Tag - unions

Book Review: Microelectronics: Capitalist Technology and the Working Class

Microelectronics does not embrace the simple solution of dropping resistance to new technologies; instead it outlines other ways workers can preserved integrity. Aside from demanding higher wages and refusing job loss and job force shrinkage, workers can demand input into the design process itself when new...

Unionized or Computerized: The Terminal Secretary

New computer based technology applicable to office work is becoming available at continuously decreasing cost. At the same time, clerical workers have begun to organize to demand higher wages, better working conditions and more opportuities for advancement.

More Than Better Pay: If the Swedes Can Do It…

It wasn’t paradise, but the work environment in the Anebyhus Company’s sawmill was much better than in mills in North America. And it was just one of many impressive work sites visited by eight IWA members and staff and two government officials during a two-week study tour of the wood products industry in Sweden.

Fight for Safe Workplace: Epoxy Boycott in Denmark

In recent years labor unions have become more and more interested in problems in the work environment. In Denmark unions have initiated research into social and medical problems related to work. Their goal has been to make the workplace safe for their members and  to track down work-related health hazards and illness...

Workers Demand Production for People

At Lucas Aerospace Corporation in Britain, workers have made specific, detailed demands that go beyond the usual material ones. These demands, if implemented, have the potential of seriously challenging the present economic system. The overall goal of their plan is to guarantee all workers meaningful jobs producing...

MassCOSH: Organizing for Occupational Health

A collective bargaining agreement which recognizes the right of the union to represent and protect its members is of paramount importance. It gives the union the right to demand that management provide complete information concerning the materials to which workers are exposed and all other hazards of the workplace. It...

Local 1199

On November 30, 1973, 200 employees from George Washington University Hospital demonstrated in the hospital lobby to demand that the hospital administrator arrange for a Union 1199 representation election for approximately 750 clerical, technical, and nursing personnel. After refusing to meet with a delegation from...

Aiding Workers’ Struggles

Where did this concern about health and safety grow out of? The issue itself has existed for a long time. Public concern with toxic effects of chemicals created fertile soil in which workers' complaints about conditions inside the plant grew. The threat that workplace hazards might leak into the community was another...

The Politics of Health

The health care system and the industrial health and safety conditions in America can only be described as institutional murder. In recent years radicals have worked to create alternatives to present health structures, to confront and expose the capitalist health system, and to organize around health and safety issues...

Occupational Health: Time for Us to Get to Work

Occupational health and job safety issues have yet to become "hot" topics with the left like community health clinics, air pollution, or poisons in food, but lately there have been stirrings of interest. The topic has been discussed a bit in Science for the People but I think that it's important that SESPA members do...