Labor Notes

February 5, 2013 - Attempts to unionize Walmart stores have been met with firings, outsourcing, and even closings. Now employees of the Arkansas-based retail giant are exercising their rights to redress grievances together -- whether or not a majority can be rallied to support the effort.

December 18, 2012 - Managers bankrupted Irving, Texas-based Hostess and then -- when bakery workers struck, refusing another round of concessions -- blamed the workers for the company's decision to liquidate. What can workers do when a private-equity firm is driving a company into the ground?

September 13, 2012 - It's time to take the conversation about union rights out of the technical and often confusing arena of labor law and into the realm of civil rights, which has a moral grounding that resonates with a far greater number of Americans than just those in unions.

August 8, 2012 - After Katrina, New Orleans fired all 7,500 of its teachers. The firings were recently ruled illegal, but teachers won't get their jobs back. Instead, the union is fighting for teachers and students through a grassroots, social justice approach.

August 3, 2012 - UAW President Bob King says organizing foreign-owned auto plants is make-or-break for the shrinking union. A Mississippi Nissan plant where temps are a quarter of the workforce is the UAW's first Southern foray in 11 years.

July 13, 2012 - History shows that union membership has grown when labor has been on the offensive fighting for all workers. That's why SEIU organizer Rand Wilson argues that the movement's next fight should be for state laws requiring "just cause" before a worker is fired.

June 28, 2012 - In the biggest union victory in right-to-work Alabama in a decade, 1,200 Pilgrim's Pride poultry plant workers in the small town of Russellville rejected management's efforts to divide them along racial and ethnic lines and voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.