Obama nominates pro-labor individuals to National Labor Relations Board

If the Senate confirms the nominations, the National Labor Relations Board may finally have a majority of members who believe the agency should be protecting workers' rights to organize and join unions. The nominees are:

Craig Becker, Nominee for Board Member, National Labor Relations Board
Craig Becker currently serves as Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale College in 1978 and received his J.D. in 1981 from Yale Law School where he was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school he clerked for the Honorable Donald P. Lay, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. For the past 27 years, he has practiced and taught labor law. He was a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law between 1989 and 1994 and has also taught at the University of Chicago and Georgetown Law Schools. He has published numerous articles on labor and employment law in scholarly journals, including the Harvard Law Review and Chicago Law Review, and has argued labor and employment cases in virtually every federal court of appeals and before the United States Supreme Court.

Mark Pearce, Nominee for Board Member, National Labor Relations Board
Mark Gaston Pearce has been a labor lawyer for his entire career. He is one of the founding partners of the Buffalo, New York law firm of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux where he practices union side labor and employment law before state and federal courts and agencies including the N.Y.S. Public Employment Relations Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the National Labor Relations Board. Pearce in 2008 was appointed by the NYS Governor to serve as a Board Member on the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals, an independent quasi-judicial agency responsible for review of certain rulings and compliance orders of the NYS Department of Labor in matters including wage and hour law. Pearce has taught several courses in the labor studies program at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations Extension. He is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Prior to 2002, Pearce practiced union side labor law and employment law at Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria LLP. From 1979 to 1994, he was an attorney and District Trial Specialist for the NLRB in Buffalo, NY. Pearce received his J.D. from State University of New York, and his B.A. from Cornell University.

Statehood Countdown #16 (1955 ILWU Biennial Convention)

Aug 6th, 2009 by Arnie Saiki

Continuing our Statehood Hawaiiʻs “Statehood Countdown,” weʻre looking at four resolutions delivered to the ILWU Local 142, 2nd Biennial Local Convention at the Hilo Armory in September 1955. The four resolutions on World Peace, World Trade, Capital Punishment, and Statehood for Hawaii.

This document not only offers insight as to what were some of the major conditions facing Hawaii and our relationship to the world in 1955, but it opens the door to our understanding of the relationship between local and international unions, the United Nations, and the cold war.

Go to Statehood Countdown.

July 2009 - ILWU Origins in 1934 Strike

An exhibit in the San Francisco Public Library's History Center features the the birth of the ILWU in the 1934 strike.The following is taken from their website.

Featured Exhibition: The Men Along the Shore and the Legacy of 1934

At the beginning of the 20th Century, employers launched an all-out campaign to crush the labor movement. Union organizers were portrayed as un-American in the media and union members were subjected to a reign of terror, including vigilante violence, mass arrests, deportations and lynchings. Radical union leaders were driven underground and many workers were forced to join company unions.

In 1934 the workers fought back. The Pacific Coast Maritime Strike and the subsequent San Francisco General Strike are some of the most significant events in San Francisco and U.S. labor history. In a new exhibition in the Skylight Gallery - The Men Along the Shore and the Legacy of 1934 - historic photographs, graphics and newspapers will tell the story of how longshoremen, considered little more than transients at the time, stood up and made history. The exhibition will be on view through August 31 on the Sixth Floor of the Main Library.

Boycott the Pacific Beach Hotel

Do not patronize the Pacific Beach Hotel

Support our brothers and sisters of the Pacific Beach Hotel in their long struggle to organize under the ILWU and negotiate a first contract. On Dec. 1, 2007, HTH Corp. fired 32 workers, many of the top union supporters, and refused to recognize the union. NLRB hearings on the charges against the company concluded in March 2009. The administrative law judge who presided over the hearings should be issuing a decision soon. Check out their boycott site website.