SEIU – Nation’s Largest Union Calls for End to U.S. Occupation of Iraq and Withdrawal of U.S. Troops
Nearly 4000 delegates of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s largest with 1.6 million members, voted unanimously at the union’s national convention in San Francisco today to end U.S. occupation of Iraq and to bring U.S. troops stationed there home.
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Sharing Our Group History
Posted June 7, 2003
by Bobby Hall
The Working Women’s History Project
began as the Women & Labor History Project in 1996.
We launched our first theater project with Kathleen Miles’ “Come Along and Join” and an address by Karen Nussbaum, head of the new Working Women’s Department of the AFL-CIO. At this event we celebrated the birthdays of two beloved union women, Vickie Starr of the Packinghouse Workers and the Teamsters and Mollie West of the Typographical Union and Secretary of the Illinois Labor History Society.
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Rev. Addie L. Wyatt
Interview by Joan McGann Morris
Working Women’s History Project
“Racism and sexism were economic issues.”
It is December 14, 2002. I am very honored to be in the home of Rev. Addie L. Wyatt, who is the Co-Pastor Emeritus of the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago, Illinois, along with her husband, Rev. Dr. Claude S. Wyatt, Jr. who has worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1958 to 1968 and has participated in major marches in Selma, Alabama, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. She spent thirty years as a leader and officer of the labor movement, retiring in 1984 as Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. In 1975, Addie Wyatt appeared on the cover of Time magazine as one of its Women of the Year.
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Rose Meyer’s Rigorous Review of Modern Times and
Things That Need Radical Repair Right Now
On the election of 2002
It time for the Monday morning quarterbacks to reflect on the election of 2002 (those who wish to panic may stop reading this now). But, first we need to ask the four questions -no, not those asked at a Seder at Passover – still just as important.
WHAT HAPPENED? WHY DID IT HAPPEN? WHERE DID IT HAPPEN?
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
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Rose Meyer’s Rigorous Review of Modern Times and
Things That Need Radical Repair Right Now
RAMBLIN’ ROSE’S THOUGHTS
ABOUT UNION LABOR’S PRECARIOUS POSITION
IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM.
At the last CLUW Annual Dinner at which Margaret Blackshere was the keynote speaker, I greeted her with what I thought was a tongue-in-cheek remark: “At the way we’re heading we are going to fight for the 8-hour day and Child Labor Laws all over again.” Rather than a chuckle, she replied seriously: ” I think you’re right” and used my dire prediction in her speech. Think about it, instead of continuing to make new gains or even holding on to the gains previously made, in working conditions, wages, protections, and benefits, every day the newspaper headlines scream gloom and doom
UIC and THE CHICAGO LABOR EDUCATION PROGRAM
THE CHICAGO LABOR EDUCATION PROGRAM is a satellite program of the Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. The Institute offers credit classes and programs to both labor and management. The labor education faculty focuses on trade audiences, teaching skills union members need to participate effectively at the bargaining table. Read the rest of this entry »
INTERVIEW with Yolanda “BOBBY” Hall 3.2001
by Joan McGann Morris
Yolanda “Bobby” Hall, the coordinator of the Working Women’s History Project, has been a long time union activist and organizer for many years in the Chicago area.
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Twenty years ago on Mother’s Day in 1980 there was an enormous rally in Grant Park in Chicago to support passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Over 50,000 people attended, all dressed in white, the color of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Things have quieted down since then. Illinois never ratified the ERA.
Current Activism: Chicago Colleges
United Students Against Sweatshops
Mary Wehrle
The United Students Against Sweatshops is a nation wide student organization connected by e-mail and the Internet. USAS uses tactics such as teach-ins, rallies, sit-ins, and fasts to protest sweatshops and bring attention to other labor and poverty issues. At some schools they take over the dean’s office, make their own films and conduct anti-sweat fashion shows.