Smithfield Foods has filed a racketeering lawsuit against UFCW—the union organizing its employees in Tar Heel, North Carolina—along with its allies in that fight for justice, including Jobs With Justice. National JWJ will dedicate a part of their web site to this threat.

Many voices have already joined us in opposition to this tactic, including a piece in the DMI Blog, "Using a Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut: Smithfield’s Union Busting History,", and an in-depth series on the Global Labor Strategies blog, "Smithfield Packing v. The Constitution" and "The Smithfield and Wackenhut RICO Suits: Forward into the Past."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research released last week an interesting report titled "The Decline in African-American Representation in Unions and Manufacturing, 1979-2007."

We know that unionized manufacturing jobs last century were crucial to broadening a Black middle-class. Less understood is how that story has turned around so that only one-in-ten Black workers today have a job in manufacturing, compared to one-in-four in 1979.

A new site by American Rights at Work puts the focus on Bush's Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and how she has "hijacked the Department of Labor to benefit big business," abandoning its historical mission to protect and improve workers' circumstances and implement labor and employment laws.

It has a regular entries the bring to light the various ways she has mismanaged the DoL, including rolling back mine safety protections and helping corporations instead of workers.

Bookmark this one for sure.

A good post from Dan Kovalik of the USW, and my quick comment below. Read the whole post on the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Last week, a delegation of AFL-CIO union leaders undertook a two-day, fact-finding trip to meet with leaders of major Colombian unions to hear firsthand the dangers and challenges faced by Colombian trade unionists. They also met with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, telling him the U.S. union movement cannot support the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until real progress is made to protect the lives and rights of trade union members.

James had a great article published last month in the magazine In These Times:

A handful of progressive black politicians, clergy or community leaders show up at antiwar rallies to speak, but the black masses are conspicuously absent. The lack of black voices in the peace movement is particularly dissonant because the community overwhelmingly opposes the Iraq War.

Read the full piece, now available online.

The WEF began today in Davos, Switzerland. The New York Times coverage describes it this way:

It seemed like just another meeting of the world’s most exclusive talk shop, held each January in this Alpine ski resort. The trouble is nobody was talking about anything but the global market turmoil and the faltering American economy.

World political figures and CEOs of the largest multinational corporations meet, and we can expect that their response to current economic troubles will be more of the same neoliberal non-solutions that put all faith into "free" markets.

This is the first post of 2008, and while it's a bit late to wish you a happy new year, we have the highest hopes for carrying the struggle for social and economic justice further.

James, myself, and our leadership are working on plans to strengthen our ability to support the fights of workers and their communities. Among ongoing campaigns, we will help build a strong delegation of Chicago activists to the National JWJ Meeting this May in Providence, Rhode Island.

I hope this web site will keep you informed and offer ways to get involved. Please come back regularly and look for bigger and better things from Chicago JWJ.

Feel free to leave your suggestions for us as a comment to this post or through our Contact Page. Thanks!

I first learned about the screenwriters' strike through news stories, most of which focused on it's impact on the current television season. Once the strike started, it was hard to avoid the news, most of which then turned to the participation of celebrities in solidarity with the writers, who are part of the Writers Guild of America (WGA). These celebrities are part of the Screen Actors Guild, and they have joined other unions like the Teamsters and SEIU in supporting the writers.

Here's a link to a very good speech by David Bacon at a recent conference held in Minnesota on the impacts of NAFTA. It's roughly 30 minutes long. It's made available by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, but I couldn't find a link or any details on their web site.

David Bacon, Quicktime file

A federal judge extended for 10 days an order preventing the implementation of the new Dept. of Homeland Security no-match rule and the mailing of no-match letters by the Social Security Administration. SSA planned to send 140,000 notifications to employers, covering approximately 8 million workers. DHS intended to include with the letters an explanation of the new rule exposing employers to liability if they did not insure social security no-matches were resolved or employees' work eligibility was reverified within 90 days.