The 17th Biennial Coalition of Labor Union Women Convention is taking place November 13-16 in Reno, Nevada.

From their website...

The women's movement and the labor movement are facing some of the biggest challenges in our history, with battles on every front. This is our opportunity to engage those in the labor movement and our friends who are not part of the labor movement and to learn how we can Move the Working Women's Agenda Forward.

This convention is about working together to set new goals and frame our objectives from the founding principles that guide the work of our organization. Progress is made possible by networking, sharing information and developing ideas to form new programs and policies.

To participate in the convention with voice and vote you need to be a regular national CLUW. Find out more about CLUW and their convention here.

At 5 AM PST today, non-union workers moving Walmart goods at a California warehouse plan to launch a two-day surprise strike in protest of alleged retaliation for exposing safety risks. Organizers expect at least thirty of the warehouse's two hundred-some employees to join the work stoppage, the latest in a wave of Walmart supply chain strikes.

"I'm scared because I need to work for my family's sake," employee Miriam Garcia told The Nation in Spanish. Garcia said she worried that the strike could cost her her job. "But I don't want me or my co-workers to keep working in these conditions."

The Mira Loma, California, warehouse is operated by Olivet International, an apparel and luggage company. Employees say management told them in a mandatory meeting that about 70% of the product the facility moves is for Walmart, and workers charge that the retail giant bears responsibility for alleged abuse there. As The Nation has reported, Walmart has faced increasing scrutiny over labor conditions of sub-contracted workers in its supply chain, both within the United States and abroad. "I think they have a lot of responsibility," warehouse worker Heidi Baizabal said in Spanish. "They need to see the conditions we're working in. Because even though we don't work directly for Walmart, we're moving their merchandise."

Olivet did not respond to Monday or Tuesday requests for comment regarding the workers' allegations. Reached by e-mail Tuesday, a Walmart spokesperson did not directly address the safety or intimidation allegations, but said the warehouse "isn't a Walmart or Walmart dedicated facility."

Today's strike is backed by Warehouse Workers United, a project of the Change to Win union federation. It comes two months after twenty-one Olivet warehouse employees filed a formal complaint with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, alleging rampant safety violations: emergency exits blocked by boxes and merchandise; forklift brakes, seatbelts, and horns that don't work; workers loading shipping containers in the dark; triple-stacked and unsecured boxes; lack of ventilation or adequate water amid intense heat; "a risk of workers being hit by forklifts"; and workers "trapped inside trailers as they drive off."

"It's important that I make it home to my family safe, in good health, Garcia told The Nation. "I don't want to get injured [at work] like my other co-workers." Along with "a good salary," said Baizabal, "we want simple things we have the right to, like clean water." She said that workers' repeated efforts to address issues with Olivet had proven a dead end: "For me, it took a lot of courage to go to managers with our concerns. And then we kept doing it, and every time, they ignored us."

Following the May filing of the complaint – which included fifteen photos taken by workers – activists allege that Olivet responded with an intimidation campaign. "They're watching us all the time," said Baizabal. Workers charge that management has installed twenty-nine surveillance cameras and begun following activist workers. They allege that the company has retaliated by cutting employees' hours and implied that they could lose their jobs. And they say Olivet instituted new rules restricting health and safety discussions, and regular meetings to discourage organizing.

Today's strike follows work stoppages by workers at two other Walmart-contracted warehouses last fall – one at another Mira Loma facility, and the other at the Walmart distribution center in Elwood, Illinois, which organizers say handles the majority of Walmart imports to the United States. It comes as Walmart faces a new high-profile challenge to its business model – a "Large Retailer Accountability Act" passed by the Washington, D.C., City Council and currently awaiting a signature or veto by Mayor Vince Gray.

The Mira Loma warehouse strike also follows strikes by the union-backed retail workers group OUR Walmart, including a several-day walkout last month during which a hundred-some workers traveled to Arkansas for protests pegged to the company's hometown shareholder convention. The retail workers' campaign now faces perhaps its greatest challenge to date: Alleged retaliatory discipline against sixty worker activists since the June strike, including the firing of nineteen strikers. (Walmart denies singling out strikers.) While OUR Walmart held a rally (not a strike) against the alleged retaliation earlier this month in Los Angeles, the group's main response has been a series of protests targeting members of Walmart's board, including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer – an apparent effort to make Walmart's alleged crimes a liability for the high-profile tech titan. OUR Walmart actions this week are targeting Williams Capital Group CEO Christopher Williams and Community Foundation of San Francisco Chair Aída Álvarez, who also sit on Walmart's board.

Striking workers plan to rally outside the Olivet warehouse at 11 AM PST today. "We wanted to strike so they would listen to us, so that they'd hear our voice," said Baizabal. She added, "We've felt violated for a long time."

Two veteran labor lawyers will be President Barack Obama's new picks to serve on the National Labor Relations Board as part of an agreement to win confirmation for several of his stalled appointees, two Democratic officials said Tuesday.

Obama intends to nominate Nancy Schiffer, who retired last year as an associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, and Kent Hirozawa, currently the chief counsel to the NLRB's chairman, said the officials, who disclosed the developments on condition of anonymity because they were not free to speak about the events by name.

The two would replace Richard Griffin and Sharon Block, whom Obama installed as recess appointments that bypassed the Senate. The appointments have been ruled invalid by an appeals court.

Democratic lawmakers are hoping the two can win Senate confirmation by the end of next week, an extraordinary turnaround time for a vetting process that usually takes months. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said there would be a hearing for the two next Tuesday, followed by a committee vote Wednesday. The full Senate would begin taking up the nominees next Thursday, he said.

The move is part of a broader deal that averts a threat by Senate Democrats to change historic rules to make confirmation easier for some nominees. If they are confirmed, along with Mark Pearce, who has been nominated for a new term as NLRB chairman, it would prevent the virtual shutdown of the agency because of a lack of confirmed board members to rule on collective bargaining disputes between unions and companies.

Obama angered Republicans when he bypassed the Senate last year to install Griffin and Block, and they refused to consider the two for permanent appointments. But the new nominees are seen to be just as union-friendly in their outlook, and won praise from the powerful Service Employees International Union and other labor leaders eager to have a fully functioning board.

McDonalds has partnered with Visa to launch a website to help its low-wage workers making an average $8.25 an hour to budget. But while the site is clearly meant to illustrate that McDonalds workers should be able to live on their meager wages, it actually underscores exactly how hard it is for a low-paid fast food worker to get by.

The site includes a sample”‘budget journal” for McDonalds’ employees that offers a laughably inaccurate view of what it’s like to budget on a minimum wage job. Not only does the budget leave a spot open for “second job,” it also gives wholly unreasonable estimates for employees’ costs: $20 a month for health care, $0 for heating, and $600 a month for rent. It does not include any budgeted money for food or clothing.

Basically every facet of this budget is unachievable. For an uninsured person to independently buy health care, he or she must shell out on average $215 a month — just for an individual plan. While some full-time McDonald’s workers do qualify for the company’s $14 a week health plan, that offer caps coverage at $10,000 a year and is often insufficient. If that person wants to eat, “moderate” spending will run them $32 a week for themselves, and $867 a month to feed a family of four. And if a fast food worker is living in a city? Well, New York City rents just reached an average of $3,000 a month.

The sample budget is also available in Spanish. On another section of the site, it concludes, “You can have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it.”

Neither McDonalds nor Visa returned requests for comment by the time of publication.

Last year, Bloomberg News found that it would take the average McDonalds employee one million hours of work to earn as much money as the company’s CEO. This immense wage disparity in the fast food industry has sparked a series of protests and walk-outs by low-wage workers working at fast food chains around the country — in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Seattle, to name a few cities, workers from chains including KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell have spoken publicly about the need for serious wage increases across the industry.

WASHINGTON — At the heart of the rancorous showdown between Senate Republicans and Democrats over President Obama’s blocked political appointments is an unglamorous federal agency that polices labor practices and that has, for Republicans, become a reviled symbol of the Obama administration’s bureaucratic overreach.

The agency, the National Labor Relations Board, has functioned without a full slate of five members, and with its existing appointees in legal limbo, for Mr. Obama’s entire presidency.

This chronic disarray, experts say, has left the 80-year-old agency rudderless, throwing into doubt dozens of rulings on the nation’s thorniest labor disputes.

Republicans have never been enamored of the board, generally viewing it as a New Deal creation to foster unionism.

But their anger spiked in 2011 when the board’s acting general counsel filed a case against Boeing, asserting that its plan to open an aircraft assembly plant in South Carolina constituted illegal retaliation against the company’s workers in Washington State for repeatedly going on strike.

Although Boeing eventually settled the case with the board, Republicans accused it of discriminating against states in the South that were attracting investment from more heavily unionized states.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, denounced the agency as “the Grim Reaper of job creation,” and said he would place an indefinite hold on labor board nominations to prevent it from making any major decisions.

“The N.L.R.B. is a four-letter word in South Carolina,” Mr. Graham said in a telephone interview on Monday, explaining his refusal to allow a vote on Mr. Obama’s nominees. “I do understand that they need to exist, but they’ve sort of been a rogue organization.”

With Washington in an era of extreme partisanship, it is perhaps unsurprising that Republicans, supported by their business allies, have declared war on the agency that is linked most closely to corporate America’s longtime nemesis, organized labor.

For some in the labor movement, the Republicans’ anger toward the board is less about any specific legal action than a wholesale assault on the New Deal-era laws that underpin its work.

“There’s a breakdown of what used to be a consensus that the workers should have a right to organize, that this should be protected by the government, and that collective bargaining is a good thing for the country,” said Craig Becker, a labor lawyer and former member of the labor board who is now general counsel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

The politics goes both ways, as Mr. Becker’s experience demonstrates. Senate Democrats refused to confirm some of President George W. Bush’s nominees to the board in his final year in office, and Republicans responded in kind when Mr. Obama nominated Mr. Becker, who was then an outside lawyer for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Service Employees International Union.

With Mr. Becker’s nomination hung up, Mr. Obama named him to be the board March 2010 when Congress was in recess.

Republicans dug in when they refused to confirm Mr. Obama’s subsequent nominees. In January 2012, the president made three more recess appointments to the board.

But in January of this year, a federal appeals court ruled that those appointments were unconstitutional. The board is likely to shrink to just two members next month, leaving it without the quorum of three needed to conduct business like enforcing its rulings, or those of its offices across the country.

“The situation we’re seeing now is really unprecedented,” said David L. Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John’s University. “There was a period of chronic vacancies that was as much the fault of the Democrats as the Republicans. But we really haven’t seen a showdown like this in modern history.” The White House reiterated Monday that Republicans were “needlessly and systematically” obstructing the president’s nominees, arguing that he had put forward a full bipartisan set of candidates in April.

“Republicans want to make this an ideological fight in an effort to dismantle the agency,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “If the Senate fails to act, the board will lose a quorum in August and be unable to function, which is exactly what Republicans are seeking.”

In addition to the Boeing case, Republicans complain that the board has ordered businesses to post notices informing employees of their right to unionize, and has issued new rules to streamline and speed up unionization elections — making it easier, in theory, for workers to organize.

Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the N.L.R.B. was far too chummy with organized labor. “We think this labor board is more liberal than virtually any prior board, and they were improperly appointed to begin with,” he said.

Some labor experts say Republicans are also motivated by simple political calculations, confronted by a Democratic president who is proposing nominees with close ties to labor.

“Republicans like to go after unions because unions support Democrats,” said Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard.

The agency, he said, has played an important role by intervening to protect workers’ rights to unionize — punishing employers that illegally fire workers for supporting a union or that unlawfully threaten to close a factory if employees vote to form a union.

The board has jurisdiction over industries with about 100 million employees, including seven million who are union members. As union membership has dwindled, the board has asserted its power to protect nonunion workers, issuing rules that make it illegal for companies to punish workers for communicating on Facebook or by e-mail about their wages or bosses.

“Whether you already have a union, or you’re trying to form a union, or you’re having a conversation with a co-worker about problems you face on the job, the N.L.R.B. is the only place you can go to protect your rights at work,” said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America.

I have been fascinated with the Civil Rights Movement for a very long time. When I was born in 1971, the movement was over and the Civil Rights Act had passed, opening up many doors for me as an African-American woman.

But now in North Carolina, the Republican-dominated administration is regressing the people of this state back to the days of Jim Crow.

They have put forth a very radical agenda: restricting voting rights, cutting Medicaid for 500,000 people, raising taxes on 900,000 working poor, cutting pre-school for 30,000 low-income children, and rejecting federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation—causing 70,000 to lose their unemployment benefits and thousands of others’ benefits to be cut.

For the first time in my life, I am seeing the people of North Carolina come together, to fight this radical agenda by protesting at Moral Mondays. Thousands of people come out each week to say No.

I attended July 1 in support of the unemployed. A cousin affected by these cuts attended with me. After working in manufacturing for 21 years, the industry she worked for moved to Mexico, leaving her jobless in this economy.

Her situation has opened her eyes to how important it is to be involved in social and political issues. At this particular Monday, it is speculated that 1,500 to 2,000 people attended, and nearly 100 were arrested.

My cousin and I understood how our brothers and sisters in the ’60s felt when they came together to fight the “Goliath” of their day.

Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, has vowed to continue having Moral Mondays as long as it takes to repeal this radical agenda. A very positive thing that is coming out of this movement is that labor unions are joining the fight, which may open up some doors for them in the future.

Moral Mondays continue to bring people together from all different backgrounds. We are uniting to insist that North Carolina represent all of its people, instead of a few.

Scabby is a mainstay of union protests in Chicago, a giant inflatable rat meant to shame companies that use nonunion workers.

Scabby, however, met his match this weekend when an angry worker stabbed it with a box cutter and then ran over the deflated rodent with his car, prosecutors said. The worker was trying to get past the rat during a Downtown dispute with a Teamsters organizer.

The Scabby slashing hit George Koukos hard, though. Police charged the 43-year-old Wauconda resident with a felony and locked him up.

It happened, prosecutors said, as Teamsters Union demonstrators gathered outside 20 S. Clark St. on Sunday.

Koukos tried to leave work, but got into an argument with a Local 705 organizer about whether he was a union member.

Koukos tried to leave, but the giant rat was blocking his exit, according to court records. When the union organizer refused to move the rat, Koukos pulled out a box cutter and stuck it into Scabby.

The air rushed out as Koukos got into his vehicle and ran over the deflated rat, according to court records.

According to the Inflatable Rat's Facebook page, it stands "about 8 feet tall, is grey and fed up!"

Scabby pops up whenever union demonstrators want to draw public attention to nonunion employers and contractors.

Historically, the Teamsters Union, which represents a range of blue collar workers and professionals, has a reputation for intimidation, even violence. 

On Sunday, instead of taking matters into their own hands, union organizers called police. The judge setting bail for Koukos took note.

"Teamsters have refined themselves, haven't they," Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. said during a bond hearing Wednesday.

Koukos was originally charged with a misdemeanor. But after the state's attorney's office dropped those charges this week, Koukos was arrested again on felony charges as he left a courtroom at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse.

Koukos is now charged with criminal damage to property and aggravated assault. Bourgeois set his bail Wednesday at $100,000.

Unity talks currently are taking place between the AFL-CIO and the United Food and Commercial Workers, but no agreement has been reached for UFCW to reaffiliate with the federation, a UFCW spokeswoman told BNA July 10.

Asked about news reports that delegates to UFCW's convention in Chicago next month will be asked to vote on reaffiliation with the federation, UFCW spokeswoman Jill Cashen told BNA that President Joe Hansen has advocated for reunification for many years in many forums. While unity talks are ongoing, Cashen said, “there is nothing to announce today.”

When asked July 10 about the news reports, an AFL-CIO spokeswoman deferred to UFCW.

Several labor sources told BNA that an agreement on reaffiliation is “close,” but final details have to be worked out. Whether a deal can be reached by the time the UFCW convention opens Aug. 12 remains to be seen.

In 2005, UFCW was one of seven unions that disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win Federation (146 DLR AA-1, 8/1/05).

In addition to UFCW, those unions included the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union, UNITE HERE, the Laborers' International Union of North America, the United Farm Workers, and the Carpenters and Joiners of America, which disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in 2001.

At the time of the split, the CTW unions said the labor movement needed to put more emphasis on organizing rather than politics. Officials on both sides also attributed the split to a dispute over who would control and lead the federation (142 DLR AA-1, 7/26/05).

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has made reunifying the labor movement a top priority of his administration since he was first elected in 2009 (130 DLR A-11, 7/10/09).

Since then, two of the seven Change to Win unions have reaffiliated with the AFL-CIO. UNITE HERE rejoined the AFL-CIO in September 2009 (179 DLR C-1, 9/18/09), while the Laborers rejoined the AFL-CIO in October 2010 (157 DLR A-11, 8/16/10). The Carpenters stopped giving per capita payments to CTW in November 2008, but never announced its disaffiliation from the federation until queried by BNA in September 2009 (174 DLR A-5, 9/11/09). It remains an independent union.

Craig Davis, a former forklift operator at a Hostess cake plant in Emporia, Kan., has been unemployed since November, when the Twinkies maker shut its factories and began liquidation proceedings.

He could have applied to get his old job back now that the plant is churning out Twinkies, Zingers and Ding Dongs in preparation for a July 15 return to store shelves. But he said the current starting salary of about $11 an hour, with the chance to bump it to $14, is "a slap in the face."

"When I left, I was making $16.53 an hour, so I just didn't see the point," said Mr. Davis, who worked at the plant for almost 22 years.

Eight months after Hostess closed amid labor strife, its former workers have had divergent paths, but many of them have failed to regain their previous income levels. Hostess moved to liquidate in November shortly after the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Millers International Union went on strike in response to a new contract imposed on them at a bankruptcy court's direction. The bakers balked at the company's cessation of pension contributions. Hostess later admitted to using wages that were supposed to help fund pensions for the company's operations.

C. Dean Metropoulos, chief executive and co-owner of the new Hostess, where the workforce currently isn't unionized, said the company has "put together an excellent and competitive wage and benefits program for our employees."

Some former Hostess workers who belonged to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters still blame the baker's union for the company's demise.

"We might still have our jobs if they didn't go on strike in November," says Scott Quenneville, a former Hostess delivery driver and Teamster in Detroit.

The 42-year-old father of three said he's gotten just one job offer as a driver for a food company 72 miles away, offering only $527 a week. It would have cost him $300 to $400 a week in gas to commute, so he passed. He expects he'll have to move out of state to find work. He and his wife are falling behind on house and utility payments.

Luigi Peruzzi, another former Hostess driver in Detroit, is now delivering Frito-Lay chips as a salaried employee filling in when other drivers are on vacation. The 49-year-old expects he might get his own route in a year, enabling him to earn commissions.

For now, he's making $700 a week, about half the nearly $1,400 he was making at Hostess.

Mr. Peruzzi said he feels fortunate to have a job, but "Trying to stretch that money across all my bills is pretty tough." The Hostess episode, he said, "is like a distant bad memory now."

The 42-year-old father of three said he's gotten just one job offer as a driver for a food company 72 miles away, offering only $527 a week. It would have cost him $300 to $400 a week in gas to commute, so he passed. He expects he'll have to move out of state to find work. He and his wife are falling behind on house and utility payments.

Some former Hostess employees are better off. James Jones, who had worked at a Lenexa, Kan., bakery for almost 26 years, found a new job as a machine operator at a nearby Unilever ULVR.LN +0.72% PLC plant. Mr. Jones, 52, said he earns almost $2 an hour more than his $16.32 hourly wage at Hostess, and has better benefits.

As a bakers union member who had voted to strike, he said, "I have no regrets."

Mr. Davis, the former forklift operator, said he's hoping for a job at a power plant after he finishes his associate's degree in power-plant technology next year from a vocational school he's attending through a government retraining program.

His house is paid for and his two kids are grown, so he and his wife can get by on her salary as a registered nurse for a while. Mr. Davis, 45, considers himself lucky, but worries about retirement. Had Hostess continued contributing to its employee pension plan, Mr. Davis says he would have been eligible to collect about $1,800 a month starting at age 55. Now expects to draw only $500 a month.