There they go again. This important essay was written by Mike Jackson, executive secretary treasurer of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights union. Please contact your state legislator and ask them to vote NO on House Bill 4406. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), an anti-union organization, is hoping taxpayers further subsidize their failed training programs. This time, […]

In August of 2015, the year before he was elected president, Donald Trump had a clear and concise message for auto workers: You make too much money. He said U.S. automakers could shift production away from Michigan to communities where autoworkers would make less. “You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you’d do full-circle […]

The Great Orange Smoke Screen The front pages of any major news outlet, online or otherwise, are full of news of Donald Trump and the corrupt, inept-yet-frighteningly-effective cabal of criminals that make up his administration and circle of advisors. Nearly 40 people tied to him, his administration, his inauguration, and his campaign have been indicted and more are sure to […]

This week marks the painful beginning of the lame duck (or, as I call it, “enflamed duck”) session in the Michigan State legislature. With a Democratic governor about to take the reins, Republicans are hell-bent to pass as much regressive legislation into law as they can before Gov. Gretchen Whitmer moves into her new office. One of the worst is […]

In 2016, Donald Trump got around 37% of the vote from members of labor unions. He actually out-performed Mitt Romney in this regard suggesting that his faux pro-worker rhetoric hit its mark. Since then, he’s continued his attempts to appease union workers and convince them — despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary — that he is on THEIR […]

This past week, corporatists ticked off a major agenda when the United States Supreme Court decided in their favor in the Janus v. AFSCME case. With this decision, SCOTUS has turned America into a “Right to Freeload” country. Will Swaim, president of the California Policy Center, an affiliate of the Koch brothers State Policy Network (SPN), celebrated the decision to […]

The following post was contributed by my good friend Frank Houston. Frank is the Michigan Regional Program Manager of the BlueGreen Alliance, a group that encompasses a variety of progressive values: labor, environmental, and political action. For this reason, it’s a group that I’m happy to share this platform with. The gains made in federal environmental policy under the Obama […]

Last week I wrote about a 2-day strike by nurses working for Duke LifePoint’s UP Health System hospital in Marquette, Michigan, a protest against profound under-staffing that is leading to dangerous conditions for patients and the nursing staff who care for them. They’ve also been working without a contract with their new for-profit employer since July. Yesterday, nurses ended their […]

Nurses at UP Health System in Marquette, Michigan – run by Duke LifePoint – went on strike today to protest understaffing that has led to unsafe conditions for patients at the facility as well as the nurses who work there. In addition, they are demanding that the administrators of the facility begin bargaining with them in good faith on a […]

James O’Keefe, the “film” producer who spends his life trying to take down any organization valued by progressives with heavily-edited videos of “stings” he orchestrates has been spending time in Michigan this year trying to bring down the American Federation of Teachers. Fortunately, a combination of an O’Keefe operative’s stupidity and the intelligence of the AFT’s staff resulted O’Keefe’s crew […]

In one of the major labor victories since Republicans made the birthplace of organized labor in America a so-called “right to work” state, 1000+ nurses at Traverse City’s Munson Medical Center will now be represented by a union for the first time: A vote to unionize registered nurses at Munson Medical Center will soon be certified. The two-day election took […]