Chris is a labour law researcher, specialising in China and the right to strike. He spent 27 years in the SA union movement. Chris now lives in Canberra. More →
The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention has ended, but the global union movement is keeping its attention focused on Pittsburgh, as world leaders arrive for the G-20 summit. AFL-CIO members expressed solidarity with workers around the world and recognized that we can’t solve the international economic crisis alone. Convention delegates approved a resolution calling for a coordinated [...]
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/05/03/happy-birthday-pete-seeger/ Also buy, the 2007 DVD of a stirring revelatory film of the life of Pete Seeger, “The Power of Song”, with music and tributes by Dylan, Guthrie, Baez, Springsteen, Peter Paul and Mary; a wonderful song writer “Where have all the flowers gone?” “Turn, Turn, Turn” “If I had a hammer” and many more; [...]
The US labour movement is in campaign mode to attack corporate interests lobbying against the new Employee Free Choice Act promoted by the unions and President Obama. Corporate America says they cannot afford in this crisis to have new workers’ rights. Unions press the opposite – new workers’ rights are central to improving the economy [...]
US unions are campaigning for the freedom to organise. I receive daily campaign updates from the AFL-CIO to lobby to support The Free Choice Bill. But there are no daily emails from Australian unions and the ACTU to pressure the DPM, the ALP caucus and the Senate to amend the Fair Work bill before the [...]
The Israeli’s step up their genocide of the Palestinians. I condemn this brutality. In the US… http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/315.html
In the Financial Review yesterday, DPM Gillard remains tough in Labor’s crack-down on pattern bargaining. Pattern bargaining – industry-wide industrial action in pursuit of an industry agreement or identical enterprise agreements – is like workChoices specifically prohibited by her Bill (sections 412 and 422). Her “Fair” Work Bill retains all of the WorkChoices repressive regime [...]
The message from last weekend’s G-20 summit meeting on the global economy must be a parody of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: The game can’t go on. The game must go on. In the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, European leaders had flirted with the idea of actually trying to [...]
Trade union leaders from the G20 countries put forward a comprehensive plan to turn around the global economy, in meetings with world leaders in Washington DC on the eve of the financial crisis summit hosted by the US government on 15 November. The top level union delegation will discuss the plan with IMF Managing Director [...]
US unions sucessfully mobilized unionists and workers to vote for Obama and for reforms: on the economy, for green jobs and alternative energy, higher minimum wages, health care, rights to join a union, withdrawing troops from Iraq and ending the Reagan-Bush right wing political era. Follow the US union movement’s commentaries. The AFL-CIO blog http://blog.aflcio.org/ [...]
