By Pete Shaw A crowd of 15 striking steelworkers gathered outside the offices of Schnitzer Steel in Portland on Monday morning, April 9. Schnitzer is the parent company of Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, located in McMinnville, OR, where over 300 unionized members of Steelworkers Local 8378, went on strike Sunday, April 8th–one week after their…
by K. Kendall TriMet General Manager Neil McFarlane is directing TriMet as a corporation and not as a public service, according to James, an Occupier whose wife, daughter, and granddaughter have all been TriMet drivers. “He’s giving the fare inspectors quotas,” James says with outrage. “They have to give four citations an hour from now on,…
by Barbara Ellis A Job-Finding Assembly for the long-term unemployed in Multnomah’s East County and Clackamas county by Occupy Portland’s Labor Solidarity Committee is scheduled for Sunday afternoon, April 15. It will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. at SEIU Local 503’s headquarters, 64th and SE Holgate Boulevard. The purpose is to organize this…
by Greg Margolis On March 20, 2012, an estimated crowd of 1,500 teachers and community members, including parents and students, gathered in the Gresham High School gymnasium to rally and march in support of the Gresham-Barlow Education Association, Reynolds Education Association and Parkrose Faculty Association in their efforts to bargain a fair contract with the…
by Jeremy Brecher Based on a talk by Jeremy Brecher to Occupy University, Zuccotti Park. Last December, Occupy Los Angeles proposed a General Strike on May 1 “for migrant rights, jobs for all, a moratorium on foreclosures, and peace – and to recognize housing, education and health care as human rights.” The idea has spread…
By Shamus Cooke How are government budgets created, and in whose interests? In Portland, Oregon, the city recently held the second and last of its public budget forums, where the community could offer feedback to help craft the city’s budget. Over two hundred people attended the Wednesday evening meeting at Cleveland High School, many more…
By Greg Margolis and Adam Rothstein A critical part of the strategy of the corporate campaign to maximize profits has been focused on attacking organized workers and eliminating unions. Over the last forty years this systemic attack on workers has successfully eliminated most unions in the private sector. Today, the emphasis is on public workers.…
By Shawn Fleek A threatened closure of a window factory in Chicago has been delayed 90 days, after workers there occupied their factory for three days. The factory may still close, or a similar occupation may again take place, if the union or management can not find a new owner. The factory closure threatened 50…
by Chris Lowe A contract is a contract… In a previous item in The Occupier, Lester Macgurdy argued that we should not exaggerate the victory achieved by ILWU Local 21 in Longview in their struggle against union-busting and scab labor employed by EGT/Bunge. Nor should we overblow Occupy’s achievement in affecting the outcome, lest we…
This article is from the Occupied Media news wire. It was originally published over at the Boston Occupier. by Julie Walsh On the evening of Thursday, February 16, a circle of about forty picketers marched outside Harvard University’s Lamont Library, chanting and waving signs in an intermittent drizzle. The group had gathered to protest the…
