New York City sings “No, no, no!” to Walmart

By , on April 14th, 2011

Last Friday, NY Jobs with Justice and other members of the Walmart-Free NYC Coalition staged a flash mob in Time Warner Center, headquarters of the Related Companies, the real estate developer currently in talks to lease Walmart space to build its first store in New York City.  Nearly one hundred of us sang and danced with brass band accompaniment to the tune of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” to let Related know that we don’t want them opening the floodgates for Walmart to take over our city:

Our action might have been fun, but the consequences of Related’s actions are quite serious. If the deal with Walmart goes through, Walmart is believed to have plans to open at least a hundred more stores throughout New York, threatening to kill quality jobs, shut down small businesses, and lower labor standards throughout the city. New Yorkers deserve better, and that’s why we showed up at Related’s headquarters to let them have a little signing and dancing piece of our mind.

But of course, this struggle isn’t isolated to New York.  Facing declining sales for the first

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April 14th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Category: Campaigns, Public Money | Comments are closed

What REALLY Goes On In Organizing Campaigns

By , on April 23rd, 2010

The debate over measures to fix America’s broken labor laws took a back seat during the long debate on health care.  Now that the focus has shifted to efforts to stimulate economic growth and job creation, it’s time to put workers’ rights front and center.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce along with right-wing noise groups with shady sources of funding put out numerous talking points and videos painting unions as the problem as citing union intimidation as the biggest threat to the rights of working people to decide whether to unionize or not.  They even went so far as to hire an actor from The Sopranos (union actors by the way) to create a cartoonish vision of this imagined reality.

The idea that unions are the problem flies so greatly in the face of the reality experienced by countless workers who have been involved in organizing campaigns, that a lie that big can’t be allowed to stand unchallenged.  But rather than earnest position papers and counterpoints, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers thought it was time to push back with a video version of how corporations really

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April 23rd, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: Campaigns, Unions | Comments are closed