Barack Obama comes to Washington carrying a load of hopes and dreams, none more ardent than organized labor's. Item No. 1 on the AFL-CIO's legislative agenda: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as the card-check bill. Simply put, EFCA would streamline the process by which employees could decide to join a union. In most cases, a simple majority of signed cards would suffice; no need for a full-blown election sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board.
The federal government's $700 billion financial rescue plan will get its first official review Tuesday.
In the final days before the election, the strategy in battleground Virginia has shifted from getting people registered to making sure they show up to vote.
There are phone calls from Democratic and labor union phone banks.
Sen. John McCain made a stop Thursday in Wilmington, Ohio, discussing job losses that could result from closing the local DHL shipping center.
The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president Thursday, calling him "a champion for working families."
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have aggressively courted organized labor, but unions are divided between the Democratic candidates.
About $50 billion in adjustable rate mortgages reset this month, driving interest rates up for many borderline borrowers. And despite efforts to raise awareness, it doesn't look like anyone is really prepared for what's to come.
On Wednesday small business owners nationwide caught a break of sorts when a federal judge blocked the implementation of a recent Bush administration initiative that would use the Social Security system to go after employers of illegal immigrants.
The Social Security Administration cannot start sending out letters to employers next week that carry with them more serious penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Barack Obama comes to Washington carrying a load of hopes and dreams, none more ardent than organized labor's. Item No. 1 on the AFL-CIO's legislative agenda: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as the card-check bill. Simply put, EFCA would streamline the process by which employees could decide to join a union. In most cases, a simple majority of signed cards would suffice; no need for a full-blown election sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board.
The federal government's $700 billion financial rescue plan will get its first official review Tuesday.
In the final days before the election, the strategy in battleground Virginia has shifted from getting people registered to making sure they show up to vote.
There are phone calls from Democratic and labor union phone banks.
Sen. John McCain made a stop Thursday in Wilmington, Ohio, discussing job losses that could result from closing the local DHL shipping center.
The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president Thursday, calling him "a champion for working families."
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have aggressively courted organized labor, but unions are divided between the Democratic candidates.
About $50 billion in adjustable rate mortgages reset this month, driving interest rates up for many borderline borrowers. And despite efforts to raise awareness, it doesn't look like anyone is really prepared for what's to come.
On Wednesday small business owners nationwide caught a break of sorts when a federal judge blocked the implementation of a recent Bush administration initiative that would use the Social Security system to go after employers of illegal immigrants.
The Social Security Administration cannot start sending out letters to employers next week that carry with them more serious penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The Teamsters Union said Wednesday it will ask a federal appeals court to block the Bush administration's plan to allow Mexican trucks to carry cargo anywhere in the United States.
There's a good reason why Democratic candidates court the support of organized labor.
John Edwards has worked hard for union support, but this year labor may be cautious about an endorsement
The revival of the Senate's immigration legislation also resurrected a rare split inside organized labor
The House is expected to pass a piece of legislation Thursday that seeks to significantly rebalance the playing field for unions and employers and could possibly reverse decades of declining membership among private industries.
In a sunlit office overlooking Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., union leader Andrew Stern, 55, is sipping coffee and holding a midmorning meeting with a few top aides. The subject is a study on t...
Card check. Sounds like a new party game or what happens when you've maxed out your credit. But that phrase is about to acquire a whole new meaning - as shorthand for the biggest, bitterest labor-business fight in Washington.
The AFL-CIO announced Wednesday it will spend $40 million on get-out-the-vote operations for the midterm elections in an effort to try to drive congressional Republicans from power as well as win governorships in 21 states across the country.
As politicians grapple with the thorny immigration issue, unions are stepping into the debate on the side of illegal immigrant labor.
WakeupWalmart.com, backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, has launched a nationwide bus tour to make its case against Wal-Mart's low wages and restrictive employee benefits.
A pension reform bill moving through Congress includes a clause to allow hedge funds to manage significantly more pension-fund money, according to a published report.
Did you see the retirement packages of some of the top CEOs according to the AFL-CIO? Number one is Henry McKinnell of Pfizer, who gets $6.5 million. A year! Shocker! Especially since PFE is down over 30 percent during the past five years, way underperforming the market.
We consumers get knocked for racking up the debt, but there was some good news in a recent government report.
Northwest Airlines, which has already outsourced many jobs formerly performed by its mechanics union to outside contractors and replacement workers, is now looking to make deep cuts in the work done by its unionized flight attendants.
At first glance, the numbers don't look good for organized labor. In the 1960s, unions represented a third of U.S. workers. Today total involvement is about 17 million out of a workforce of 142 mil...
When asked his reaction to two giant unions, the Service Employees and the Teamsters, quitting the AFL-CIO on the opening day of the 50th anniversary convention of American labor's merger, Tim Leahy, the secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor, put it in personal terms: "I feel like a child of divorce."
Another large union decided to leave the AFL-CIO Friday, widening a rift that has cost the labor federation more than a third of its members in the past week.
The bolt in Chicago Monday from the AFL-CIO by the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reflects a long-building reaction to John Sweeney's plans a decade ago when he muscled his way into the labor federation presidency.
The U.S. union movement split apart this week over how to best organize workers at non-union companies.
The Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union voted Monday to withdraw from the AFL-CIO.
In nominating Representative Chris Cox to head the SEC, President Bush signaled he wants to pull back from two years of activism under chairman William Donaldson. But whatever Cox's own free-market...
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said in a teleconference with reporters Thursday that the organization is facing financial troubles and may have to lay off 25 percent of its workforce, according to the Washington Post.
The barons of the American labor movement gathered January 10 at the AFL-CIO fortress across Lafayette Park from the White House, with doors closed to the public as usual. The AFL-CIO Executive Committee's agenda prepared by President John Sweeney allotted 30 minutes for reform of the labor federation. But James P. Hoffa of the Teamsters insisted much more time was needed to debate badly needed changes.
Heads of most financial firms have yet to openly support private Social Security accounts, even as President Bush prepares to disclose the details of his plan to let younger investors funnel billions of dollars of future payments into privately held investment accounts, a newspaper said Tuesday.
A woman's work is never done. Though you might not know it to look at her paycheck.
We were worried yesterday that we'd gone too far in our reporting on Teresa Heinz "Shove it!" Kerry. Little did we know that we'd be writing this morning about John Kerry's "Bubble Boy" photo-op, pictures of President Bush picking his nose and cheerleading at Yale, and a 1975 quote in which Teresa called Ted Kennedy a "perfect bastard."
Union and management negotiators at SBC Communications met throughout the weekend, with both sides reporting some progress but significant differences on some key issues.
Under fire for its plan to overhaul rules for overtime pay, the Bush administration has revised its proposal to protect overtime for police, firefighters and some white-collar employees earning up to $100,000 a year.
The timing is ironic.
The largest U.S. labor organization is stepping up the battle over the outsourcing of American jobs to lower-wage nations such as China and India.
There are four Southern primaries today, two with juicy political implications. But the story we're watching most closely today is the awkward reunion of organized labor, which gathers in south Florida to make sense out of a particularly clumsy primary roadshow that left them divided, dispirited and, in some cases, doubting their ability to defeat President Bush.
Check out the links below to hot political stories around the country this morning.
Sen. John Kerry has won the backing of the AFL-CIO, a spokesman for the nation's biggest labor group told CNN Friday.
Back in 1996, around the time Bill Clinton was cruising toward reelection against Bob Dole, I had a conversation with Labor Secretary Robert Reich about the pathetic state of America's unions. Reic...
After last year's corporate scandals, CEOs won't be surprised to find a record number of resolutions up for vote this proxy season. Institutional Shareholder Services' Patrick McGurn provides insig...
Come 2003 proxy season, CEOs may be in for some "capital punishment." In a down market, stories of Tyco-type excesses and anger at the sky-high levels of CEO pay (an average of $11.6 million in 200...
John Wilhelm knows that soon he'll be playing hardball with hotel owners from Philadelphia to Las Vegas to Honolulu. Contracts with thousands of unionized hotel workers in those and other cities ar...
Doug McCarron, president of the carpenters' union, seems an unlikely savior for Big Labor. After all, McCarron delivered a body blow to the labor establishment in March when he pulled his 550,000-m...
Hold on to your Aeron chairs and ergonomically correct keyboards. Employees who yearn for a more comfortable workplace may be in for a bumpy political transition. A controversial set of ergonomic s...
Despite constant talk about the unseemly influence of money on politics, campaign contributions alone don't necessarily determine elections. For example, even though business interests have outspen...
You've seen this drama before. An important trade vote in Congress. Huge mobilization efforts by business and labor. Desperate meetings in Capitol suites and the Oval Office. Late-hour agonizing by...
Predicting what the Federal Reserve will be doing in a few months is always perilous, but a widening consensus of Wall Street economists and market watchers is betting that the Fed will begin raisi...
That's John Sweeney, standing outside a tire factory in Des Moines, oddly formal in his signature black suit. It's 5:30 in the morning. A bright half-moon shines down on first-shift workers going i...
Not so long ago, a million dollars a year seemed like an absurdly extravagant income, and for nearly all the world's inhabitants, it is still the stuff of fairy tales. But in certain places in Amer...
In Washington, at least, organized labor is back. The AFL-CIO almost single-handedly defeated fast-track trade legislation last year, won an increase in the minimum wage the year before, and, overa...
In the 1950s, Al Barkan, the legendary political boss of the labor movement, had a watchword whenever Washington looked as if it might lean too heavily in favor of Big Business: They've got the mon...
History, to paraphrase the 19th-century thinker Thomas Carlyle, is nothing more than the biography of great men and women. That's worth keeping in mind as you plot your 1997 investment moves. For n...
You can't blame Douglas Fraser for getting a little excited. "When was the last time anyone from Fortune called about the labor movement?" says the former United Auto Workers president, now teachin...
INVESTING IN PRISON
"Disney thinks that they are so big we can't hurt them. But when you get too big for your britches, you've got problems coming." So says the Reverend Donald Wildmon, whose right-wing Christian grou...
THE ALL-PURPOSE SUIT
About one American worker in 10,000 dies in an on-the-job accident. Cooks in restaurants have higher mortality rates than firemen. Federal regulations on formaldehyde exposure result in expenditure...
It seems we left a loose end dangling in last fortnight's musings. In them we put forward an arresting proposition: that politicians with mustaches may be more liberal than average. But having prop...
Who is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate? The last time we asked this fateful question (June 19, 1989), the surprising answer was Claiborne Pell, the spaced-out aristocrat from Rhode Islan...
Easily the most maddening political debate these days is the one about whether Congressman Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, should resign on grounds of turpitude. Some say yes (e.g., the B...
Give me a Caddy that looks like a Caddy, demanded Cadillac fans. GM obliged. The 1989 Sedan de Ville is nine inches longer than 1988's model; the Coupe, six. Both have long, narrow taillights, 1960...
There's life in ol' labor yet. That given-up-for-dead special interest group lost the battle to increase the minimum wage to a determined conservative filibuster, and the protectionist textile bill...
One of these days a Congressman will stand in the well of the House and utter the truth about sweatshops, but no way does this person figure to come from the tenth district of New York. The tenth, ...
Hey, fellows, guess what? Your correspondent is about to come down on the same side as the New York Times on a burning issue. Amazing, eh? And yet no more flabbergasting than the semi-unprecedented...
A fortnight ago, we were groaning in this space about the curious fact that modern liberals -- unlike liberals of earlier years -- are powerfully biased against defense. The occasion for the groan ...
In which we inaugurate the first annual or possibly quinquennial (let's see & how it goes) Keeping Up Awards to point up the phenomenon of predictably high- minded behavior among people who ought t...
A new Christmas catalogue is in the mail that bears a familiar, but hardly seasonal, message: ''Buy American.'' The Union Label Shopper offers union- made products at prices 10% or more below retai...
We like Nancy Reagan's resonant solution to the drug problem: ''Just say no.'' But how about applying it more broadly? Holding aloft a beacon, here is a random selection of phenomena to which yours...
It is Labor Day. A spectral silence pervades the Time & Life Building. You could send a bowling ball careering down the corridor and be guaranteed not to topple any human resources. Condemned to is...
THE CAMERA sweeps a California hillside, where a flock of bright yellow-and- ( black butterflies flicker over a spring meadow. These are Bay Checkerspot butterflies, the voice-over says, a threaten...
''If New York City, with its long tradition of permissive, easy- going government and its notorious lack of discipline, can embrace austerity and succeed, why can't this Congress?'' WILLIAM PROXMIR...
''Consumers should say, 'I'm addicted to this damn thing and I'm better off without it.' '' - FRANK ANNUNZIO, 70, Congressman from Illinois, urging consumers to cut up and mail back their credit ca...
Matters. In which the present writer yet again puts forward a number of slightly loaded questions unredeemed by any prospect of reasonable answers and additionally burdened by a spiraling word coun...
IS THE EXPLOSIVE growth of service industries condemning increasing numbers of Americans to low-wage lives? To many economists, journalists, business and labor leaders, and politicians, the answer ...
In a case with important First Amendment implications, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled that a financial newsletter falls under the jurisdiction of the 45-year-old Investment Advisers Act and ...
AS TREASURY SECRETARY James Baker puts the finishing touches on the Administration's tax reform proposal, a formidable new coalition is seeking to ambush one of the biggest money raisers in the pla...
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