America’s biggest retailer—with $10.3 billion in profits last year—has a shameful record of child labor violations, sex discrimination, low wages and lousy benefits...More than 30,000 Working Family e-Activists have pledged to buy back-to-school supplies somewhere other than Wal-Mart this year...

U.S. employers added 207,000 new jobs in July, while the national unemployment rate remained at 5.0 percent, the Labor Department reported on August 5. Yet for one group of workers in America, there is little to cheer about when it comes to being hired by employers.

One lawyer is a smooth, handsome corporate attorney whose political loyalties, partisanship, and ideological moorings earned him a seat on the fast track to the top positions in corporations and now in judicial branch of the US government.

According to a report authored by the staff of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, because of Wal-Mart's low wages, any one of its employees might be forced to seek public assistance estimated at $2,103 to the US taxpayers for health care and other assistance. With approximately 1.3 million US employees and growing, this amounts to a total of $2.7 billion a year.

Up until the early 1990’s the socialist camp including the Soviet Union acted somewhat as a brake on imperialism and on capitalist globalization. In addition to checking military domination and adventures, as trading partners the socialist bloc also provided the means for many developing countries to resist and/or minimize unfair trade and the penetration of foreign capital.

At its 25th Constitutional Convention, the AFL-CIO voted to adopt a resolution supporting "the brave men and women deployed in Iraq." The resolution states that US service men and women, which include AFL-CIO members and who mainly come from working families, risk their lives and deserve real leadership.

Although high ongoing unemployment in a number of industries has depleted union membership and pushed the unionization rate down to record lows, job losses in heavily unionized sectors do not account for the decline in union membership since the 2001 recession.

The freedom to join a union is a basic right guaranteed under the law. But as two new reports show, the main process whereby workers can choose union representation — NLRB-certified elections — stacks the odds unfairly in favor of employers waging aggressive anti-union campaigns.

Economic recovery means many things. One thing can be more hiring opportunities for temporary employees in the U.S. In the current phase of the business cycle, American employers are increasing their hiring of temporary workers, slowly. The demand for such employment had dropped in the recession of 2001 that followed the stock market slide.

Not since Ronald Reagan gutted the PATCO Air Traffic Controllers has a union suffered such a high profile thrashing. After the longest labor lockout in the history of pro-sports, the National Hockey League Players Association now resembles John Ashcroft after 12 rounds with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad.

[The following news items are summaries of weekly events that workers need to know. Unity is the Key.] Vermont Gov. James Douglas (R) has said he will sign a measure raising the state’s minimum wage to $7.25 an hour—a 25-cent boost—effective Jan. 1. At the federal level, congressional Republicans have blocked several attempts to raise the minimum wage, which has been frozen at $5.15 an hour since 1997.

To workers and union leaders, it is a familiar refrain. These days, the story goes, consumers demand low prices, meaning goods must be produced and sold cheaply — and retail wages must be kept as low as possible. Companies like Wal-Mart insist they’re feeling the squeeze and must pay workers poverty wages — even while netting $10.5 billion in annual profits and awarding millions to top executives

Last week the United Auto Workers (UAW) union announced a major victory for Thomas Built Bus workers in High Point, North Carolina. The workers voted by a large majority of 58% to join the UAW in an election supervised by the National Labor relations Board (NLRB), the federal regulatory body that oversees union matters.

About 100 contract delivery drivers held a 10-hour strike yesterday, over unreasonable fining policies, poor payment and intense workload.

Workers of a Taiwanese factory in central Vietnam during a strike in protest against alleged mistreatment, long hours, and low pay. Many factory workers in Vietnam still suffer from long hours, low pay and poor working conditions, but workers are realizing that going on strike may be their best recourse to get what they want – better rights.

Since the 2001 recession, wages and benefits for nonunion workers have been pushed down, while wages and benefits for union workers have remained more consistent and rising costs for health care have pushed up the benefits portion of hourly costs of union workers...Wages for union workers averaged $20.76 per hour in March 2005, compared with $16.72 for nonunion workers.

The proposed new laws place iron fisted restrictions on the rights of workers to defend themselves and their rights. They expose individual workers as well as their unions and union officials to massive compensation claims from anyone who claims to have been affected by their actions.

The 93rd Session of the International Labour Conference is meeting in a year which commemorates the anniversary of our organization, WFTU, which was founded at the end of the Second World War 60 years ago, just after the creation of the UN.

The Bush administration demands higher standards of democracy from countries abroad than it is willing to practice here at home, insists a new report published by American Rights at Work, a non-partisan organization that advocates for workers rights...Unfortunately, Bush’s standard of democracy seems to apply only to countries that it doesn’t like or is trying to impose its agenda on