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Union Density Continues Slip and Fall

New Orleans I went by the gala reception on St. Charles Avenue last night to celebrate the fact that the SEIU International Executive Board was in town to see old friends and comrades. Past the music, food and short speeches, it was hard to find much evidence of good news for unions and organizing even from [...]

Unionize College Athletes Now!

New Orleans I’m not sure if we are moving towards the end of the college bowl cycle or in the middle? The big bowl games, like the Sugar, Rose, Cotton, and Orange are now BCS bowls, and the biggest bowl is the Championship right around the corner in the Louisiana Superdome. But, there are scores [...]

Do NLRB Election Changes Matter If No One is Organizing

New Orleans The surviving members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) published a final rulemaking on some “modest” (quoting Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO) changes to election procedures this week. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has quickly announced that they will file suit to block the regulations as an [...]

Taking Back the Capitol

New Orleans There are few organizations anywhere that are better at pure and simple communications than MoveOn.org and the Service Employees International Union, but they just about met their match in trying to turn up the heat with a demonstration culminating SEIU’s Fight for a Fair Economy campaign in DC. To the media this was [...]

Are we Hearing the Death Knell for Unions?

New Orleans The backdrop to the great excitement and fight back in Wisconsin, Ohio, and India for the labor movement seems to be a very black curtain that some are trying to pull across the stage. The evidence seems everywhere. Steven Greenhouse, one of the last labor reporters, sounded the death knell in the [...]

Politicians Slip and Fall: Oliver Thomas’ “Reflections”

New Orleans Contrary to popular opinion, it is actually a very, very rare event for a New Orleans city politician to go to jail for some kind of corruption, regardless of our reputation. The hometown paper, The Times Picayune, campaigned mercilessly for investigations and convictions of Mayor Marc Morial and his troops, largely to no [...]

Los Mineros and Napoleon Gomez’s Exile

Prince George, British Columbia I wanted to hear Napoleon Gomez Urrutia speak to the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU) leaders gathered in the northern part of the province to look at how their union connects to the community. Gomez is Secretary General of the 250,000+ member Union of Mining, Metallurgical, Steel and [...]

Union Puzzle in Vietnam

Hanoi There was no question that the Organizers’ Forum delegation debated more ardently than the proposition of the independence and effectiveness of the Vietnamese General Federation of Labor. At the end of our visit we were clear that their role in Vietnamese society was critical, their voice within government was not trivial, their sincerity and [...]

Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

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