Minnesota Independent

Local labor organizers lament ‘card-check’ provision’s seeming demise

By Paul Demko | 08.06.09 | 6:00 am

Throughout the 2008 campaign, the “card-check” provision of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was a political lightning rod. Business groups pilloried the proposal as an attack on workers’ rights, while organized labor lobbied ferociously for the measure, which would allow workers to unionize when more than half have signed cards indicating support for collective bargaining. When Democratic leaders quietly decided to drop the measure from EFCA last month — without so much as a vote — it came as something of a slap in the face for labor.

Union once again looking to organize Wal-Mart workers

By Paul Demko | 05.01.09 | 6:00 am

After years of eschewing labor-organizing drives at the world’s largest company, the United Food and Commercial Workers has vowed that capitulation to Wal-Mart is over. The union has started organizing campaigns in 17 states, including Minnesota, targeting more than 100 stores. The impetus for the organizing drive: the new administration in the White House and the possibility of passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Business collapse can end union contracts, but not AIG bonus contracts

By Chris Steller | 03.16.09 | 7:27 pm

Contracts guaranteeing bonuses to executives at collapsing businesses — like American International Group (AIG) — are held inviolable, while labor union contracts regularly get voided or reneged-on when corporations declare (or even threaten) bankruptcy. Labor experts say it’s the law of the land.

By RNC standards, is SUV ramming Planned Parenthood terrorism?

By Chris Steller | 01.23.09 | 10:56 am

When an SUV rammed the Planned Parenthood office on Ford Parkway in St. Paul yesterday on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, was the driver furthering terrorism in violation of Minnesota’s Patriot Act – a charge Ramsey…