On Wednesday around 5 p.m., half an hour into a rally to support striking Chicago Whole Foods workers, striker Matthew Camp took up the bullhorn and announced: "We got news that our company will now allow anyone who wants Thanksgiving off to have the day off." The assembly of about 100 demonstrators let out a cheer and quickly began chanting, "When we fight, we win!" The so-called “Strikesgiving” ...

CHICAGO—Ana Laura Lopez has working at Unique Thrift Store in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood down to a science. She’s sorted through loads of donated goods to determine what is sellable, priced the merchandise, put it out for customers and worked the cash register. But after eight years of working at the store, Lopez, a 38-year-old mother of six, earns just $9 per hour—75 cents more than Illinois’ ...

Representatives from the advocacy group Chicago Workers' Collaborative are taking OSHA to task for historically failing to protect temporary low-wage workers. (Chicago Workers' Collaborative)   Rosa Ramirez, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant and mother in Illinois, knew something was odd about the plastics factory where her temporary-labor agency had sent her. "From the minute one walks into that fa...

Cameras click as Chicago police arrest Myron Byrd for blocking the street outside of the Lakeview Wal-Mart where he works.   (Amien Essif) Around 7:30 a.m. on November 29, the day of the annual “Black Friday” shopping frenzy, demonstrators massed in front of the large Wal-Mart Supercenter on Chicago’s North Avenue, where steel crowd-control fences stood as remnants of one of the busiest shopping n...

A proposed poultry inspection privatization plan isn't good for workers or consumers, advocates say. (USDAgov / Flickr / Creative Commons)   With Thanksgiving Day nearly upon us, government officials are moving forward with plans to privatize some poultry inspections at chicken and turkey slaughter plants in a manner that could compromise worker and consumer safety. The poultry privatization plan ...

Boeing has threatened to move the production of the 777X airliner, a hotly anticipated variant of the 777, out of Washington state. (Boeing Dreamscape / Wikimedia Commons)   For much of the last few years, Boeing has been soaring. In 2012, the aircraft-manufacturing corporation raked in $3.9 billion in net income; it’s projected to earn at least $4.2 billion this year. And thanks to the $95 billio...

The union representing 22,000 service workers across the University of California system went out on a one-day unfair labor practices strike this Wednesday, joined by 15,000 graduate student employees. The action was particularly notable because of its use of a rare sympathy strike and the sight of academic workers standing in solidarity with service workers, as I reported last week. Alongside the...

Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen, pictured here at an October march for immigrant rights, has been fighting for filibuster reform for four years. ( CWA )   Since 2009, Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen has been pushing to eliminate the filibuster in Congress. Earlier this year, Cohen’s union, CWA, worked with the Sierra Club, NAACP and Greenpeace to con...

'Though the government has plenty of measures in place to oversee corporate finances, Hira points out, there’s almost nothing being done to prevent employers’ questionable treatment of workers.'   (DennisM2/Flickr/Creative Commons) In 2005, Suraj Kamath began working for Bosch Engineering in India as an automotive engineer. In March of 2009, Bosch moved him to its test facility in Santa Barbara, C...

Migrants laboring in Qatar. Most are underpaid and face torture or abuse. (Photo by WBUR/ Flickr)   The big controversies surrounding Qatar as the site of the 2022 World Cup have been the shady bidding process and fears that the desert heat will ruin the soccer games. But in the past few days, the spotlight has finally begun to move to longstanding concerns over the treatment of the migrant worker...

A landscape in Odessa, TX transformed by hydraulic fracturing.   (ddimick/Flickr/Creative Commons) BALTIMORE—The continuing drama of organized labor's conflict with the environmental movement, especially notable in the controversy surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline project , is readying for another round as a coalition of green groups launches a campaign to stop the proposed construction of a Ma...

“We are on strike today to have respect and dignity at work,” says Walter Melendez, one of approximately 40 Los Angeles port truck drivers who walked off the job at 5a.m. morning in protest of alleged unfair labor practices. The strikes featured the rolling “ambulatory pickets” that the truckers have excelled at—chasing down trucks as they leave the port and setting up picket lines in front of the...

"We’ve got a lot of associates to make good solid, middle-class income,”  said  Wal-Mart Corporate CEO and President Bill Simon in a September 11 presentation at the Goldman Sachs Annual Global Retail Conference. Simon buttressed his argument with a slide from his  presentation  showing that in 2012, 475,000 associates earned more than $25,000. But  critics  were quick to point out the flip side o...

The Registered Nurse Response Network sends its first team to the Philippines on November 14 from San Francisco International Airport. (NNU / Flickr / Creative Commons)   When Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines a week ago, the destruction was swift, total and unsparing—showing the disproportionate impact of disasters on poverty-stricken communities of the Global South. The internation...

A young child farm worker hard at work in a cotton field.(Louise Boyle / Flickr / Creative Commons)   Last year, the Obama administration ditched a proposal for new workplace safety rules that would have protected children from doing some of the most hazardous agricultural jobs. In an article for The Nation , Mariya Strauss reports on the child farmworkers who have died since that rule was abandon...