PARIS, March 15, 2007 (AFP) - Thousands of European workers from Alcatel-Lucent demonstrated in Paris on Thursday against plans by the newly-merged telecoms equipment maker to cut 4,500 jobs.

Congressman Marty Meehan accepts position of Chancellor at UMass Lowell.  The Congressman expects to leave office as US Representative for the 5th District of Massachusetts sometime in July.  All of us here at Local 1365 wish the Congressman well and good fortune as he pursues this new and vital roll as Chancellor.  Click on the headline to read Congressman Meehan's statement...

LAWRENCE - The benefits are far from ideal, but at least it's a job.  Just two weeks ago, a Malden Mills union voted 47-15 to reject a contract offer from their new employer, Chrysalis Capital Partners, essentially getting them fired in the process. 

March 6, 2007

The Right to Organize

There are many reasons for the long decline in the membership rolls for private sector unions, including powerful changes in the economy and the unions’ past corruption scandals.  And there is little doubt that federal rules and regulations for union organizing have also become increasingly hostile to labor, helping to drive unions’ share of the work force down from a peak of 35 percent in the 1950s to a mere 7.4 percent today.

The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field for workers who want to join a union by among other things, allowing workers to choose a union if more than 50 percent of a worksite sign union authorization cards. Teresa Joyce and her co-workers at Cingular Wireless in Lebanon, Va., know that process works—they’ve seen it firsthand.

When Confined Space founder Jordan Barab shut down the workplace health and safety blog to go to work with the House Education and Labor Committee to help strengthen the nation’s job safety laws, he didn’t stop keeping an eye on the headlines for news the safety community might find informative.

Check out these recent links from Jordan—and for a sobering reminder of the dangers all workers face every day on the job, see the latest Weekly Toll.