By Leilani Albano

The LA Times four-part series about the United Farm Workers has sparked a fury among those in the progressive community.

In last week’s articles, Times author Miriam Pawel lodges a host of allegations against the UFW.

Most damaging of all, the Times author says that the union has abandoned founder Caesar Chavez’s mission of aiding farm workers.

Unlike the UFW of the 1960s and 1970s, when the organization launched the widely successful grape boycotts and implemented major changes for workers, today’s union does little to help farm laborers, Pawel reports.

However, not everyone agrees with her assessment.
"It is one pack of lies after another."

That was long-time UFW spokesman, Marc Grossman.

WIN Week In Review July 19-20, 2008

By Doug Cunningham

GM - America’s fourth largest company in annual sales - said Tuesday that it’s making more deep cuts to survive a harsh economy. GM jobs have gone from 107,000 hourly jobs in 2004 to 74,000 today. Buyouts and early retirement incentives will slash even more of those as some new workers are added at half the pay. The new cuts include selling off $4-7 billion in assets, slashing salaried jobs and benefits and suspending the GM stock dividend. GM CEO Rick Waggoner called this an “unprecedentedly difficult time”. He said these cuts are necessary for GM’s survival.

Economic Report:

Americans are burning out, or at least they feel like they are burning out. A new study from Harris Interactive has found that 78 percent of American workers say they feel burned out. Forty-five percent attribute it to a heavy workload; while 23 percent are unhappy with the balance between work and their social lives. However, many workers confuse stress with burn out. Some signs of actual burn out include detachment, isolation, apathy, and hopelessness.

Dell is being hit by a class action lawsuit. Jesse Russell reports:

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Dell, alleging that the computer maker violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and underpaid call center workers. The suit was filed by two Dell workers, but was opened up for class action status to include 5000 call center workers. The allegations in the suit say that Dell only allows supervisors to make changes in the time keeping system, which has been underreporting how many hours employees actually are worked. The workers allege that the supervisors aren’t making the necess

Newspaper workers spent Thursday protesting as Tribune Company prepares to make job cuts today. At the Baltimore Sun, 100 black folding chairs were lined up to represent the 100 jobs being cut at the paper, but as of yesterday no one knew how the layoffs would be handled by the company. Sixty jobs will be cut in the newsroom.

By Doug Cunningham

At its convention in Chicago, the American Federation of Teachers voted to endorse the Conyers single payer universal national health care bill in Congress. HR676 would create a real national health care plan covering all medically necessary care by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system. The sweeping health care reform would eliminate deductibles and co-payments. There are 90 co-sponsors in the U.S. House for that bill right now. More than 400 different labor union organizations have endorsed the Conyers health care bill.

By Doug Cunningham

On Thursday, the SEIU rallied for what it called a Global Day of Action to take back the economy against private equity firms. One of the goals, according to the SEIU, is to get Congress to close tax loopholes that give private equity firms big tax breaks that then reward the destruction of jobs when equity firms buy, slash and sell companies. SEIU says if these tax loopholes were closed to the “buyout billionaires” $31 billion in government revenue would be generated. That money could be used for healthcare or for middle-class tax cuts rather than stuffing the already overstuffed pockets of private equity firm owners.

Economic Report:

The U.S. has set a new record. Inflation hit a 26-year high in June with consumer prices jumping by 1.1 percent. The Labor Department revealed those numbers as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified for a second day on Wednesday in front of Congress. Accelerating inflation puts the Reserve in a complicated position by making it difficult to cut interest rates that would normally be used to boost the floundering economy.

Female road construction workers are now receiving equal acknowledgement in Atlanta work zones. The City of Atlanta has long used the iconic “Men At Work” signs in roadway construction zones, even though it isn’t only men who are at work. Following a formal complaint made by the editor of PINK Magazine that the signs are discriminatory, the city has made the decision to put up gender neutral signs that say “Workers Ahead.”

The United Kingdom saw a bit of chaos on Wednesday as hundreds of thousands of workers walked off the job. Jesse Russell reports:

Anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 civil servants walked off the job in the UK as part of a one-day strike. The walk out disrupted libraries, schools, garbage collection, sports centers and more as workers protested a plan to only raise wages by 2.45 percent, a plan that is below the rate of inflation. The workers are represented by the trade union Unison, and General Secretary Dave Prentis said the workers who walked off the job are some of the lowest paid in the

By Doug Cunningham

The Center for Economic and Policy Research says while shoring up mortgage giant Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is necessary, they should not be given unlimited tax dollars without strings attached. The economic think tank says the incompetence of their management has made this government rescue necessary. The housing bubble collapse means the values of homes aren’t as high as the mortgages, triggering the crisis of loan defaults. The Center for Economic and Policy research says Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed to the housing bubble by continuing to issue loans based on false bubble prices.

By Doug Cunningham

Senator John McCain calls Social Security a “disgrace”, but the AFL-CIO says it’s an American success story, it’s not broken and it’s NOT a disgrace. The labor federation says Social Security is the cornerstone of American retirement security and McCain wants to gamble it away with risky privatization and diversion schemes that will only weaken it. McCain, the AFL-CIO note, has used every opportunity to vote to replace Social Security with private accounts that will undermine the system. What millions of Americans who depend on Social Security need, the AFL-CIO says, is a president who will strengthen the system, protect it and bring it into long-range balance.

Economic Report:

On a day of turbulent stock market news due to the housing crisis, a new study was released by Forbes showing it isn’t bad everywhere. Houston is number one on the magazine’s list of best cities to buy a home in. Median home sales in the Texas city have increased by 6.6 percent since 2005. The number two city is Austin with San Antonio in fifth and Dallas in fourth. Philadelphia and St. Louis are the only two non-Texas cities to fill out the top six spots.

Are you a Wal-Mart worker that wants to collectively bargain? Then you might need to move to China. While the world’s largest retailer has a record of ferociously busting unions in the United States, the company this week signed a collective bargaining agreement with the Shenyang City Trade Union. Wal-Mart began agreeing to union representation in China in 2004, as long as the unions were associated with the Communist Party-run All-China Federation of Trade Unions. The agreement provides an annual 8 percent pay increase, paid vacation, and overtime pay. The Chinese union said the agreement r

Organized labor has its first openly gay leader. Jesse Russell reports:

New York based United Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten has been elected to succeed Edward McElroy as President of the American Federation of Teachers. The election makes Weingarten the first openly gay labor leader to be president of a national labor union. Weingarten served for 10 years as UFT head, and under her tenure she negotiated a 43 percent increase in educator salaries and helped organize 28,000 home childcare workers in New York City.

By Doug Cunningham

An awful economy for U.S. workers and now Working America’s Karen Nussbaum says that fifteen million workers have bad bosses on top of the bad economy.

[Nussbaum]: “The bad economy makes the problem even worse. A third of U.S. workers, or about fifty million people, feel pressured to stay with a bad boss because of the current economy."

Working America is holding its annual bad bosses contest to hear stories like one of last year’s winners.

[Nussbaum]: “A help desk worker in a plant who was required to stay in a burning building to keep answering the help desk line while the building was burning down around him."