The House of Representatives today passed Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) fiscal year (FY) budget resolution. Introduced last week (on April Fool’s Day), the Ryan budget is as extreme as the proposals he offered last year and the year before. As in previous budgets, Ryan seeks to cut the deficit on the backs of …
On March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan. Today, we know our clothes are still often sewn in lethal conditions in foreign factories. Last year’s disastrous Rana Plaza collapse and a series of deadly factory fires resulted in much hand-wringing over how to improve safety in Bangladesh’s garment industry. …
It’s Time to Clean Up the Los Angeles Garment Industry’s Dirty Secret Read More »
Not content to only go after collective bargaining rights, pensions andvoting rights, the extremists in Ohio are targeting a new group of their state’s residents, attempting to pre-empt any attempt by college athletes to organize and express their rights. After the National Labor Relations Board ruled that players at Northwestern University were employees of the school, and could thus form …
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) turns 20 this year. Some 700,000 jobs have been lost, income inequality, the U.S. trade deficit and environmental and other problems have grown because of NAFTA in the past two decades. On Thursday, a panel of trade experts will hold a Capitol Hill briefing on NAFTA’s failed trade model …
A small group of teachers in Philadelphia are finding their union rights under attack on questionable religious grounds, much the same way that women across America found their right to healthcare assaulted this week in the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby case. Some 55 teachers at the Perelman Jewish Day School, which has two K-5 campuses in …
Is Perelman Jewish Day School the Hobby Lobby of Union-Busting? Read More »
In a major victory for a long-running campaign, port truck drivers at Pacific 9 Transportation in California have won the right to be considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act, and to form a union. That ruling, by Region 21 of the National Labor Relations Board, that the truckers had been misclassified as “independent contractors” …
Adjunct faculty joined SEIU president Mary Kay Henry and House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member George Miller (D-CA) to launch the Adjunct Action Network and talk about the future of adjunct faculty organizing at a town hall at Georgetown University today. “Imagine if brick-by-brick adjuncts work to build a new model,” Henry said as …
Town Hall Unites Adjunct Faculty, Launches Network Read More »
This is the week! Again! This is the week, that is, that the Senate will once again attempt to pass an emergency unemployment aid extension that House Republicans will refuse to even bring up for a vote. The bipartisan unemployment deal the Senate will be considering has some problems, mostly ones created in the effort …
Jobless Aid to Get Yet Another Senate Vote as House Continues to Balk Read More »
While the AFL-CIO “strongly supports” a proposed new rule that would limit workers’ exposure to silica dust, AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario outlined several areas that should be strengthened to provide better worker protection from deadly silicosis and other diseases caused by silica exposure. Testifying before an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) hearing, Seminario noted …
Proposed Silica Standard Needs to Be Strengthened Read More »
During the nearly two years he worked at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., Ed Hunter, 43, spent his days bent over, crawling in and out of cars on the assembly line. He believes the posture slowly destroyed his body and led to an accident he suffered in June 2011. “When I got into the …
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.
