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More than 400 locked-out North Dakota American Crystal Sugar workers got some good news this week when the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled they were eligible to collect unemployment benefits. When the lockout began in August 2011, North Dakota Job Service ruled the workers were ineligible for the benefits.
Members of the Reagan High School band stopped rush hour traffic yesterday in front of the federal building in Austin, Texas, along with hundreds of advocates, community leaders, families and construction workers, as they celebrated the Workers Defense Project’s (WDP's) biannual Day of the Fallen.
A new report outlines how employers across the country are gaming today’s broken immigration system to exploit immigrant workers and evade both labor and immigration laws. The report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) uses two dozen case studies—including the recent action at Palermo’s Pizza—as examples of employers’ use of immigration enforcement or the threat of it to retaliate against workers who seek their basic workplace rights.
Hundreds of Omaha, Neb., area residents worked up a sweat to raise money for the Omaha-area Energy Assistance Program. Union members from Electrical Workers (IBEW) locals 1483 and 1521 and the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) Local 70-558 participated in the Heartland Walk for Warmth.
Aug. 28 of this year marks the 50th anniversary of the famous March on Washington. For many people, the march was simply the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. However, the full name of the march was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the march marked a high point of the modern civil rights movement, after black communities and their supporters throughout the country boycotted buses, sat-in at lunch counters, rode in Freedom Rides and marched in the streets. These massive protests were aimed at destroying, once and for all, the era of legal segregation— which was a blot on this country since the end of slavery.
If you're in New Jersey and trying to register your friends and family to vote, keep your eyes peeled for a bright green van. The New Jersey State AFL-CIO is teaming up with Working Families United for New Jersey Inc. and coalition partners to debut a brand-new, state-of-the-art voter registration van, which will make it easy to register voters where they work and live and engage the community. Equipped with Internet access and computers, this van, according to the state federation, "allows us to take our entire voter registration operation to the streets and to engage communities in the democratic process."
Angelia Wade is an associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO. She sends us this takeaway of the opening oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder. This is a case of extreme importance for voting rights advocates.Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County, Alabama versus Holder. It was a spirited oral argument that drew clear and noticeable reactions from otherwise staid attorneys as we sat in the lawyers’ lounge, an area for attorneys barred before the Supreme Court but who are unable to get in the courtroom if the courtroom is at capacity, as it was yesterday. We could only hear the argument, not see the justices. The comment that received the most attention was that of Justice Antonin Scalia, who claimed the renewal of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act represented the "perpetuation of racial entitlement.” He further insinuated that no one in Congress was going to vote against the renewal of Section 5 in 2006, (Section 5 was renewed 98-0 in the Senate and 390-33 in the House) because lawmakers did not want to lose votes. He stated, "Even the name of it is wonderful, the Voting Rights Act....
Source: Work Boat
Source: Global Post
