With writer’s still walking the pickets, studios continue to make interim agreements with the Writer’s Guild of America independently of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The most recent studios to come on include Lionsgate and Marvel Studios.
With writer’s still walking the pickets, studios continue to make interim agreements with the Writer’s Guild of America independently of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The most recent studios to come on include Lionsgate and Marvel Studios.
The day after Senator Barack Obama overwhelmingly won the primary in South Carolina he received a major endorsement – that of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy has a close relationship with all three of the candidates running for President. Over the past month Kennedy has become increasingly upset with the Clinton campaigns tactics and according to the Washington Post he reportedly made his decision after he became infuriated when former President Bill Clinton compared Obama’s South Carolina victory to Jesse Jackson winning the state’s smaller caucuses in 1984 and 1988. Ac
Lede: A Canadian Union of Public Employees organizer gets banned for using Facebook to organize, then gets reinstated with a little help from his friends. Doug Cunningham reports.
By Doug Cunningham
Canadian union organizer, Derek Blackadder discovered that for some folks having too many online friends can get you banned from Facebook. Through some spirited online collective action sparked by the labor news web site Labourstart, Blackadder also found that some collective action and solidarity can get you reinstated on Facebook.
[Blackadder]: “What I was attempting to do on Facebook is determine just how useful it might be for organizing–trade union organizing. I don’t mean necessarily trade union organizing in the sense of organizing for certification, but also political mobilization or internal organizing within an established union.”
Lede: A Canadian Union of Public Employees organizer gets banned for using Facebook to organize, then gets reinstated with a little help from his friends. Doug Cunningham reports.
By Doug Cunningham
Canadian union organizer Derek Blackadder discovered that for some folks, having too many online friends can get you banned from Facebook. Through some spirited online collective action sparked by the labor news web site Labourstart, Blackadder also found that some collective action and solidarity can get you reinstated on Facebook.
[Blackadder[: “What I was attempting to do on Facebook is determine just how useful it might be for organizing – trade union organizing. I don’t mean necessarily trade union organizing in the sense of organizing for certification, but also political mobilization or internal organizing within an established union.”
For the first time in years organized labor has some numbers to be happy about. According to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership went up in 2007 by .1 percent. According to the bureau, it is the first time since 1983 that union membership rates have increased. The unionized workforce is now 12.1 percent up by nearly 310,000 members. Women saw the biggest increase of workforce representation climbing from 10.9 percent in 2006 to 11.1 percent. The rate of men joining labor unions remained mostly unchanged.
For the first time in years organized labor has some numbers to be happy about. According to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics union membership went up in 2007 by .1 percent. According to the bureau it is the first time since 1983 that union membership rates have increased. The unionized workforce is now 12.1 percent up by nearly 310,000 members. Women saw the biggest increase of workforce representation climbing from 10.9 percent in 2006 to 11.1 percent. The rate of men joining labor unions remained mostly unchanged.
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One of the bloodiest chapters in American labor history is the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, where 20 innocent men, women and children were murdered by thugs hired by a trio of coal companies. Colorado miners had been trying for years to organize with the Mine Workers (UMWA).
That southern Colorado site may soon become a National Historic Landmark. Last week, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said he plans to introduce legislation to give the tent-city massacre site Landmark status. As Salazar writes in a letter to the National Park Service:
The site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre is central to our nation’s understanding and memory of the labor struggles of the early 20th century, to the region’s identity and to the descendents of all those involved in the 1913–1914 strike and other labor conflicts of the era. It is fully deserving of National Landmark status.
In 1917, the UMWA erected a monument at the site “in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.” But there has been no state or national commemoration of the site.
In 1913, southern Colorado miners and their families walked out of the mines and mining camps striking for adequate wages, enforcement of state mining laws and union recognition. For more than a year, they lived in tent colonies near the mines.
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