Labor

There's an old adage among investigative journalists: if you want to know what's really going on, ask the workers.

If you want to know what's really going on in Iraq - to American soldiers, to their families back home, to Iraqi women - read this column, and learn what I did at the historic AFL-CIO convention held this summer in Chicago.

A century after launching the campaign for an eight-hour workday, the US labor movement faces challenges that may well determine its long-term survival. While automation and globalization threatens massive displacement, and employer resistance to aggressive organizing meanwhile turns union-busting into a growth industry, business pushes new schemes to limit the basic right to organize.

One of the more insidious is so-called "paycheck protection," being aggressively hawked by GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush as a way to neutralize the movement for campaign finance reform. Without it, he claims, any reform would be like "unilateral disarmament" for Republicans. The idea is to require unions to get permission from each member before using any dues for political purposes. Unions would be effectively muzzled while corporations remained free to influence elections in many other ways. read more

A century after launching the campaign for an eight-hour workday, the US labor movement faces challenges that could determine its long-term survival. While automation threatens massive displacement and employer resistance to aggressive organizing turns union-busting into a growth industry, business pushes new schemes to limit the basic right to organize. One of the most insidious is the so-called "paycheck protection" initiative. Being introduced into state legislatures, it would require unions to get permission from each member before using any dues for political purposes. If the strategy succeeds, unions could be effectively muzzled while corporations remain free to influence elections. read more