If the last 30 years were an era of reaction, then the coming decade could turn into an era of reform, even radical reform. Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.

Coalitions of labor, community and environmental groups cheered the passage of the historic climate change legislation in the House last month. But the hard work for a similar bill in the Senate has just begun, they added.

Until Sunday, December 31, 2006, I had been holding for about three weeks a second job at a gas mart/convenience store in Indianapolis, Indiana. This gas mart/convenience store is one of many for this several-state chain-store company...

The AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with our sister organizations of Honduras as well as with the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), representing over 45 million workers of this hemisphere, in condemning the military coup that resulted in the illegal ouster of democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya.

The production lines at Overhill Farms move very quickly. Every day for eighteen years Bohemia Agustiano stood in front of the "banda" for eight or nine hours, putting pieces of frozen chicken, rice and vegetables onto plates as they passed in a blur before her.

I've had a few of my progressive friends say to me, "You know Keith, I'm not that happy about the president not really going after those quirks in the Bush administration, I'm not that pleased that we haven't heard as much as we want to hear about a public option. What about 100 percent auction for cap and trade? What about these issues that we care about?"

Accurately sensing a growing anxiety among Americans that an economic turnaround hasn't been swift enough, the Obama administration this week made a strong push to announce the speed up of economic stimulus projects.

Today at noon (June 8) Mayor Carl Redus of Pine Bluff, Arkansas hosted a meeting for the AFL-CIO with the Arkansas Conference of Black Mayors. Twenty or so mayors were at the lunch meeting at the Pine Bluff Ramada Conference Center.

Things are not always as they appear. In proving this old proverb, Karl Marx explained some key features of capitalism in a way that remains relevant today. Towards the end of the first chapter of Capital, Vol. 1, after having established the validity of the labor theory of value, Marx presents a section on the Fetishism of Commodities.

With the monthly unemployment numbers for the month of May due Friday, June 5th, economists estimate the national unemployment rate will rise from 8.9 percent to 9.2 percent, with the total job losses over the course of the month to be slightly lower than in April.

Across the country, local faith and community leaders will be confronting their local and regional Chambers of Commerce next week to expose their role in propagating misinformation round the Employee Free Choice Act.

Because President Obama’s election – and I still can’t believe the sound of that “President Obama!” – because President Obama’s election doesn’t simply offer us the chance to win good labor laws ... or health care ... or tax reform ... or to put more money into public services ... or to stop global warming.

Studs Terkel was synonymous with the everyperson, heart of the hoi polloi. In one of his last interviews he repeated a story he enjoyed telling about encountering a couple of vocally anti-union Young Urban Professionals in his hometown of Chicago.

We all own General Motors now. The US government will provide about $30 billion and the Canadian government will chip in another $9 billion to keep General Motors (GM) afloat through a bankruptcy process that began June 1st.

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced in Congress on March 5th. The struggle to pass it will be huge and all hands on deck will be required to pass it.

Action taken under President Obama's economic recovery act has saved or created 150,000 jobs since late February, the White House Task Force on Working Families reported earlier this month.

As the trial of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi marked its second day, solidarity activists and workers under the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), an active member of the Free Burma Coalition-Philippines today held a protest action in front of the Burma embassy in Makati City and denounced the recent arrest and detention of world’s only imprisoned Nobel laureate.

The The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) is asking the Rudd government to step in and guarantee funding to cover a $350 million shortfall in the James Hardie asbestos compensation fund.

We live in the era of the global commons, but very few have actually met their neighbors – except as subalterns: household maids, hotel service-workers, nannies, most likely college-educated women from the Philippines.