When the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) defeated the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in balloting among 43,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente (KP) last October, SEIU Executive Vice President Dave Regan was exultant. SEIU’s victory was “a huge achievement,” he said. “NUHW is now, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. We’re thrilled.” On a conference call [...]
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is not alone in bashing public employees these days. In the view of his fellow GOP governor, Mitch Daniels from Indiana, a possible presidential candidate next year, collective bargaining has transformed civil servants into “a new privileged class.” For right-wing Republican governors and legislators, the solution to state and local government [...]
No modern American union has a larger alumni association or a bigger shelf of books about itself than the United Farm Workers (UFW). Even at its membership peak thirty years ago, this relatively small labor organization never represented more than 100,000 workers. Yet, in the 1960s and ’70s, the UFW commanded the loyalty of many [...]
Steve Early was a Boston-based organizer for the Communications Workers of America for 27 years. He is the author of two books, Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, from Monthly Review Press, 2009, and The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor from Haymarket Books in 2010.
