Last week I attended the Web 2.0 Organizing Conference in NYC. It was an incredible event packed with hundreds of online organizers from around the country. While I think the conference was a tremendous success, I think we, in labor, have a long way to go. We have the daunting task of internal organizing so …
Some Things I Took Away From The Organizing Conference Last Week Read More »
One of the most creative bits of problem solving I’ve ever heard of came during Hurrican Katrina. In the French Quarter, Addie Hall and Zackery Bowen found an unusual way to make sure that police officers regularly patrolled their house. Ms. Hall, 28, a bartender, flashed her breasts at the police vehicles that passed by, …
As over 1,500 students at Loyola Marymount University begin a massive boycott of Sodexo’s dining facilities this week, Sodexo’s general manager for the area, Lisa Farrell, has issued a revealing quote that may enrage workers and students all over the country. The school’s newspaper, the Los Angeles Loyolan has the story of the boycott, which …
Consider the fate of the labor reporter. A long vanishing breed, there are only a few of them left in the country. Businesses and their mouthpieces disparage them for daring to question their facts, their motives and for humanizing the stories that Corporate America wishes would remain distant and bloodless so nobody would pay attention …
Aetna announced that it will deliberately cut 600,000 people from its insurance rolls to raise its profits next year: In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. …
Nurses have been called the new face of organized labor. Like an increasing percentage of the rest of America’s labor movement, the typical RN in the U.S. is female, college-educated, and working a non-outsourceable job in the service sector. This week, American nurses banded together to weild unprecedented power in the workplace and in national …
It’s Official: Three Unions Merge to Form Nurses ‘Super Union’ Read More »
Today, the Department of Labor released its Fall 2009 Semi-Annual Regulatory Agenda (PDF). That may sound dull, but if you care about good jobs and safe workplaces, you should care about this, because it signals the Department’s regulatory priorities for the year to come. And now that we have a Labor Department with leaders who …
Labor Department Unveils Regulatory Priorities for 2010 Read More »
Business is tough in the best of times. And few would probably argue that these are the best of times. A part of the problem is the rift between workers and their bosses. From an old Harris Poll that found only 37% thought their management had integrity, emails to Workplace911 and almost any conversation overheard …
Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be an Effective Leader? Read More »
Workers employed in low-wage and poorly regulated industries (most prominently restaurants, residential construction, domestic cleaning, and mechanics) are confronted with staggering exploitation as employers look to cut corners in today’s recession. Such exploitation includes health and safety violations, discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, firing for participating in union activity, and wage theft—failure to pay workers for …
Female Pharmacist Wins Appeal Including Punitive Damages and Huge Front Pay Award It’s one thing to prove discrimination. It’s an altogether different thing to prove damages which occurred as a result of it. In the recently published gender discrimination case of Haddad v Wal-Mart Stores Inc,*, the Supreme Court Judicial Court (“SJC”) of Massachusetts affirmed …
Court Upholds $1.9 Million Dollar Verdict In Gender Discrimination Case Against Wal-Mart Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
