Dollars & Sense articles from September 1998

Dollars & Sense archives from September 1998

Students against sweatshops. (United Students Against Sweatshops)
September 1, 1998... When I learned that students were organizing a national coalition to oppose their colleges' use of sweatshops to produce school merchandise, I knew it was now or never for me to get involved with this cause. I remembered reading about Duke...

Black radicals unite. (Black Radical Congress)
September 1, 1998... Two thousand African-Americans flooded to the University of Illinois in mid-June to form the Black Radical Congress (BRC). Crowding the halls were socialists, nationalists and feminists of various ideological persuasions; environmentalists,...

Social Security: solidarity or speculation?
September 1, 1998... Those who would privatize Social Security ask us to give up a pension with guaranteed benefits for a chance to do better on the stock market. While the privatizers boast loudly of better returns, they whisper about benefit cuts and wink at mutual...

Michael Moore to GM: show some respect! (interview with producer Michael Moore regarding the United Auto Workers' month-long strike at two General Motor plants)(Interview)
September 1, 1998... In 1990 Michael Moore produced the film Roger and Me, a devastating critique of corporate arrogance. Moore dogged the steps of Roger Smith, the chairman of General Motors, while exploring conditions in Flint, Michigan, Moore's home town, as...

Unfettered capital wreaks havoc. (international financial institutions)
September 1, 1998... Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, most countries restricted the flow of money across their borders. National sovereignty in economic affairs depended upon this. In order to manage their economies, in order to prevent mass unemployment...

The 'natural rate' of unemployment: it's all about class conflict.
September 1, 1998... In 1997, the official U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 27-year low of 4.9%. Most orthodox economists had long predicted that a rate this low would lead to uncontrollable inflation. So they argued that maintaining a higher unemployment rate -...

Rank and file Teamsters fight for labor's future. (Teamster presidential elections)(includes related article on Ron Carey's term as president of the Teamsters)
September 1, 1998... A future Teamster marched in Wenatchee, Washington, last year with Mexican and Mexican-American workers organizing at apple packing plants in the central part of the state. Reformer Tom Leedham is targeting the new Latino members of the Teamsters...

How Yale workers defied union busting. (Yale University)(includes related articles on the Local 34 employees' union)
September 1, 1998... On December 17, 1996, a year-long struggle to preserve close to six hundred union jobs in the city of New Haven ended victoriously for Yale University workers. The workers were members of Yale's two union locals, both part of the Hotel and...

'A dialogue about capitalism': the AFL-CIO's Bill Fletcher speaks his mind. (American Federation of Labor and Congress of International Organizations)(Interview)
September 1, 1998... How do you engage and educate 13 million union members? Bill Fletcher, Jr., Education Director of the AFL-CIO, has been grappling with that question since he was appointed by incoming president John Sweeney in 1996. One of his took is "Common...

Worker ownership's uncertain future: lessons from two decades of trials. (includes related articles on cooperative activism and worker-owned cooperatives)
September 1, 1998... Worker-owned enterprises, sometimes called "worker cooperatives," have a long history, even in the United States. In May, 1791, Philadelphia's Journeyman Carpenters "not only organized the first recorded strike of U.S. labor in the building...

Rustbelt buyouts: why Ohio leads in worker ownership. (Ohio Employee Ownership Center)(includes related article on employee-owned Russian firms)
September 1, 1998... No one said it was going to be easy for the employees of Brainard Rivet to take ownership of their company. Certainly not Jeff Chine, the worker heading the buyout committee: "They arrested us, handcuffed us, took us to the station, booked us,...

Democracy in steel? (interview with United Steelworkers of America consultant Mike Locker)(Interview)
September 1, 1998... Responding to numerous threats and actual shutdowns of steel companies in the United States and Canada, in the mid-1980s the United Steelworkers of America first succeeded in using employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) to buy steel plants and...

Organizing a childcare union in Philadelphia. (includes related article on Childspace daycare centers)
September 1, 1998... "What an awesome gathering!" Kim Cook, a union organizer from Seattle, smiled as she looked around the meeting room of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees in Philadelphia in mid-June. Just one month earlier, this affiliate of...

Why economists are wrong about coops. (worker-controlled businesses)(includes related article on Canada's labor-sponsored investment funds)
September 1, 1998... Democracy in America is not perfect, but it is relatively widespread. We elect school boards, judges, sheriffs, city councils, and mayors on the basis of one-person-one-vote. But there is a glaring exception: business. Management does have to...

ESOPs and coops. (employee stock ownership plans; producer cooperatives)
September 1, 1998... ESOPS If you've worn Gore-Tex lately or flown on United Airlines, you've patronized a company most of whose stock is owned widely by its workers, through employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs. During the last decade, the number of ESOPs and...

Activists Beyond Borders.
September 1, 1998... by Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (Cornell University Press, 1998) Elaine Bernard Activists Beyond Borders is one of the finest books on global social activism to come out in recent years. It breaks new ground by offering a theory of...