English for Activists

“Our parents have suffered from this cheap labor market and now they are getting old. Do we want to follow in the footstep of our parents?” asks an anonymous Honda worker in China in an internet posting explaining the motivations behind a stunning two-week strike that shut down Honda’s production across the country.

Apple's been all over the news these days, and not just because of the iPad. The high number of worker suicides at a supplier factory in Shenzhen, China, has built into a crisis for Apple, one that activists could push to crack the abusive relationship between corporations and their suppliers that drives wages and working conditions ever downward across the globe.

Folklorists Edith Fowke & Joe Glazer identify Hold The Fort as one of the two oldest songs to spring from the American trade-union movement.

Twelve thousand nurses in the Twin Cities set a one-day strike for June 10. They're pushing for adequate nurse-to-patient ratios and fending off a coordinated bid by management to introduce Toyota-style "lean" restructuring.

The anti-immigrant bill passed by rightwing forces in Arizona has mobilized immigrant and community groups. When will organized labor raise its voice loudly in opposition?

Hundreds of Farm Labor Organizing Committee members and supporters rallied in Winston-Salem North Carolina, bringing complaints of abuse in the tobacco fields straight to R.J. Reynolds.

With huge service cuts and layoffs looming, New York’s transit crisis is the thin edge of a wedge threatening to up-end reliable bus and subway service in communities nationwide.

Striking workers at the Supervalu-owned Shaw's Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., have been marching from Methuen to Boston for justice since Sunday, May 23.

The 310 workers, members of UFCW Local 791, have been on strike since March 7 over the company's insistence that the burden of increasing health care costs be borne by workers.

Striking Shaw's Distribution Center workers have been marching since Sunday and will end with a rally at the State House in Boston Thursday.
Photo credit: Rand Wilson

Five thousand members and supporters of the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union blocked a port May 24 to protest the brutal police beating of more than 20 union leaders and activists.

Soon after declaring the first week of May "National Charter School Week," President Obama continued the push to open up public school districts—and their coffers—to non-union, privately run charter schools. Applications are due June 1 for the second round of his Race to the Top fund, which will reward states that jump on the charter bandwagon.

After six months of rocky contract talks, hotel workers have launched a boycott of the Westin hotel in downtown Providence to protest the company’s deep unilateral wage and benefit cuts, as well as work speedups. The rain-or-shine pickets, on for two weeks now, got going right as the hotel hosted an influx of guests for the NCAA basketball tournament in late March—a big tourist boon for the city.

The Westin boycott is the latest attempt to fight off a wave of attacks from the hotel's managing Procaccianti Group: threats to replace workers with subcontracted labor and retaliatory firings of worker activists. The last straw came in March, when the Westin broke off talks, and imposed deep cuts to wages and benefits.

Twenty-six leaders of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) are in a San Francisco court facing bogus charges made by the Service Employees International Union. The real reason they’re in front of a judge and jury is that growing numbers of unhappy SEIU members are leaving SEIU to join NUHW.

This song is about someone who has no more choices or money, who can't get hired but still wants to start over somewhere. Inspired by, but not about, Utah Phillips.

Labor’s campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act appears to have failed. It’s time for our movement to rethink a long-term strategy to change this country’s dysfunctional labor laws, starting by putting modern union busting on trial.

What a disappointment was last week’s This American Life. This episode of the popular one-hour show on public radio was a snapshot of how the auto industry could have been saved—if only executives had learned from the innovations pioneered at the NUMMI plant in California, a joint Toyota-GM experiment created in 1985.

I have been a big fan of This American Life.

Health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia went on strike Wednesday, holding out against demands to give up free-speech rights, explode health care costs, and hobble the union's power. A rally of 1,200 cheered their resolve.

Bill Fletcher, ex-AFL-CIO staffer and Center for Labor Renewal co-founder, diagnoses the disarray in the U.S. labor movement in a short interview with "The Real News Network," arguing it results from an excessive reliance on an inside-the-Beltway strategy.

It’s day 58 of the miners’ lockout in the harsh desert of Boron, California. From the pews to the union halls, the coffee shops, and schools, the town has galvanized into a community driven for its very survival.

For eight months 3,000 Steelworkers have been on strike at Vale Inco mines in Ontario, standing against a crush of concessions. They rejected an insulting settlement offer by 87 percent in mid-March.

Teachers at four charter schools on Chicago’s northwest side went public last week with their organizing campaign, marching into their buildings to present principals with cards. The schools, run by ASPIRA Inc., are the latest campaign by the fledgling charter organizing project called the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff—a collaboration of the Teachers (AFT) union, its Illinois affiliate, and the Chicago Teachers Union.