Labor Union Blog

The fight of workers at Resurrection Health Care for a union illustrates the growing global crisis in workers’ rights.

Anti-worker governments here and around the world, together with U.S.-based multinationals, are assaulting workers’ freedom to form unions and have a voice at work. Starting Monday, union leaders from around the world are coming together here to identify the problems and discuss what we can do, together, to fight back.

The AFL-CIO will host a historic conference Dec. 10–11 involving more than 200 trade union leaders from the United States and 63 countries at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. The delegates will lay the groundwork for and discuss global strategies to help workers join unions. The summit opens on International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), a time when
U.S. unions traditionally mobilize to restore the freedom to join unions.

More than 10,000 delegates and observers from around the world are gathered in Bali, Indonesia, for the 10-day United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC). Of the 90 union delegates, more than 20 are from North America, including Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and chair of the Energy Task Force. Baugh sends us the first of a series of posts by members of the North American delegation.

Union representatives for the first time are allowed to directly participate in key working sessions of the conference, meeting here to discuss strategies for current rules on reducing global warming—known as the Kyoto protocols—which expire in 2012.