Labor Union Blog

Lede: An auto worker on the shop floor is writing a book to be published this year about a militant and inspirational event in labor history that has the power to inspire today’s workers. Doug Cunningham has more.

By Doug Cunningham

In the winter of 1937 thousands of Flint, Michigan autoworkers seized a GM factory in a sit-down strike and held it for 44 days against police onslaughts as the National Guard ringed the plant. That bold act of courage and solidarity won recognition for the UAW from the world’s biggest, most powerful corporation. Martha Grevatt works on the shop floor in UAW Local 122. She’s writing a book to be called “In Our Hands Is Placed The Power” about the heroic Flint sit-down strike.

Lede: An auto worker on the shop floor is writing a book to be published this year about a militant and inspirational event in labor history that has the power to inspire today’s workers. Doug Cunningham has more.

By Doug Cunningham

In the winter of 1937 thousands of Flint, Michigan autoworkers seized a GM factory in a sit-down strike and held it for 44 days against police onslaughts as the National Guard ringed the plant. That bold act of courage and solidarity won recognition for the UAW from the world’s biggest, most powerful corporation. Martha Grevatt works on the shop floor in UAW Local 122. She’s writing a book to be called “In Our Hands Is Placed The Power” about the heroic Flint sit-down strike.

Any hopes that the Boeing strike will be solved in the near future were dashed this weekend as the company’s President and chief executive Scott Carson said he expects it to be “a couple of weeks” before the two sides can get to a place where they are willing to sit down and start talking again. Workers represented by the International Association of Machinists have been on strike against Boeing four times in the past 20 years. The last strike was in 2005. This time, the big issue surrounding the negotiation stalemate is the job security. The union is seeking to have a larger voice when it comes to the outsourcing issue.

Any hopes that the Boeing strike will be solved in the near future were dashed this weekend as the company’s President and chief executive Scott Carson said he expects it to be “a couple of weeks” before the two sides can get to a place where they are willing to sit down and start talking again. Workers represented by the International Association of Machinists have been on strike against Boeing four times in the past 20 years. The last strike was in 2005. This time, the big issue surrounding the negotiation stalemate is the job security. The union is seeking to have a larger voice when it comes to the outsourcing issue.

Fixing the nation’s broken health care system is serious business. But a new online game by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) makes it fun to bone up on the health care proposals by presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain.

The CWA Health Care Challenge offers lots of great information on each candidate’s health care proposals and demonstrates the wide gulf between the two.

One round of the game compares Obama’s goal of health care for all with McCain’s plan to force workers to pay an income tax on their employer-sponsored health care benefits.