers in general and unions in particular. Before she arrived in Washington, for example, she led the successful charge to raise California’s minimum [...]

As congressional lawmakers debate whether America’s automakers deserve an emergency cash infusion, a central point of contention has been the relationship between the powerful autoworkers union and Detroit’s failed business model. In a sentence: Many Republicans argue that the platinum pension and health-care benefits enjoyed by workers have made the Big Three unable to compete [...]

The McCain campaign’s decision to effectively concede Michigan to Obama makes no political sense because the GOP nominee enjoys key advantages in the state.