Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

November wasn’t a good month for mortgages. Defaults of uninsured mortgages leapt by a record 35 percent. The number of insured borrowers more than 60 days late also bumped up substantially in November hitting 61,033. Nearly 16,000 more than in November 2006 and a 2.9 percent increase over October of this year.

A judge has ruled that the Santa Barbara News-Press wrongly fired eight employees due to union activity. Jesse Russell reports.

A Santa Barbara paper that spent much of 2007 involved in a labor dispute has been judged in the wrong. Judge William G. Kocol ruled last week that the Santa Barbara News-Press violated labor laws when it fired eight journalists for taking part in union activities. The eight employees had been seeking to join the Teamsters. The case was brought on behalf of the workers by the National labor Relations Board. The board alleged that the paper retaliated against the employees due to their union activity.

By Doug Cunningham

Iowa voters will caucus tomorrow in a Democratic presidential primary that’s too close to call. The three top contenders – Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards – are within the statistical margin error of each other when polls are averaged. Labor is in the thick of the Iowa campaigning. The two biggest union efforts in Iowa are for Clinton and Edwards. Gerald McEntee is president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has activated an army of activists for Clinton.

[McEntee]: “We’re going to do it the old-fashioned way – work site by work site and block by block.”

In November, thousands of workers around the country marched against the Bush National Labor Relations Board’s years of anti-worker rulings.

From a new Congress taking the reins on Capitol Hill in January to the AFL-CIO’s first-ever global organizing conference in December, working families have seen significant victories, unfortunate setbacks and a lot of unfinished business this year. We take a look back at 2007 in a series of posts, ending today with a quick glance at top items from October through December. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

October

* After watching the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issue anti-worker, pro-employer decisions time after time, systematically reducing workers’ freedom to join unions, the AFL-CIO sought international assistance. We filed a complaint with the U.N. organization, the International Labor Organization, charging the NLRB with denying workers’ rights in violation of international labor standards. Said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney: “Under Bush, America’s labor board has so failed our nation’s workers that we must now turn to the world’s international watchdogs to monitor and intervene.”