Published: 6/23/2010
Timothy Duperron, chief operating officer for Focus: Hope, is a more-than-decent guy who worked for the Ford Motor Co. for decades, starting at the bottom and rising into management. He was still on the lower rungs and hadn't yet earned a college degree when he was given an electrician's apprentice ...[MORE]
Published: 2/17/2010
During the last two monthly meetings of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, News Hits has hovered nearby, trying to keep tabs on what's happening behind closed doors. We can tell you with certainty this much: Things are getting really ugly inside the New Center headquarters, and besieged union pres...[MORE]
Published: 3/25/2009
When News Hits went to witness the court proceedings involving reporter Diane Bukowski at the end of February, we came away thinking things were looking pretty good for her. Although we highlighted the outpouring of community support she's received, what really had us believing her legal probl...[MORE]
Published: 12/10/2008
Blame the workers. Especially, blame the United Auto Workers. That's what we've been hearing from the talking heads over the last several weeks as our auto industry skidded toward the brink of extinction and politicians debated a bailout.Over and over again, I've heard people repeat that the tro...[MORE]
Published: 4/23/2008
When News Hits heard about the melee at the recent Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, all we could hear in our heads was the union anthem "Solidarity Forever." Here's the first verse, as sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic": When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood s...[MORE]
Published: 4/16/2008
Once, years ago, I speculated impolitely on the reasoning behind some now-forgotten boneheaded move the United Auto Workers union had made. Doug Fraser, then a professor of labor studies at Wayne State University, ripped the column out of the Metro Times and circled the worst part of what I sa...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 12/22/1999
A National Labor Relations Board Judge reviewing Detroit Newspapers' firing of 90 strikers ruled last Friday that nearly half the workers were discharged illegally, according to an NLRB spokesperson. A 156-page opinion issued by NLRB Adm...[MORE]
Published: 12/15/1999
Here's a scene from feminist ancient history: It's 1972 and about 20 of us are gathered in somebody's living room for our weekly "women's support group" meeting. We're all associated, in one way or another, with a small public college catering ...[MORE]
Published: 11/3/1999
When James P. Hoffa became president of the Teamsters, he promised Detroit newspaper workers that their struggle would soon be over. Insiders still make no predictions about when or whether the papers will settle the conflict short of an appeal to the Su...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 11/3/1999
The long legal battle between Detroit Edison and more than 1,300 of its workers ended last week when an arbitration panel awarded $45.15 million to workers to settle three class action suits accusing the utility of race and age discrimination. The...[MORE]
Published: 10/31/2007
Happy Halloween, comrades. This is my favorite holiday, or would be if it didn't take so much energy to get those razor blades precisely into the dead center of the apple. Calculating the exact dosage of rat poison to put in the center of that chocolate bar is harder too, since today's kids are ...[MORE]
Published: 10/17/2007
Writer and L.A. Times journalist Scott Martelle first learned of "the Ludlow massacre" in the early 1990s. He was floored to read a mere footnote recounting how, in Colorado in 1914, more than two dozen people had been killed when National Guardsmen and company detectives opened fire on a tent...[MORE]
Published: 10/10/2007
You can do a lot of he said/she said back-and-forth statistical see-sawing when comparing positions on what the conservatives call "right to work" laws and the labor movement puts down as the "right to work for less." First, for the folks who don't have a clue as to what the hell we're talkin...[MORE]
By Steve Cotner
Published: 9/26/2007
I ditch my hand-me-down foreign car in an ironworkers’ lot, a block away from General Motors’ Powertrain Plant in Warren, and hike up to a team of UAW strikers. Homeless for the night, I figure I will spend it with them, if they’ll have me. My Tigers hat sits too high on my head, a...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 10/13/1999
The morning began like most other workdays for Frank Johnson. Up before 4 to see his wife off to her job at an auto plant, he downs a couple cups of coffee and does chores around the house for an hour or so before climbing into his 11-year-old ...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 9/29/1999
By land and by sea locked-out newspaper workers continue to spread their message that the long-running labor dispute with the city’s dailies is not over. Before the annual Detroit News river cruise last Friday night, locked-out workers ...[MORE]
By Tate Hausman
Published: 9/8/1999
The most energetic student movement of the ’90s, the protest against exploitative foreign sweatshops, is poised to return to campuses this fall with more vigor, enthusiasm and resources than ever before. At issue is the widespread practice...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 9/8/1999
When you ask some union and academic leaders at Wayne State University whether they are surprised Detroit Public School teachers went on strike last week, they will say, "absolutely not." And when you ask them why not, they will give one answer...[MORE]
Published: 9/8/1999
Back when labor unions were winning the great organizing battles of the 1930s and 1940s, a large part of their successes was, naturally, due to public relations. Strategy, timing and tactics helped too. But im...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 9/1/1999
The old saw about the rich getting richer appears to be truer than ever. Total compensation for corporate chief executive officers has skyrocketed a wallet-popping 481 percent during the 1990s, says a new study by the nonprofit groups Institute...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 9/1/1999
Graduate employees at Wayne State University won a major victory last week: a tentative contract agreement. Reached after 10 months of negotiations between the Graduate Employees Organizing Committee (GEOC) and Wayne State officials, the agreement...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 8/25/1999
National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland declared Detroit Edison a "merchant of shame" during a Detroit speech Saturday. "Electricity is not the only thing that is shocking at Detroit Edison," said Ireland ...[MORE]
Published: 8/18/1999
With no opposition from management, 2,100 workers at the MGM Grand Casino became union members on July 23, with their ranks divided among a four-union coalition called the Detroit Casino Council. Maintenance workers will be represented by the International Union...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 8/4/1999
Detroit water department workers say the metropolitan area’s water supply may be in jeopardy if Mayor Dennis Archer does not offer them a fair contract. With a banner that read, "Mr. Mayor don’t gamble with Detroit’s water," about 20 members of the Sanitar...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 7/28/1999
About 60 union employees and supporters picketed WDIV’s downtown offices last Friday with signs that read "Turn off Channel 4, it’s bad news for workers." According to Dan Morgan, a video editor in the news department and spokesman for the National Association o...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 7/28/1999
If it were not for Scott Brooks and Jeff Ellison, two Detroit labor lawyers, I may never have learned about working class hero Eugene V. Debs – or had so much fun in the process. Like hundreds of others, I began to appreciate the 20th century labor leader while I attended a Detr...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 7/21/1999
How do you commemorate a four-year labor dispute? With a pig roast, naturally – sans the pork. Several hundred locked-out Detroit News and Free Press workers and supporters cheered as they pretended to barbecue a man dressed in a pig suit, calling him their "corporate pig.&...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 7/7/1999
Barb Ingalls leads a dual life. Since being called back to her job as a printer at Detroit Newspapers after going out on strike nearly four years ago, she is once again the dutiful employee, showing up on time, performing her job, drawing a paycheck. But wh...[MORE]
Published: 6/30/1999
After a springtime skirmish in the media with General Motors execs over a new manufacturing method called "modular assembly," United Auto Workers President Steve Yokich finally pronounced the issue "dead." Despite Yokich’s obituary, the issue is very much a...[MORE]
Published: 8/15/2007
Real opportunities to nationalize health insurance in the United States only come around once in a while. The last time was in 1993, when a plan by then-first lady Hillary Clinton was trashed by corporate opposition. Now is the best chance since then. Most Americans agree that the system doesn'...[MORE]
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