Perhaps I am spending too much time on this story, but it is likely that the outcome of this contract fight will have an impact on the working class movement, far beyond the 73,000 workers at GM or the 640,000 members of the UAW. Just as the UAW plant occupations of the 30's were a key element of the working class fight back that gained so much for the class in those years - so too the concessions of the past couple decades have played a significant role in the declining power and living standards of the industrial working class in the United States. And perhaps as a member of UAW Local 1981 (the National Writers Union), I feel a special obligation to covering this story. In any case, here is an excellent summary of the tentative contract from Labor Notes. It is actually worse than what I said in my R.I.P UAW entry. Only 3,000 temporary workers will be made full time employees (I know I read 6-7,000 somewhere earlier, but I can't remember where at this point). And rather than s...

The following is an article I wrote on domestic worker organizing for Labor Notes, based on my interviews over the Summer with organizers in this emerging social movement. An edited version of this piece will appear in next months Labor Notes... http://labornotes.org/magazine Domestic Worker Organizing: New Front in the emerging “Non-Traditional” Labor Movement by Jerry Mead-Lucero For over two years, Marian, a Colombian immigrant and a housekeeper in Roslyn, New York, worked 18 hours a day, six days a week for about two dollars an hour. The family that employed her fired her without notice, kicking her out of the home and leaving her with nowhere to turn for support. After enduring months of verbal and physical abuse by her employer, “Vivian”, an Indian immigrant and nanny in Manhattan, refused the orders of her boss. Her boss’s response was to strike her with a sandal and kick her out the house without her pay or her passport. “Judy” a Malaysian immigrant and housekeeper on one occa...