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California unions grow, bucking U.S. trend

Alana Semuels Los Angeles Times
Latino workers, demanding respect in a precarious job environment, helped boost the state's unionized workforce by 100,000 in 2012.

RIP Leo Robinson, Soul of the Longshore

David Bacon In These Times
Leo Robinson was a leader of the longshore union in San Francisco. He died this week. For many of us, he was an example of what being an internationalist and a working-class activist was all about.

Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE The New York Times
As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.

French Unions Back Revisions of Labor Law

Liz Alderman The New York Times
PARIS — French labor unions and business leaders struck a deal to overhaul labor laws. The changes include more flexibility for employers to reduce hours to prevent lay offs in times of "economic distress." Employers will pay a higher tax for using temporary labor. In exchange for flexibility, unions secured improvements to unemployment benefits and health insurance, as well as seats on the board of large companies.

Big Win for Labor in Chicago

Josh Eidelson Salon
City council passes "wage theft" law that threatens license of violating companies. Will other cities follow?

Teacher Fight Backs and Contractors Threaten ULPs Against NYC School Bus Drivers

Teachers unions and other educational service workers across the country - in New York, Seattle, and Hawaii - are fighting against further cuts in school budgets, for better quality education for their students. In New York, school bus drivers prepare to strike for job security for trained professional drivers; in Seattle, teachers vote to refuse to give standardized tests; in Hawaii teachers campaign for a penny tax increase dedicated to education.

Coercive Wellness Programs Create New Headaches

Jane Slaughter Labor Notes
Employer-created wellness programs are about what workers should do on their own time, not what the employer could do to stop making them sick at work...Wellness programs are growing fast. In firms with more than 200 workers, 94 percent had such programs in 2012

Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement; Labor Once Again Becomes Part of the National Conversation

Sarah Jaffe; Amy Dean AlterNet and The Century Foundation
The passage of a so-called "right-to-work" law in Michigan recently left the labor movement feeling gut-punched. AlterNet talks with Stephen Lerner, Jonathan Westin, Ruth Milkman, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jane McAlevey, Eric Robertson & Ben Speight for their suggestions on how labor can go on the offensive in the next year. Amy Dean, former president of the South Bay (CA) AFL-CIO Labor Council looks at best & worst developments of 2012 in the labor and social movements.