Labor Watch

Labor Watch
Republicans and Big Labor: The Two Minds of Tricky Dick
Richard Nixon had voted for Taft-Hartley in Congress, but opposed efforts to establish a national right-to-work law. After his decisive but narrow victory, President Nixon pursued a middle path on…
by Michael Watson on April 23, 2025

Labor Watch
Republicans and Big Labor: Reagan-Bush and Beyond
Running away from Big Labor, most prominently by Ronald Reagan’s Transportation Department sacking illegally striking PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, did not harm the GOP.
by Michael Watson on April 23, 2025

Labor Watch
Big ESG’s Big Partner: Big Labor
“Big Labor is Everything Leftism and Everything Leftism is Big Labor.” ESG is no exception, and the Proxy Preview 2025 reveals the extent to which Big Labor is entwined in…
by Michael Watson on April 17, 2025

Labor Watch
The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: “Big” Labor in 1990
The 1990s saw a shift in the leadership of organized labor. Out went Lane Kirkland, the social democratic Cold Warrior head of the AFL-CIO since 1979, and his backers in…
by Michael Watson on April 14, 2025

Labor Watch
The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: Justice for Janitors
While the Long Decline amid the Reagan Revolution persisted, Big Labor and its increasingly militant left wing did have a silver lining that might show a path back to power…
by Michael Watson on April 14, 2025

Labor Watch
The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: Sweeney Ascends
Pressuring Kirkland into retirement was not enough for Gerald McEntee and the other leaders of labor’s left wing. They instead turned to John Sweeney of the SEIU, the architect of…
by Michael Watson on April 14, 2025

Labor Watch
The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: Sweeney’s Understudy Becomes a Rival
When Sweeney took over the AFL-CIO, he created a vacancy in the leadership of the SEIU. Richard Cordtz, Sweeney’s number two, initially took over ad interim, but Sweeney’s former campaign…
by Michael Watson on April 14, 2025

Labor Watch
The Dance of Sweeney and Stern: Stern Pushes the Button
By mid-2005, Stern, his New Unity Partnership allies, and some new allies (had had enough with the Sweeney regime. Shortly before the 50th anniversary of the union of the American…
by Michael Watson on April 14, 2025

Commentary, Labor Watch
The Teamsters’ Trojan Horse
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley presents himself as a conservative champion of working-class voters, attacking wokeness in corporations and the workplace. But that doesn’t fit the recent coziness between Hawley and…
by Michael Watson on April 9, 2025

Labor Watch
A History of Everything Leftist Unionism: The Old Left and the Reds
American labor radicalism has come a long way from Soviet agents in the Congress of Industrial Organizations through the UAW-funded Students for a Democratic Society to today’s SEIU purple-shirted demonstrators…
by Michael Watson on March 6, 2025