Freelancers of the World, Unite!
Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union, contends that a union is a means for workers to join together to solve problems. In order to reach this goal, unions need to be “independent of government, employers and other institutions.” The Union is focused on providing health care, education and advocacy services. Its next project is portable pensions. (Subscription required.)

Serious Players in Learning
 Trade unions in the U.K. are engaged in a battle “to expand the minds of workers,” the social and economic importance of which has been recognized the government, which now helps to fund union learning initiatives. Despite the success of these programs,  employer resistance lingers.

Unionizing White-Collar Workers
With wages stagnating nationwide, economic anxiety has hit not just the low-wage workers who usually feel the brunt of economic uncertainty. It's also affecting highly skilled professionals.

What China Needs Now: Unions
The U.S. trade gap with China is booming, and steps like revaluing the Chinese currency won't help. What we really need is for Chinese workers to earn more.

Who Speaks for Employees? It's Certainly Not Management
As the union voice has become weaker, this democracy of ours has become more fragile. Employees who believe that they don't need a collective voice are just wrong, based on the record. Democracies suffer when there is an absence of countervailing power in the society. That is where we are now.

Unions Must Evolve To Attract Professionals
Additional coverage of the March 2005 DPE conference on Organizing Professionals in the 21st Century, in which the ASI acted as collaborator.

Half the World's Workers Denied Fundamental Rights
A May 2004 report by the International Labor Organization showed that the rights to freedom of association and to bargain collectively are not guaranteed to half of the world's workers. The report also in-cludes a sampling of worker rights abuses around the world.

Learning to Organize
This pamphlet from the British labor movement places training and skills development at the center of a campaign to reinvigorate unions. Providing workers with the skills they need for the new economy, it argues, makes unions more valuable to their members, business and the economy as a whole. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

Professional Workers Joining Unions in Record Numbers
A record number of professional and technical workers are joining unions—nearly 30 percent of all new union members, according to this AFL-CIO report, Rising Tide: Professionals, The New Face of America’s Unions. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

Changing Courses
A new report examines the instructional innovations that can help low-income workers succeed in community college.

World Bank: Unions Are Good for World Economies
Despite the World Bank's historic antipathy toward labor, this 2003 report finds that both workers and their nations' economies benefit from high unionization rates. Workers gain from higher wages, shorter working hours, and more training, as compared to their nonunion counterparts. Economies gain from lower unemployment and inflation rates, higher productivity, and faster adjustment to economic shocks.
&Read  this report. (Requires Adobe Acrobat)

The Next Crisis: Too Few Workers
Even as the US economy struggles and unemployment climbs, demographers have begun to talk about a looming skills shortage. No kidding. Here's what the experts say.

Globalization and Its Discontents
A thoughtful review of Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stigletz's recent book, which argues that mistaken IMF and World Bank policies may worsen the plight of  developing nations.

Working Man Blues
A self-proclaimed "worker's paradise," how will China's rulers deal with growing (and increasingly organized) worker unrest?

At a time when some forecast a declining role for unions, growing numbers of professional, technical, and contingent workers are joining union ranks. These men and women are gaining an increasingly influential voice in the workplace and within the labor movement. Through this new voice, they are also attempting to address many of the larger issues affecting workers in the new economy. These issues—including a desire to improve the quality of their work, the need to keep pace with changing technologies and a globalizing economy, workplace flexibility, threats to professional autonomy, and the wish to work collaboratively with employers—go far beyond traditional union concerns. The Albert Shanker Institute promotes discussions and sponsors research to explore new structures, services, and roles for unions as they work to meet these challenges. The following are among these efforts:

"Should Labor and the Democrats Revive the Muscular Liberalism of Al Shanker"
On Feb. 20, the Albert Shanker Institute, Freedom House, and the Progressive Policy Institute co-sponsored a forum in Washington, D.C., titled “Should Labor and the Democrats Revive the Muscular Liberal Internationalism of Albert Shanker?” in which participants talked about Shanker’s stance and influence on numerous international questions. Presenters recalled Shanker’s work with Lane Kirkland, former AFL-CIO president, Thomas R. Donahue, former AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and president, Tom Kahn, special assistant to Kirkland and later AFL-CIO international affairs director, and Irving Brown, to help ensure the survival of the independent Polish union Solidarnosc, bring down apartheid in South Africa, restore political and trade union rights in Chile, build free trade unions in Eastern Europe after the demise of communism there, and promote academic freedom. Shanker built one of the best international affairs operations in the labor movement within the AFT and built a project called Education for Democracy/ International, designed to help teacher unions in Eastern Europe, Nicaragua, South Africa, and other countries teach using more honest, liberal curricula than they had known under authoritarian regimes. Panelists differed on the degree to which Shanker’s labor internationalism had declined within the labor movement, but most agreed much more could be done, both in terms of labor’s international role and also within the Democratic Party. For more on this, see a St. Louis Dispatch item. The remarks made at the forum by Herb Magidson, former vice president of AFT and chair of its Democracy Committee, and current member of the Shanker Institute’s board of directors are available here).

Workforce Development Study Trip to the U.K.

As part of its on-going effort to explore innovative and successful unions models, the Shanker Institute hosted its third study trip to the U.K. to review the nationwide “learning representatives” program administered by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and its affiliated unions. This program, called UnionLearn, offers workers access to lifelong on-the-job learning services. The group, which was led by AFT and Shanker Institute President Ed McElroy and Executive Vice President Toni Cortese, also included Ken Brynien York State Public Employees Federation), John McDonald (Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers), Marcia Reback Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals), and Randi Weingarten and Aminda Gentile from the United Federation of Teachers. With this trip, representatives from all AFT constituency groups and all AFT officers have had a chance to review the program. Trip participants met with learning representatives, union leaders, learning representative trainers, the General Secretary of the TUC, and a number of TUC officials who administer UnionLearn. The group heard from leaders of the three British teachers unions and representatives of the public and service employees union, a communications workers union, and a transportation worker union. The group found a labor movement deeply committed to building a learning representative program that helps unions reach and attract members by giving them on-the-job educational supports and that holds a special appeal for younger members, ethnic minorities, and women — groups that have historically been underrepresented among the ranks of union activists. British labor leaders told the AFT group that workers are more likely to join and become more engaged with unions when they offer concrete assistance with career development and job training, as well as guidance about opportunities for further education. They said that the new face of unionism generated by this emphasis has helped improve the public’s perception of unions and stabilize membership numbers. The group came away from the experience wanting to explore the idea of AFT learning representative pilot programs, both for the possible benefits to the AFT and as a means to provide the broader U.S. labor movement with a U.S.-based model. The Institute is currently arranging a series meeting of all those who have been to the U.K. to decide on next steps.