Blog for Workers’ Rights

About a month ago, I asked my friends in the blogosphere to write a post, sometime over Labor Day weekend, about anything having to do with work or unions. I’m collecting posts as I get them, so this post will refresh as new ones are added. Without further ado:

Particpants:

• Comfort Addict posted his thoughts about why IT professionals need a union.

• My own post, about what unionism means to me, is below.

• Penguin Unearthed posted on work-life balance in Australia (where it’s not even Labour Day!).

• Phil, one of my favorite SAHD bloggers, wrote in about his wife’s job (a topic he can’t post about on his own blog).

• Carrie posted on the ridiculous insensitivity showed by Northwest Airlines, in a memo they sent employees who were about to be laid off.

• Library Lady posted about her dissatisfaction with the union at her former place of employment.

• Jim wrote a lovely post about rewards other than money that he gets from his job.

• Jackie wrote about issues involving academics and other knowledge workers in their work lives (ah, the adjunct status!).

I also wanted to give people some useful links for more info on these subjects.

First, here’s an interesting post I read a few days ago about Apple’s iPod factories and unionism. I was somewhat surprised to see that it was written by the managing editor.

Jonathan Tasini’s blog Working Life has been doing some good work recently on the destruction of the U.S. pension system.

Nathan Newman’s Labor Blog has become more sporadic since he’s been blogging in other places, but it’s still good stuff.

Jordan Barab’s Confined Space blog is always good for a chilling story on health and safety issues on the job.

SEIU’s affiliate, Purple Ocean, has a decent blog community.

And then of course there are the two labor federations, Change to Win and the AFL-CIO.

Have a happy Labor Day, everyone. And if you’ve gotta work today, I hope you’re getting overtime.