The new governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, is a hedge fund manager whose salary last year was $60 million. He spent $65.9 million—including $27.6 million of his own money—buying his last election, and he’s about to introduce an austerity program that will make most folks in Illinois think they are living in austerity-wracked Greece, with less idyllic weather. Read More
The Desert Springs contract had now expired. This was a big deal. Under U.S. labor law, when a contract expires, four dangerous things happen: workers can strike; the employer can lock workers out; the employer can stop collecting union membership dues from the workers’ paychecks; and the “permanent window” period for decertifying the union begins. Read More
Bill Fletcher and I were talking about the analysis and the coverage of labor’s defeat in the Wisconsin recall effort. After we each read some back and forth in The Nation, we decided to jump into the fray to call out the central issue of the lack of radical political education inside today’s unions. Read More
The labor-environmental partnership, or, more colloquially, the blue-green alliance, has fallen into a state of disrepair. Even though pro-union environmentalists and a few unions worked together to fight the Keystone XL pipeline, the two camps ultimately remain divided, to their own detriment. In this episode of Nation Conversations, Jane McAlevey joins executive editor Betsy Reed to identify the failings of both sides and the types of solidarity that could help them combine forces. Read More
I’ve penned another piece for The Nation titled “Labor’s Last stand” Emboldened by November’s election results, corporations and their right-wing allies have launched what they hope will be their final offensive against America’s labor unions. Their immediate target is government workers’ unions. While New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie has gained national fame by beating up on public school teachers, the threat to unionized workers is playing out in all fifty states, to the drumbeat in the media about states going broke because of government workers’ wages, pensions and benefits. Read More