Ottowa's Jeffrey Monaghan Is No Anarchist!!!!11

Not an anarchist
The Leader-Post
Saturday, June 16, 2007

I am writing to correct the inaccurate use of the label "anarchist" as applied to me in the CanWest News Service article, "Former employee goes public about arrest" (Leader-Post, May 11.)

Contrary to its assertion, at no time have I self-identified as an anarchist.

Though I share many of the ideals of anarchism -- mutual aid, self-determination, equality and freedom, for example -- I decidedly eschew labels and identity politics.

My ethical standpoint is my own and not that of any ideology.support people, not ideology.

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ABC News Scum Insults Brave Congress Hotel Strikers

After four years, union workers and Congress Hotel are still at odds
By Ben Bradley
ABC 7 Chicago

June 15, 2007 - Four years ago Friday, workers walked off the job at Chicago's Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue.

On Friday night, dozens of housekeepers, waiters and other workers continued to walk the picket line demanding higher wages and improved benefits. This has become one of the longest running strikes in the nation and despite protestors with picket signs, guests continue to check-in. It is also worth mentioning that the two sides have not talked formally to resolve this matter in six months.

The number of strikers outside the Congress Hotel has ebbed and flowed over the last four years but every year on the anniversary of their walk-out, many of the original 115 strikers return. At least for one day, their numbers and spirits are bolstered by their union.

"This has been a tremendous strain for my family life," said Danny, a striking banquet server. "I have had to change my whole lifestyle completely because I lost my job."

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Lunch Ladies Rise up

Lunch ladies just looking for a little respect
They serve the food, monitor lunchrooms and feel invisible
June 3, 2007
BY MARK BROWN
Chicago Sun-Times Columnist

The lunch lady knows. The lunch lady knows when the kids aren't going to eat the meal she's been instructed to serve that day, and she knows when she's setting out food that they'll eat but probably shouldn't because of its negligible nutritional value.

The lunch lady knows which kids are vegetarians and which are diabetic. She knows who has a peanut allergy and who gets two meals because they're homeless.

She may not have a master's degree, but the lunch lady knows which kids mind their manners at school, and which ones go hungry at home because their parents are hooked on drugs.

'They treat us like we're not there'

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Zabalaza on Public Sector Strikes

ZACF Statement of Support for Public Sector Strike

This year, it was recommended by the Independent (state) Commission for the Remunaration of Public Office Bearers that President Thabo Mbeki get a 57,3% pay rise, taking his total package from R1,1-million to R1,8-million annually. The Commission also recommended that Members of Parliament receive a total of R650,000 annually. Compare this to the insulting 6% wage increase initially offered by the state to public sector workers, one of whom, a hospital clerk, told us she fed five mouths with an annual take-home salary of under R12,000.

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (southern Africa) supports the public sector strikers in South Africa, not just in their demand for a wage increase of 12%, which has now been reduced to 10%, but also in their struggle to improve the standard of all public sector services. We call on all workers and community members to show their support for this strike, as it is not just about wages but an attempt to raise the quality of public services provided to us all.

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Metalworkers on African Unions

Building sustainable unions in Africa

The IMF regional office in Africa works closely with affiliates to build international solidarity, strengthen trade unions and improve the lives of workers. As described in this report, the challenges are enormous requiring a strategic focus on building sustainable unions as can be seen in Tanzania and Swaziland.

REPORT BY STEPHEN NHLAPO

Successive waves of political, cultural and economic colonization and global power struggles have left Africa an economic shell. Today, human and mineral resources are extracted and small pockets of industrialisation remain to support the ongoing plunder. Alongside this, vast ghettos of poverty and suffering exist.

The countries that make up Africa are a diverse grouping in terms of geography, population size, language, wealth, distribution of wealth, life expectancy, health, public sector resources, trade union size and cohesion, labour market size and HIV prevalence.

The depth and deepening of poverty in many African countries has often not served to mobilize workers and their organisations but has in fact weakened them both politically and organisationally.

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Russia: Mikhail Chesalin, dockers' leader, stabbed and beaten

Russia: Mikhail Chesalin, dockers' leader, stabbed and beaten
LabourStart

On Thursday June 7, Mikhail Chesalin, the chairman of the local Dockers Union of Russia in Kaliningrad, was savagely stabbed and beaten outside the union office. An unknown number of assailants attacked Chesalin when he got out of his car at 10:30am local time, stabbing him numerous times in the spine, and beating him severely about the head. He was left lying face-down, unconscious, in a pool of blood.

Chesalin's colleagues believe that the attack was orchestrated by Vladimir Kalinichenko, the General Director of the Sea Commercial Port where the dockworkers' union is currently running an organizing campaign. The union has been in a bitter fight with Kalinichenko for ten years, after Kalinichenko made it his personal goal to destroy the union following their 1997 strike – their battle, and the workers determination has become a symbol of Russia’s young, struggling independent trade union movement. Since April, the union has been conducting an unprecedented organizing drive among the workers in the Kaliningrad port to change a miserly and arbitrary wage system, and win respect and a voice on the job. Kalinichenko has tried to break up every union event by sending his personal "security" forces, together with local thugs, to spy on and intimidate workers.

Mikhail Chesalin is known throughout the region, country, and world, as one of Russia's foremost defenders of workers' rights – the dockworkers' case has received the attention of the ILO, the European Court for Human Rights, and most of all the attention of Kaliningrad residents, who voted for Chesalin when he ran directly against Kalinichenko in 2006 – with 13 times less money, Chesalin received four times the votes of Kalinichenko to be elected as a deputy to the regional parliament. In that sense this attack is not only on free trade unionism, but on an independent governmental representative.

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CtW Rocks the Capital Strategies

'Broker Votes': Opponents May Win One

NYSE and SEC Look To Rein In the Practice; Criticizing CVS Election
By KARA SCANNELL
Wall Street Journal

Investors who are growing increasingly vocal about the performance of executives and directors may soon get a boost, as the role of shareholder votes cast by brokers comes under closer scrutiny.

In routine matters at annual meetings, such as the election of uncontested directors, shares not voted by shareholders can instead be voted by the brokers who hold those shares, any way they want. That's created controversy in some votes recently, and has gained the attention of regulators, some of which are pushing for a change.

This question arose most recently in the case of Minnesota businessman Roger Headrick, who was re-elected to the board of CVS Caremark Corp. last month after receiving 606 million votes, or 57.2% of the total cast. CtW Investment Group, an arm of Change to Win, a coalition of labor unions, says the contest was swung by 264 million "phantom" votes cast by brokers who hadn't received specific instructions from their clients.

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Free Advertisement for the Losers Across the Pond

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We want to discuss, learn from successes and failures of the past and develop strategies to increase the power we, as ordinary people, have over our own lives.

Who
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Continued...

We're back motherfuckers

Dear Comrade-Enemies,

After a lengthy hiatus our beloved P-CRAC is born anew. We are in the process of relaunching a new blog site and currently have chapters in Seattle, Chicago and New York City.

We would regret our time away from you if we had anything but disdain for McAnarchyism, its adherents and inanity... but the truth is we hate you all as much as we love you.

Yes. We love you. Like a mother that drowns her babies.

We will assimilate you or destroy you. The choice is yours.

On behalf of P-CRAC,

Thugarchist
Minister of Propaganda

ChuckO Munson "Snitchjackets" Anarchist He Dislikes

ChuckO Munson: Dastardly Villain of Infoshop Fame

Out of pure spite ChuckO Munson accuses well-known anarchist bastard, Duke Aaron, of being an FBI informant after exchanging insults on a public anarchist message board. Duke may be a fucking prick, but this is not how an anarchist deals with conflict. These type of malicious accusations destroy movements and historically, have gotten solid revolutionaries killed.

Discussion Located Here

Munson's email address is chuck@mutualaid.org and his phone number is 913.940.7426 if people would like to let him know what they think of this type of counter-revolutionary tactic.

Possibly the dumbest thing in McAnarchyism

V for Vendetta is about Anarchy
A for Anarchy

Anarchists: This Friday marks the beginning of our most important opportunity in decades to communicate with millions about the possibility of a world without capitalism or coercion. On Friday, March 17, 2006, the long awaited film version of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel, V for Vendetta, will premier throughout the US. V for Vendetta is the story of an anarchist who dismantles a fascist state through propaganda of the deed, inspiring the masses to revolt with a vision of building an anarchist future. The book’s protagonist does not simply promote vague anti-authoritarianism or nondescript appeals to “question authority” but explicitly and compellingly calls for the masses to eliminate the state and replace it with anarchy.


Unsurprisingly, this radical message has been lost in the translation to Hollywood’s watered-down film version. Warner Bros. presents a hero rebelling against fascism and advocating “freedom”, yet never suggests that until the state is destroyed, no one will truly be free. Alan Moore has described the script of the film as “rubbish” and had demanded that his name be removed from it.

Time and again, anarchists have seen our message distorted, our comrades martyred, and our stories erased by the corporate and governmental
servants of the ruling class. We cannot allow this to happen again!

An ad hoc group of anarchists in New York City have launched AforAnarchy.com, a website and education campaign designed to reinject anarchist politics into V for Vendetta and radicalize audiences of the film.

We are calling for anarchists everywhere to use the film as an opportunity for education and dialogue. Through the use of literature, speakouts, lit tables, and street theater outside movie theaters showing the film, we can inspire moviegoers leaving the film to join the fight for a stateless society. In New York, we will begin doing these things at sneak previews on March 16th and will continue at theaters for the duration of the films’s run in theaters.

To this end, we have created a number of ideas and tools that we hope you will find helpful. (Further information and downloads can be found
at AforAnarchy.org in the Contact & Press section):

* We have prepared a flyer to distribute at your local movie theater where V is showing revealing the graphic novel’s anarchist politics and encouraging moviegoers to embrace anarchy. We’ve deliberately kept the politics fairly general in an attempt to create a document that can represent anarchists of all tendencies.

Feel free to modify it to suit the needs of your local community. And of course, if you don’t like this flyer, by all means, create one that you prefer.

* Engage audience through costumed role playing of “deleted scenes”—acting out portions of the graphic novel where V speaks in support of anarchy.

* We have designed sticker mock-ups to promote the website that you can download, print on sticker paper, and stick all sorts of places. Of course, we DO NOT suggest that you put them on V for Vendetta movie ads, as this would be vandalism, and vandalism is against the law.

* While many of us are skeptical of the corporate and in some cases even the alternative media, they can be a powerful vehicle for getting the attention of large numbers of people. While we obviously can’t expect them to accurately represent our entire message, we can at least use them to pique people’s curiosity and drive people to the website, where we can present an unfiltered message, To this end, we have prepared a model press release available on the website that you can send to your local media documenting your V for Vendetta related outreach activities., and will be sending a national press release, which can include information on your local actions if you email it to adam@wetlands-preserve.org.

We invite you to use these resources and join us in any or all of the actions listed above. Our hope is to gain a nationwide, significant, and unsuspected response to the film’s release that will lead moviegoers to a far more radical place than the corporate filmmakers behind this film intended, and help to bring thousands of new people to the anarchist movement. We thank you for your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.

For Anarchy,

aforanarchy.com

(an ad hoc collective on individual members of groups like New York Metro Anarchist Alliance, NEFAC, Wetlands Activism Collective, Freegan.info, Students for A Democratic Society, Libertad Skool Collective and other groups)

A for Anarchy

Chicago Nurses Do something ambiguous

CHICAGO NURSES JOIN NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO END NURSING CRISIS
SEIU

CHICAGO—Registered nurses in the Chicago area are joining nurses from across the country to advocate for real solutions to the nation’s patient care crisis. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced the launch of the new Nurse Alliance of SEIU, a distinct national membership organization by, for and of nurses. The Nurse Alliance of SEIU also announced the launch of a national campaign, Value Care, Value Nurses, focusing on improving the quality patient care and bringing nurses back to the bedside.

Today the Nurse Alliance of SEIU also released a white paper by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), emphasizing the importance of registered nurses in the delivery of quality patient care and the ways in which poor conditions in hospitals are devaluing these worthy caregivers. The paper cites low pay, short staffing, and mandatory overtime as conditions that have caused nurses to leave the bedside and shows how raising nurse salaries will help to draw more nurses to the profession.

“Over 83,000 registered nurses chose to leave the bedside right here in Illinois. It is time that we start addressing the real reasons and commit to real solutions to bring them back. The future of patient care and the nursing profession both depend on it,” said Karen Backus, RN, Director of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU-Illinois.

The IWPR report found that, nationally, 35 percent of employed nurses who are not working in nursing are in positions of higher pay and 46 percent of them find better hours in other work environments.

In the spirit of unity, the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) and the Nurse Alliance of SEIU-Illinois will be convening a round table of registered nurses with area legislators and other officials on Monday, April 3rd to discuss possible solutions to the nursing crisis.

“There is a 9% RN vacancy rate in our state, and we as nurses know why RNs are leaving the bedside and what it is going to take to keep them there. We look forward to the opportunity to discuss it with legislators,” said Sandra Robinson, RN, who works at the Chicago Department of Public Health and chairs the INA E&GW Commission.

Parties interested in the April 3rd event should contact Karen Backus at 312.235.4739 for more information.

For more information about the Value Care, Value Nurses campaign, go to:
Nurse Alliance Midwest
Value Care Value Nurses

Go Fedaykin

Public service talks to resume Friday
BCGEU

The union representing 25,000 government employees who provide important public services in communities across the province has agreed to the provincial government’s request to return to the bargaining table. Talks are set to resume tomorrow, March 17, the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU) said today.

“I have received word from the government that they are prepared to make us the significant new offer we said we needed. If it’s an offer that addresses our members’ key issues of privatization, contracting out and fair wages, our committee is ready to work hard to get an agreement,” said George Heyman, BCGEU president.

The union stepped away from the bargaining table on Monday, March 13, after seven straight days of talks failed to result in a tentative agreement. The union has since commenced essential service negotiations with the government, in the event of a strike.

“We told the government’s negotiators on Monday that while we are committed to achieving a negotiated settlement, their last offer wasn’t going to do it,” Heyman said. “We reiterated that any deal had to address privatization and contracting out, and provide for fair wage increases that keep pace with inflation.

“The government’s last offer did not provide the assurances our members need to protect them from privatization and contracting out. And their last wage offer was far less than what we need,” Heyman said.

“I’m optimistic that the government has heard the strong message from our members who voted 80 percent in favour of strike to back our contract demands that we deserve better in this round of bargaining and are prepared to fight for it. With a new offer from government and some more hard work by both sides on key issues, there’s no reason why we can’t reach an agreement by Sunday.”

BCGEU

New Issue of Green Anarchy!

Seriously, Read the Bosses News

Hotels Counter False Union Charges -- AH&LA: Hotels Provide Competitive Wages and Generous Benefits, Union Strategy is Designed To Grow Declining Membership Ranks
Hospitality.Net

The American Hotel & Lodging Association today challenged assertions made by the "Change to Win" labor coalition about hotel workers' wages and benefits.

"Contrary to the accusations made by this group yesterday, the hotel industry provides affordable, quality health care, competitive wages that grow year after year, and generous benefits to its hardworking employees," said AH&LA President/CEO Joe McInerney, CHA. "These false claims mask 'Change to Win's' real agenda, which is to use union dues money to grow its declining membership rolls."

According to AH&LA, "Change to Win" has championed an organizing technique called "card check," which would eliminate the traditional secret ballot elections for union representation. The "Change to Win" unions want the company to agree to unionization, instead of letting employees vote on this important issue and decide for themselves. The unions have also demanded that many employers sign a "neutrality agreement," which prevents an employer from communication with employees about the pros and cons of unionization.

Continued...

P-CRAC Recommends Reading the Bosses News

Hilton Reportedly Target of Nationwide Strike Plan
By Eugene Gilligan, Senior Editor
Comercial Property News

Hilton Hotels Corp. may be targeted for a hotel strike in New York, and the lodging industry nationwide may face tough contract negotiations with their workers this year.

According to a report in today's New York Daily News, Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel and Motel Trade Council, will insist that his union conduct separate negotiations with hotel owners and with Hilton when the workers' contact expires on July 1. He added that Hilton has violated contracts with the union in the past, so he did not want it to be part of any multi-employer negotiations.

"We're a service business, and we have a long history of treating our team members fairly," a Hilton spokesperson told CPN this afternoon reacting to the report. "It's interesting that we're called a target. After Sept. 11, while other hotel companies had mass layoffs, we kept our people working."

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Lock this out mofo's

AK STEEL: Lockout 'corporate greed at its finest' says Butler, Pa., union leader
Pa., union president shares thoughts on lockout, sale rumor
The Middletown Journal

As members of the Armco Employees Independent Federation continued to staff picket lines at most of the gates at AK Steel Corp.’s Middletown Works, the president of another union paid a visit to Middletown late Friday and Saturday to get a first-hand look at what may be on the horizon for his membership.

Jim Gallagher, president of the United Auto Workers Local 3303 that represents AK employees at its Butler, Pa., facility, came down to Middletown to lend his support to the more than 2,600 AEIF employees who were locked-out Tuesday by AK after contract negotiations failed to reach a settlement.

“I just think the whole thing could have been avoided,” Gallagher said. “The company could have kept talking to the union while they kept working.”

Money AK is spending on extra security and hotels for replacement workers could have gone toward an agreement with the AEIF, he said.

“This situation is corporate greed at its finest,” he said.

As to some of the moves made by AK prior to the lockout, Gallagher said the company videotape sent to employees backfired. The video, which Gallagher said he believed was designed to intimidate employees, instead brought the AEIF closer together.

“AK Steel is a great union organizer,” Gallagher said. “(The video) showed they really don’t understand.

“Hopefully they’ll get to a settlement,” he said. “It’s early and pretty calm now. But is weighs a lot on a person to watch scabs go in each day at the plant.

“AK’s MO is to lock them out,” he said.

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'Bout time

Public union's 'award' leaves a trail of ill will
S. Renee Mitchell
The Oregonian

Four times in the past four years, Multnomah County's employees union has bestowed a Tar and Feather Award on a county manager who did something union leaders didn't like.

No one complained much about the name of the award. But for many black folks, it stirs painful memories of a not-so-long-ago time in America's history when tarring and feathering complemented lynching like jelly does a child's peanut butter sandwich.

Yet, on July 26, the union gave the Tar and Feather Award to a department led by a black man, Lolenzo Poe, who served on the Portland School Board for four years.

The county has a minuscule number of black managers. And Poe's agency, the Department of School and Community Partnerships, is one of the smallest and most ethnically diverse.

"It offended me and some others," Poe says of the award, "but because it was a union issue, I chose not to say anything. I kind of bit my tongue."

But whatever hurt feelings the award created calcified -- especially since an employee survey in 2004 implied that the county is a hostile workplace for people of color. Of the county's 4,288 employees, only 288 -- 6.7 percent -- are black.

"In its way, it was just unintentional ignorance," says Carolyn Edgett, a senior human resource analyst. "There are a couple of environments that are conducive to this kind of thing."

But life went on. Then, seven months later -- on the afternoon of the first day of Black History Month -- the issue resurfaced. A county employee passed news of the Tar and Feather Award to a manager who gave it to Edgett, who told County Chairwoman Diane Linn, who fired off a strongly written e-mail.

"I have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of behavior in the workplace," Linn writes, "and consider it to be both inappropriate and injurious."

Linn directed a few folks to meet with union leaders. Her chief operating officer, Iris Bell, who is black, acknowledges "things got heated." She adds: "Not everybody in the union was pleased with what we said."

The next day, Becky Steward, who has been union president for a little over a year, apologized. She also changed the name of the award to "Rotten Eggs," and she pulled the offensive phrase from past newsletters posted on www.local88.ws.

Steward also agreed to offer voluntary diversity training to her union leaders and general employees, especially since most of them didn't realize the term could be offensive.

Before management complained, Steward says, "I hadn't heard anyone sharing with me how insensitive and thoughtless we were about that."

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Micks with Bricks

Dublin Riots: What Happened and Why
A political analysis of the Dublin riots and why nobody saw them coming
by Joe - WSM - personal capacity

I, like almost everybody I know, didn't predict the events of Saturday. In fact the only person I know who did predict a major riot was a friend of mine who happens to hail from the wee North - in retrospect I should have realised that he had his finger on the pulse, for not only does he have much more experience of sectarian marches, but through his job he knows many of the people who were involved and has an unusual insight and sympathy for those people who most Dubliners write off as 'scumbags' and 'knackers'. This article is an analysis of what happened and why almost everybody got it so wrong. This article is a companion piece to the photo essay which I published yesterday.

I have a lot of experience of protesting and policing, having attended many of the most hyped and heavily policed events that Dublin has seen in the last decade as well as some of the biggest and most volatile international protests that have occurred around the world, both as a participant and a cameraman. From this it is obvious to me that the police were similarly completely surprised by the events of Saturday February 25th in central Dublin.

I also know that the Gardai are more than capable of policing contentious and potentially volatile protests in what would be regarded as a way that is in line with international policing norms. I was there on the Navan road when 3,000 anti-capitalist protestors made the march to Farmleigh on Mayday 2004. On that day there were thousands of police deployed and although the protestors managed to get much closer to the location of the summit than the police would have liked, the state was never in any danger of losing control of the situation. They had deployed thousands of police in riot gear, backed up by water cannon and a massive deployment of surveillance technology and they successfully contained the protestors much as their international colleagues routinely do. Therefore, I do not think that it is conceivable that the complete under-preparedness of the gardai could possibly be a result of incompetence in terms of their ability to police events - they have proved very successful at containing much bigger protests in the past....

There have been some suggestions that our power-crazed minister for justice or other sinister forces within the 26 country state may have deliberately failed to prepare adequately to police this event in order to further some security or anti-republican agenda. While I'm sure the minister for justice would love to have the power to do this, I'm also certain that he doesn't and that this theory is entirely implausible. Gardai are generally not happy to be sent out under prepared to face rioters and if there had been any inkling that a riot was likely to ensue, the guards would have been extremely unwilling - to say the least - to be used as target practice in such a scheme, pawns in the minister's power game. As it is the gardai on the ground were extremely angry and remain so that they were sent out to police a situation without anything like the resources that they would have needed to contain the situation. Furthermore, I talked to the Superintendent who appeared to be in charge of operations on the day and several ordinary gardai and they all expressed the same opinion - that they had anticipated some 'trouble' but nothing like the rioting that happened and while it is a foolish person who believes anything just because the Gardai say it is so (I remember the stream of lies and smears that the Garda press office came out with in the run up to Mayday 2004) - these reactions seemed genuine and unscripted.

Therefore, I think it is clear that the guards were genuinely taken completely by surprise by the events of the day and I think that the reasons for them being surprised were exactly the same as the reasons that I and almost all of the other political activists whom I know were similarly taken by surprise.

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Best of luck losers

AFL-CIO alters negotiation strategy
Union to hold talks with one unit in each of four industries
By BRIAN TUMULTY
Press-Gazette

Trying to reinvent itself, the AFL-CIO is taking a lesson out of the playbook of one of its member unions, the United Auto Workers, that targets one of the Big Three automakers for contract negotiations to set industry standards for pay and benefits.

AFL-CIO officials attending their federation's winter meeting said Tuesday that they are realigning the way they do business by starting four "industry coordinating committees" covering the entertainment and media industry, nurses, telecommunications and public employees.

One of them, the Arts Entertainment Media Industry Coordinating Committee, is likely to target one of the nation's broadcast networks next year for contract negotiations involving union members ranging from actors and TV newscasters to stage technicians and office workers.

Similarly, unions representing public employees have formed a coalition that is considering trying to target one or more states where they have recently lost or never had collective bargaining power. In the past year, Republican governors in Indiana, Missouri and Kentucky have abolished bargaining rights for public employees.

"We have to reinvigorate ourselves with the sense that we can protect ourselves," said Ed McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

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