Lynette's Syllabus Section

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry that I'm late ith this- I was involved in a car accident yesterday. Not to worry- all is well and I have a syllabus section to present to you.

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry that I'm late ith this- I was involved in a car accident yesterday. Not to worry- all is well and I have a syllabus section to present to you.


My proposed title is: The Greater Labor Movement Today

1. In order to give the fact that the labor movement is not just in the US, this article is a list of recent events in the labor movement around the world. More current events and contemporary events can be found at the Worker’s World website: http://www.workers.org/ww/index.html

Andy Mclnerney . “Workers Around the World.” Workers World News Service, Feb. 1996.

http://www.workers.org/ww/1996/fileout66.html




2. AFL-CIO is the federation of America’s unions. It is international and serves 11 million members, including 2.5 million members in Working America. Their FAQ page provides answers to questions such as “In this day and age, why do we still need unions?” and their Unions101 page provides a quick guide to what unions do for people today. The local unions page provides union contacts in California.


These are all short; 2 - 3 pages at most, and the contact page is more for reference than reading material.



AFL-CIO. “Unions101”. 2009. http://aflcio.org/joinaunion/union101.cfm

AFL-CIO. “Unions Facts”. 2009. http://aflcio.org/aboutus/faq/

AFL-CIO. “Your Local Union Movement (California)”. 2009. http://aflcio.org/aboutus/unioncities/clcfind.cfm?state=CA

3. Recently, workers have had issues with FedEx and their employee policies. Many workers are mislabeled as private contractors, and thereby denied the protection which comes with the title of “employee”. For example, FedEx has a discrimination policy to protect employees, but not private contractors. The article discusses anti-union propaganda posted, managers intimidate employees, question results of elections, terminating those who ask for union, bribery by improving conditions, etc.

The article contains personal stories as well as facts about the companies; I feel that this piece really makes the labor movement real since FedEx is such a big corporation. We could assign the entire article, but I especially liked the Anti-Civil Rights and Anti-Union Campaign sections and feel that they could stand alone.

Article Summary: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/publications/general/fed-up-with-fedex.html

Anti-Civil Rights: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/dmdocuments/ARAWReports/fedupwithfedex.pdf pages 13 - 18

Anti-Union Campaign: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/dmdocuments/ARAWReports/fedupwithfedex.pdfpages 19 – 24


Johansson, Erin. “Fed Up with FedEx: How FedEx Ground Tramples Workers' Rights at Civil Rights.” American Rights at Work, 2007.

4. For my media, I found a clip from Stephen Colbert’s show called “The Word: Solidarity”. It is a satire on arguments given against having unions and the solutions which corporations are offering as alternatives to allowing unions for their workers.

Colbert, Stephen. “The Colbert Report: The Word – Solidarity”. Online Video Clip. American Rights at Work. http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/component/option,com_issues/Itemid,92/view,issue/id,9/



I hope that you get an idea of what I had in mind; I will bring hard copies in on Monday if you do not like to view the pages online.


Lynette