Workers of the World unite.

Look For The Union Label

In a move of stunning hypocrisy, the United Federation of Teachers axed one of its longtime employees -- for trying to unionize the powerful labor organization's own workers, it was charged yesterday.

“The actions of Media Matters executives have placed employees in the impossible position of continuing to produce content espousing pro-labor values for an employer who is challenging our right to unionize,” the Local 500 of the Service Employees International Union said last year. Go To Site

Top leadership at the progressive news network The Young Turks held an all-staff meeting at its office in Culver City, California, on Feb. 12. The regularly scheduled gathering was supposed to deal with personnel matters, but instead the focus turned to the staff’s nascent union campaign, which had just gone public...

  In the staff meeting, the network’s co-founder and influential host, Cenk Uygur, urged employees not to do so, arguing that a union does not belong at a small, independent outlet like TYT, according to two workers who were present.

  He said if there had been a union at the network it would not have grown the way it has.

-Dave Jamieson Go To Site

Left-wing Media Matters bashes anyone who departs from Big Labor's agenda. But that went out the window when a union tried to organize the watchdog group itself.

  It doesn't get much more hypocritical than this. Media Matters mainly attacks Fox News, but it also goes after any reporter who strays off the liberal reservation — and aggressively attacks any hint of anti-union reporting. -IBD Editorials Go To Site

Hypocrisy, Union, Financial, Press, Jobs

CNN has agreed to pay $76 million to settle a back pay case involving union workers that marks the largest “monetary remedy” in the 85-year history of National Labor Relations Board.

  The dispute began in 2003 when CNN fired a group of unionized subcontractors working as video technicians and in other technical and support roles. The cabler then hired new, non-union employees for most of the same functions.

Hypocrisy, Liberal, Union, Character, Financial, Greed, Jobs

The labor union that led the charge for a $15 minimum wage hike in cities across California is now moving to secure an exemption for employers under union contracts.

  The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor buried the exemption on the eighth page of its 12-page proposal for the Santa Monica City Council to review... The loophole would allow employers with collective bargaining agreements to sidestep the wage hike and pay their union members below the proposed $15-per-hour minimum wage.

Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Union, Greed, Jobs

On August 5, 16 of 19 canvassers for Greenpeace in San Diego walked off the job. They were followed by a majority of the Sacramento office. 22 total employees of the Frontline program, Greenpeace’s in-house fundraising program, have had enough of labor policies that give them no job security.

  The strike, led by two veteran canvassers in Socialist Alternative San Diego, comes against an organization that claims to be progressive. However, Greenpeace uses a quota system where even veteran fundraisers can be fired for missing quota two or three weeks consecutively.

Hypocrisy, Union, Greed, Jobs

Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces....

  For much of the past eight months, labor activists have argued against special considerations for business owners, such as restaurateurs, who said they would have trouble complying with the mandated pay increase.

  But Rusty Hicks, who heads the county Federation of Labor and helps lead the Raise the Wage coalition, said Tuesday night that companies with workers represented by unions should have leeway to negotiate a wage below that mandated by the law.

I wandered down to the New York Times building in Manhattan this afternoon to watch the walkout, and I spoke to a union representative. I asked him whether he was concerned by the gap between the Times’s treatment of its unionized staff, and the pro-union rhetoric of the paper’s editorial board.

  He told me, “We have a problem with that. We’ve realized that what we’ve said in the New York Times editorial pages is not what is being followed…they fly in the face of their own editorial board…it’s just money.” Go To Site

Hypocrisy, Union, Character, Financial, Fraud, Protest

Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor. "For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.

Hypocrisy, Liberal, Union, Greed

Media Matters for America is apparently resisting an effort by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its staff. Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA's staff through a Card Check election.

Hypocrisy, Editorial, Liberal, Union, Greed

There is a strike, boycott and electronic picket line targeting the Huffington Post. That strike has been called by two legitimate unions: the Newspaper Guild (an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America) and the National Writers Union, Local 1981 of the United Auto Workers.

  The two unions, and hundreds of bloggers throughout the country, are trying to get a share of the riches pocketed by the owners of the Huffington Post via its sale to AOL, and, as important, set a standard for fair treatment in the future…

The Man Says: No Bargaining Over Pay Raises.

How Can This Be?

"The @HuffingtonPost is super progressive and liberal..."

Best wishes to the oppressed workers at The Huffington Post.

Hoping the warmth of the Holiday Season trickles into the cold, money-grubbing heart of The Man. We invite the liberal readers of The Huffington Post to protest against corporate greed. -RB

Hypocrisy, Liberal, Union

Michael Moore, champion of the working class, used non-union stagehands to film "Capitalism: A Love Story." The porcine provocateur is promoting his anti-Wall Street jeremiad by giving free tickets to unions, but the American Federation of Teachers has turned them down because Moore didn't hire any members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Hate, Incitement, Union, Violence, Threats, Oops

US Representative Michael E. Capuano, who decried violent political rhetoric after last month’s fatal shooting rampage in Tucson, said today he regrets urging union workers at a rally in Boston yesterday to “get a little bloody.”

In a move of stunning hypocrisy, the United Federation of Teachers axed one of its longtime employees -- for trying to unionize the powerful labor organization's own workers, it was charged yesterday. Go To Site