North America
Bahamas: Hospital workers stage mass 'sickie'
Nearly 80 percent of the staff of the Princess Margaret Hospital's engineering department called in sick yesterday to protest a delay in their long awaited hazardous pay, said union officials.
Around half a dozen supervisors and staff in the Maintenance and Bio Medical building were forced to carry out the duties of a normally 30-plus member crew when more than 20 workers called in sick on Tuesday, said the hospital's administrator Coralee Adderley.
Spatial Deconcentration in D.C. - Midnight Notes
The story of a covert US Government housing policy - conceived in the aftermath of the 1960s ghetto riots - to remove concentrations of potentially rebellious Blacks and other poor people from the inner city and disperse them in small groups to the suburbs.
Published in 'Midnight Notes', Vol. II, #2, July 1981, MA, USA
Original article first published by the Yulanda Ward Memorial Fund, Washington, 1981(?).
War is the health of the state - Randolph Bourne
This classic first part of an essay entitled "The State," left unfinished at Bourne's untimely death in 1918, it explores the connection between patriotism, war, and the State.
To most Americans of the classes which consider themselves significant the war [World War I] brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and surprising alteration in their habits of thought.
Black particularity reconsidered - Adolph L. Reed Jr.
An in-depth 1970s analysis of how the management of black dissent by the black American middle-class/professional elite helped restructure capitalism to its own advantage.
"[i]Black Power presupposed a mass-organizational model built on the assumption of a homogeneity of black political interests to be dealt with through community leadership. It is this notion of "black community" that has blocked development of a radical critique in the Civil Rights movement by contraposing an undifferentiated mass to a leadership stratum representing it.
Operation Northwoods: Justification for US military intervention in Cuba documents
Below is the complete text from the Freedom of Information Act-released US government document detailing the Pentagon plan to murder innocent civilians and blame the Cuban government as a pretext to invade Cuba.
[b]Code-named Operation Northwoods, US Navy members were also to be killed as part of a "terror campaign" This plan, which President John F. Kennedy refused to implement, had the written approval of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, and every other member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
1942-1944: US musicians recording ban
The musicians’ union called a ban on all commercial recordings, as part of a struggle to get royalties from record sales for a union fund for out-of-work musicians.
The union, the American Federation of Musicians, led by trumpeter James Petrillo, had previously opposed the recording of music, or “canned music”. Musicians were replaced with records in radio, and in cafes and bars bands were replaced with jukeboxes.
Anarchy, precarity, and the revenge of the IWW: An interview with Starbucks union organiser Daniel Gross
Interview with IWW organizer Daniel Gross where he discusses 'solidarity unionism,' the innovative organizing model that has made gains for Starbucks workers where bureaucratic unions have failed.
In this wide-ranging interview with IWW organizer Daniel Gross conducted by the UK-based Now or Never!, Gross discusses the innovative worker-controlled organizing model, known as solidarity unionism, that has made gains for Starbucks workers where the bureaucratic union model has failed.
Jamaican labour minister intervenes to try and avert hotel strike
Labour Minister Derrick Kellier has scheduled a meeting for tomorrow with contractors, as well as the two major trade unions representing the more than 2,000 workers at the Fiesta Hotel site in Hanover, in light of a threat by disgruntled workers to lock down the project.
Kellier, who was making his first appearance yesterday at a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House since he was appointed minister just more than a year ago, is expected to chair the meeting, which will involve representatives of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) and the National Workers Union (NWU), as well as the two main contractors on the site.
Strikers occupy First Ontario credit union
Striking First Ontario Credit Union workers have no regrets after they occupied the company’s east Mountain branch and padlocked the doors to try to get the financial institution back to the bargaining table.
Hamilton police smashed the glass on a door to gain entry to the Queensdale and Upper Sherman Avenue branch to end the occupation an hour after it began at 3 p. m. yesterday.
Fare strike - San Francisco 2005
Pamphlet with first-hand accounts and analysis of the self-organised 2005 fare strike, in PDF and text format.
Fare strike in PDF format (2.14Mb)
Fare strike!
San Francisco 2005
First-Hand Accounts
INTRODUCTION
