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

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

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.

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

For two weeks in January Belgian brewery workers blocked roads, set fire to beer crates, kidnapped managers and handed out free beer as part of their tactics against job cuts proposed by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer.Read more.

For five days in 1999, 80,000 people from Seattle and from all over the country stopped the World Trade Organization from meeting. Despite extreme police and state violence, students, organizers, workers, and community members participated in a public uprising using direct actions, marches, rallies, and mass convergences.Read more.

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Eight people were arrested Saturday after protesters broke windows, lights and planters outside the home of the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.Read more.

The Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO), IFT/AFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) successfully ended a two-day strike after nearly seven months of negotiations during which the administration refused to sufficiently guarantee tuition waivers.Read more.

Is Unite Here using "cultlike tactics" to train their organizers? That's what the New York Times reported two weeks ago in an article on the practice of "pinksheeting" inside the union.Read more.

In Philadelphia, thousands of striking SEPTA transportation workers and members of the Transport Workers Union Local 234 are facing persistent attacks by politicians and the media. NPR’s initial coverage of the strike seemed largely aimed at inciting tension between commuters and the striking workers. It even gave credence to Mayor Michael Nutter’s absurd criticism:

“To decide at midnight or so to go out on strike at 3 a.m. is, I think, the height of insensitivity and disruption to people and their lives.”

Since striking is a fundamental weapon that workers have to defend and advance their interests, Nutter’s comment would be analogous to criticizing the Phillies pitchers for refusing to announce to Yankees batters beforehand, the type of pitches they'd throw during the World Series. That is, a World Series where all the games are played in New York and the umpires are legally employed by the Yankees who begin each game with a 5 run lead.Read more.

On October 29th, two French workers were detained at Chicago's O'Hare airport, as a part of the French General Confederation of Labor (CGT) struggle against plant closures. The International Metalworkers Federation reports:

The two unionists, who were detained for four hours, were part of a delegation of CGT members who traveled to Chicago to take part in an action at the company's shareholder meeting on October 30.Read more.