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Posts published by “Dick Meister”

Labor’s Small Business Friends

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other outspo­ken foes of organized labor like to claim that small busi­ness owners are as anti-union as the notoriously anti-union Chamber and its big business members. But don't you…

The Invaluable Legacy Of Willard Wirtz

Never has there been a greater champion of US workers than former Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, who died on April 24 at 98. Certainly in more than a half-century of covering labor, I’ve never…

Obits For Sale

Like most daily newspapers these days, the San Francisco Chronicle is hustling to increase declining profit margins. But let me offer some advice to my former employer: Quit gouging grieving readers as part of your…

‘We Need Jobs! Now!’

Of all the ideas out there on how to pull us out of the economic mess we’re in, none makes more sense than the program laid out by the AFL-CIO and a coalition of civil…

A Czech Miracle

It’s a time of celebration in Prague this month. A time to mark the November day 20 years ago when the “Velvet Revolution” erupted. A time to mark the beginning of the end of the…

Labor Hampered By ‘Vetoes Of Silence’

Nothing is more basic to our democratic society than the principle of majority rule. But what if the eligible voters who fail to cast ballots were automatically recorded as voting “no”? Ridiculous as it sounds,…

The Endless Censoring Of Labor

Did you know about the Bush administration’s rot­ten treatment of the air traffic controllers whose work is essential to air safety? That controllers were forced to work long, fatiguing shifts with little time to rest?…

A Bloody Day in San Francisco

San Franciscans are observing the 75th anniversary of “Bloody Thursday” this year — that day in July of 1934 when open warfare raged on the city’s waterfront, a key day in the struggle of workers…

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