Nation Topics - Labor | The Nation

Marc Cooper's July 24/31 "Where's Hoffa Driving the Teamsters?"
provoked a storm of controversy from Honolulu to Brooklyn.

The New York of 1945 was the victorious city of the New Deal and World War II, one that can barely be glimpsed today beneath postmodern towers and billboards for dot-com enterprises.

There was a time when the very word "Teamsters" evoked some pretty dark images: a bloated and notoriously corrupt union president, carried into the Teamsters convention on a gilded sedan chair by

After the House passed President Clinton's China trade bill, Richard
Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, issued a threat: "The 163
Republicans and 73 Democrats that voted for China trade yeste

Remember those great scenes in Blues Brothers 2000 that evoked the urban grit and soul of southside Chicago and Joliet? Well, sorry.

With this issue, we resume our 'What Works' series, which explores effective projects and strategies for improving people's lives through progressive social change.
      --The Editors

I first heard about Powers Hapgood while working at the United Mine Workers, an organization he had tried to change fifty years earlier.

Seattle changed many things, and one of them is American labor. Nothing lifts the spirit or one's vision like winning.

CLARIFICATION: A sidebar to Debbie Nathan's February 21 "Sweating Out the Words," about The New Yorker's literary contest and the publishing and informatics industries (converting information to digital form), mentioned a company, netLibrary, and suggested that workers involved in hours' worth of work in its sites in China, India and the Philippines were "ruining their wrists and eyes in the process." netLibrary tells us that it requires letters of attestation and proof of working conditions from vendors it works with, requiring standards applicable in the United States. Neither Nathan nor The Nation visited netLibrary's vendor sites. Further, The Nation has no specific knowledge of poor conditions or injury to any of netLibrary's workers.

Here's a might-have-been for you.