Alliance@IBM Organizers' Page

May 1, 2001 CIO Magazine: IT Workers of the World: Are they Uniting? features IBM Alliance organizers Devin Kruse, Linda Guyer, and Bill Costine

December 24, 2000 Five Questions: Renewing a Union in the New Economy The New York Times interviews Larry Cohen, Executive Vice President of CWA, about organizing in the high-tech world

Workers of the World Unite - Forget the free-agent nation. The Internet could revive unions. From "Business 2.0" magazine (Sept 26, 2000). Discusses Alliance@IBM, Washtech, and Boeing; interview with Lee Conrad.

FORD/UAW Family Service & Learning Centers These centers will provide around-the-clock childcare facilities and a concierge service to help working families finds things from plumbers to travel planning. Eventually 30 new centers will be constructed.

Verizon settlement New agreements "provide the unions with a strategic foothold to organize the new wireless communications industry. And they place new restrictions on the kind of life-dislocating, family-unfriendly policies such as forced overtime that corporations like to impose in the name of flexibility." New terms include 12.5 percent increase over three years, several benefit increases, caps on overtime, limits on job transfers and outsourcing. (Oct 2000)

LaborTalk - updated weekly

Cyber-Union Unions Face Legal, Cultural Hurdles in Organizing Cyberworkers - scroll down a bit to find the article

Will You Fight IT Unions in Your Company? Article and discussion posts from CIO magazine

Articles by Eric Lee - Eric Lee manages the Labourstart web site and often writes about the impact of the internet on organizing

Yes, Union by Beth Shulman, The American Prospect "There is great hand-wringing in the United States about stagnant living standards and rising inequality. But despite this growing concern, too many liberals are reluctant to embrace the best proven agent of greater earnings equality—strong labor unions."

The Feeble Strength of One: Why Individual Worker Rights Fail by Katherine Van Wezel Stone, The American Prospect

• Under U.S. law, employers and anti-union consultants they routinely hire to oppose workers' organizing have refined methods of legally "predicting" - as distinct from unlawfully threatening - workplace closures, firings, wage and benefit cuts, and other dire consequences if workers form and join a trade union. A "prediction" that the workplacewill be closed if employees vote for union representation is legal if the prediction is carefully phrased and based on objective facts rather than on the employer's subjective bias. This fine distinction in the law is not always apparent to workers or, indeed, to anyone seeking common-sense guidance on what is allowed or prohibited. Unfortunately for workers' rights, federal courts have tended to give wide leeway to employers to "predict" awful things if workers vote for a union.

Spotlight on U.S. Labor Law: A Human Rights Watch special report documents the way US labor law is stacked against workers and the collusion of elected officials to keep it that way.

Education   Cornell University - Internet-based courses on labor include "Contemporary Labor Issues" and "Arbitration". Unfair Labor Practices - information from the NLRB web site

Czarnecki's Labor Education Newsletter - Excellent site put together by a retired AFL-CIO education director

How to organize a union at your workplace Quick Primer; Basic Labor Law; Aren't all Unions Corrupt?; What goes in a contract, anyway?"; Frequently Asked Questions about Unions

Sites

 

Labourstart - International News updated daily. Click to our News Section to see selected U.S. labor news highlights from Labourstart.

Communications Workers of America

AFL-CIO National Labor Relations Board Jobs With Justice - is a national campaign for workers' rights. Working through coalitions of labor, community, religious and constituency organizations, Jobs with Justice is fighting for workers' rights and economic justice.

Jobs with Justice

Workers Rights Network Yale Law School Workers' Rights Project site has an excellent Legal Resources page

Union Online - Union information database with search engine

Labor Notes - Labor Notes works to bring activists together by publishing a monthly magazine, books, and pamphlets ...a place to learn about the struggles, strategies, and solutions within the labor movement today. Selected articles from the monthly magazine are available online.

Spotlight on Union Busters by Tim Lally - Good articles on what organizers should watch out for in an anti-union campaign

Corporate Watch: find the latest on greedy corporations at www.corpwatch.org

Northland Poster - Union hats, t-shirts, note cards, bumper stickers, and more

Labornet - U.S. Labor News (not updated terribly frequently but check back perhaps monthly)

Cartoons

 

UCS Labor Cartoon of the Week

Employer Sites

 

National Institute for Labor Relations has articles like "Exposing the Forced-dues Base of Big labor’s Political Machine"

Sheridan Consulting The union-busting firm made famous in the book, "Confessions of a Union Buster". Lists IBM as one of their clients.

US Labor News

 

 

This page last updated 08/29/05

This site is designed to allow IBM Employees to discuss methods of protecting their rights through the establishment of an IBM Employees Labor Union. Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act states it is a violation for Employers to spy on union gatherings, or pretend to spy. For the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act, notice is given that this site and all of its content, messages, communications, or other content is considered to be a union gathering.