Radicals at Work

Chicago Sun Times: College Student Scheduled for Deportation Gets 1 More Year

In recent weeks, a campaign to support Rigo Padilla, a college student in Chicago facing deportation, has gathered steam. The campaign generated 1,159 faculty petitions and over 18,000 individual petitions to DHS Director Janet Napolitano, ICE Director John Morton, Sen. Richard Durbin and Sen. Roland Burris.Read more.

NYT: Health Care Debate Focuses on Legal Immigrants

The debate over health care for illegal immigrants continues to percolate in Congress, with lawmakers in both houses wrangling over how much coverage to provide for immigrants who have settled in the country legally.Read more.

Insurrection at Privately-Run Immigrant Internment Camp in Pecos, Texas

The Texas Observer has a feature story about December and January uprisings and takeovers by detainees of an privately run-immigrant detention facility in Pecos, Tx.

The evening of the uprising, the inmates sent a delegation of seven men—a Venezuelan, a Cuban, a Nigerian, and four Mexicans—to meet with the authorities.Read more.

NY Times: Immigration Crackdown With Firings, Not Raids

American Apparel, a clothing maker "with a vast garment factory in downtown Los Angeles is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees in the coming days — more than a quarter of its work force — after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents the workers presented when they were hired."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/us/30factory.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=americ...

Latest from the Blogs
posted by danh, July 28th

“You know, our group really needs a Facebook Page.”

I was starting to get tired of people telling me this.

posted by Rachael, June 12th

April's Labor Notes Conference featured a panel of union activists grappling with the question: How do we make the strike a winning tool again? Building on this conversation, Longshore and Warehouse Union organizing director, Peter Olney, discusses his view with Labor Notes after winning a 15-week lockout by their employer, Rio Tinto.

Read the full interview here.

posted by Anne, June 11th

Too male, too pale, too stale: That's a criticism frequently levied at the labor movement... But labor's chief problem...involves young people.

posted by Blake, March 2nd

LabourStart and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) have launched McJobs.org, a website intended to connect McDonald's workers from around the world.

There has been controversy over the term "McJob", which refers to low-paying, contingent work in the service industry. McDonald's objected when Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the term in 2003.

posted by Anne, February 26th

Scores of employees gathered to help Bob Moore celebrate his 81st birthday...Moore...responded with a gift of his own -- the whole company. The Employee Stock Ownership Plan Moore unveiled means that his 209 employees now own the place and its 400 offerings of stone-ground flours, cereals and bread mixes. Read more here: http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2010/02/bobs_red_mil...

posted by Blake, February 24th

A new EPI report show that one in four African American and Latino workers are currently underemployed compared to 14% of white workers. Those numbers include not only the government's official unemployment figures, but also account for discouraged and "involuntary part-time" workers.

posted by danh, February 24th

Find out what the RadicalsAtWork.org editorial committee is thinking and planning this week.

posted by Blake, February 15th

“Just remember, if you’re not stealing from work, you’re stealing from your family,” a young woman declares in a video promoting Steal Something From Work Day.  The April 15th event encourages stealing from work as a protest against capitalism as a system that derives profit from unpaid labor, which itself is “stolen” from workers.

Whether or not it represents a comprehensive anti-capitalist strategy, history has shown theft to be tactic widely utilized by workers and consumers during economic crisis.  In the 1970s, radical economics professor Harry Cleaver noted that workers in the US practiced widespread “self-reduction” of rising prices by refusing to pay for food, gas and utilities.