September 11, 2000
Through a militant strike against telecommunications giant Verizon, some 86,000 workers emerged victorious after two and a half weeks. Workers won a central demand—removing obstacles to the union’s ability to organize the fast-growing wireless division of the company.
The three-year pact provides for a 12 percent wage increase and 14 percent raise in pension benefits. It significantly limits Verizon’s ability to force workers to relocate to other jobs within its 12-state area.
The solid strike was an inspiration to some of the union’s newest members as well those with many years at the company. In Philadelphia, Charise Smith, a business consultant who had never before been in a union, commented, “When we went out together that first day, I realized it was for a good cause. I realized we did have power and that the union means something.”
September 12, 1975
LOS ANGELES—A new ruling by the recently established California Farm Labor Board provides the United Farm Workers with limited access to grower property for the purpose of talking with the workers. Earlier the Catholic Bishops Committee on the Spanish-Speaking renewed their backing of the UFW-called boycott of table grapes and head lettuce. There is substantial support among leading Catholic clergy for the UFW’s battle to regain its contracts this fall.
Until recently, UFW officials had called for the deportation of undocumented workers. Actions at the recent convention indicated that the union leadership has abandoned that dead-end approach.
It now appears that policy will be to defend the right of undocumented workers to hold a job in the U.S. and to be treated like any other workers and that includes having the right to join a union.
September 11, 1950
Everybody who belongs to any organization is a potential target of the Wood Bill (“Subversive Activities Control and Communist Registration Act”) passed by the House of Representatives.
For this bill would empower a five-member board to designate any organization as “communist” or “communist front” and order it to register as such. In at least one respect the Wood Bill is even worse than the notorious Mundt-Nixon Bill. The latter had a provision exempting labor unions, but that has been removed from the Wood Bill.
Groups designated as “communist” would have to register and list all of their members and file reports on all their activities. The adoption of the Wood Bill means that the police state in the U.S. has become a clear and present danger to the liberties of the American people, and only their independent mass action can repel it.