Maine AFL-CIO

 

Maine Workers Once Again Get Results!

IN THIS EDITION:

  • Rep. Cuddy: We Need More Union Members in the Legislature
  • Sign Up for Our Worker Candidate Training!
  • AFSCME Locals 2968 & 1814 Secure Pay Raises in New Contract
  • Reminder: Machias Nurses & Technicians to Hold Rally Thursday July 18
  • Join Loggers & International Workers at Summer Institute!

One Year Later

IN THIS EDITION

  • Nurses to Hold Contract Rally in Machias
  • Fighting Back in the Wake of the Janus Decision
  • ​Portland City Manager Throws Tantrum at Firefighters
  • Save the Dates: Labor Day Events!
  • Better Know a Local: IBEW 1837

MSEA-SEIU Reaches Tentative Agreement, Offshore Wind & More!

IN THIS EDITON:

  • State Employees (MSEA-SEIU Local 1989) Secure Pay Raises in Tentative Agreement
  • Building Trades Bill to Strengthen Prevailing Wages Signed into Law
  • Maine Union Leaders See Opportunity in Offshore Wind
  • Take our Volunteer Survey: Maine’s Labor Movement Needs You!
  • 2019 Labor Summer Institute - sign up today!
  • Better Know a Local: IATSE Local 114 Celebrates 115 Years

Labor Update: Victories & Disappointments

IN THIS EDITION:

  • Legislature Adjourns, Mills Vetoes Priority Labor Bills
  • Calais Nurses Joined by USW, MSEA & Fireman & Oilers Members at Picket
  • Calais Techs Votes Unanimously to Unionize
  • Remembering the Jay Strike

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Recent News

The Soul of a Union Man

I was raised in a company house, in a company town, where the miners had to buy their own oilers – that is, rubber coveralls – drill bits, and other tools at the company store.

That company, Inco Limited, the world’s leading producer of nickel for most of the 20th century, controlled the town of Sudbury, Ontario, but never succeeded in owning the souls of the men and women who lived and worked there.

That’s because these were union men and women: self-possessed, a little rowdy, and well aware that puny pleas from individual workers fall on deaf corporate ears.

One Year Later, Janus Decision Still Hasn’t Hurt Unions

A year after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that threatened to cripple public sector unions, they seem to be holding their own.

Government employees, it turns out, see value in belonging to unions. Membership in Illinois government unions actually has increased a year after the June 27, 2018, ruling in Janus vs. AFSCME, as Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet reported in a recent column.

Two Cheers for a Lackluster Economy

Raise a glass to the longest economic expansion in modern American history.

A full decade has passed since the end of the last recession, in June 2009, and the economy continues to grow. As of Monday, the current expansion surpassed the previous record for uninterrupted growth, set between 1991 and 2001.

But this time around, no one is accusing Americans of irrational exuberance: These good times don’t feel particularly good. Economic growth over the past decade has been slow and fragile, and most of the benefits have been claimed by a small minority of  the population.

The Strike that Brought Teachers Unions Back from the Dead

On the morning of September 10, 2012, the bells rang to open Chicago’s public schools, but there were no teachers in the classrooms.

The night before, negotiations with Chicago’s reform-minded mayor, Rahm Emanuel, had gone south, and the new activist leaders of the city’s 25,000-member teachers union, clad all in red, walked out. Surrounded by a throng of cameras, they declared that their members would go on strike for the first time in 25 years.

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We Need a Better NAFTA

The new NAFTA is another corporate handout. It won't stem the outsourcing of good jobs or protect the rights of working people. Tell Congress the new NAFTA isn't good enough.

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Prevent Workplace Violence

Recently introduced legislation would provide needed protections for health care and social services workers from violence on the job. Tell Congress to support an OSHA workplace violence standard.

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