Topics in the News:
labor movement

The National Labor Relations Board on Dec. 21 approved sweeping new rules that would speed the pace of union elections, making it easier for private-sector unions to gain members at companies that have long rebuffed them.

Tony auction house Sotheby’s had the most profitable year in its history this year, paying its top executives record bonuses. It also locked out 43 art handlers in August for refusing to accept wage and benefit cuts and the dissolution of their union as a condition of employment.

In a show of labor-union strength in New York City, 20,000 unionized workers, including thousands of UFT members, marched from Herald Square to Union Square on Dec. 1 to demand jobs and a fairer tax system for working Americans. Watching the teeming crowd, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the march was yet another example of “labor standing up for their families, neighbors and communities.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew opened the Nov. 9 Delegate Assembly with some good news: in Ohio the previous day, voters turned back by a 61-39 percent margin an attempt to prevent public-sector workers from being able to bargain collectively. He noted that 25 UFT retirees and staffers had been on the ground in Ohio, knocking on doors and making phone calls to talk about the issue and get out the vote.

In a victory being hailed by labor unions across the country, Ohio voters on Nov. 8 roundly rejected a controversial measure that would have rescinded the collective-bargaining and other labor rights of the state’s more than 360,000 public employees.

The UFT resolves to support the efforts of Local 372 workers and their union representatives to fight the proposed layoffs.

We have been sending retiree volunteers all year to states where public employees are under attack. In Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio, we are seeing anti-labor legislation reversing a century of enlightened enfranchisement. But the good news is that labor and its allies are fighting back. One Wisconsin labor leader said that this attack was akin to labor’s Pearl Harbor. It has awakened us.

Teachers, transit workers, health care workers and other working New Yorkers joined forces with the young people from Occupy Wall Street, an anti-Wall Street protest encampment that has occupied Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park since mid-September, for a spirited rally and march of tens of thousands on Oct. 5.

The battle in Ohio is heating up over a referendum on the November ballot on whether to keep or kill the state’s Senate Bill 5, which severely restricts the collective-bargaining rights of 360,000 public employees. The measure, which Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed into law on March 31, was put on hold after a coalition of labor unions and Democrats, called We Are Ohio, submitted 915,456 signatures to put it to a vote.