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By Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit 

The New York Times Opinion
Feb. 29, 2012

From the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winner-take-all plutocracy. MORE

A Civil Right to Unionize

By Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit 

The New York Times Opinnion Pages - February 29, 2012

FROM the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winnertake-all plutocracy.

Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization. Read More

Keep the CAP on Charter Schools in Massachusetts

AFT Massachusetts members are urged to click on the link below which will take you to the Action site where you can sign a letter to be sent to your legislator insisting that the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts be kept at the current level.  ^{Send a letter to your state legislator.}

A Civil Right to Unionize

By Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit 

The New York Times Opinnion Pages - February 29, 2012

FROM the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winnertake-all plutocracy.

Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization. Read More

Keep the CAP on Charter Schools in Massachusetts

AFT Massachusetts members are urged to click on the link below which will take you to the Action site where you can sign a letter to be sent to your legislator insisting that the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts be kept at the current level.  ^{Send a letter to your state legislator.}

Public News Service inteviewed Union member Rozanna Carosella about the state of negotiations with the UW and problems with our working conditions that are taking a toll on our department.

You can listen to the interview and read the transcript here.

UMD history professor Scott Laderman gives an overview of administrative salaries at the University of Minnesota. The talk was part of a two-day campus event designed to look at the cost of higher education at UMD.

Latest information regarding the Affordable Care Act can be downloaded below:

1. General Questions

2. Healthcare Exchanges

3. Q and A

4. Summary of Provisions

5. Preventitive Services

6. ACA Update on Proposed Rules