Free Talk Live

CAW president Ken Lewenza said Monday he will join thousands of American union activists protesting outside the Michigan state legislature Tuesday (Dec. 11) over Republican efforts to ram through right-to-work legislation. “An attack on workers, regardless of any border, is an attack on the labour movement in general,” said Lewenza. “I think it’s incredibly important to let our friends in Michigan know they have the support of workers in Canada.”

This comes from Business Insider, and it provides a natural follow-up to my post from last week as to why public-sector workers are more optimistic than private-sector employees. For the first time, the US has more government workers than goods-producing workers:

RENTON, Wash. -- Police say a series of cartoons mocking officers and other city workers are criminal, and the people who posted them online are guilty of cyberstalking.

One member of the police department has already been demoted, but investigators are looking for additional parties that may be involved after another string of cartoons recently surfaced.

At a time when workers pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week's elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president's plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.

In California, a special program was designed to guard the safety of peace officers and judges by keeping their addresses private to protect them from criminals.
The program has since expanded to include legislators, city council members, county supervisors, prison employees, trial court workers, parking officers, Child Protective Services social workers, national park rangers, other groups, and their spouses and children, and even after they are no longer public employees.

With police investigations in shambles, a group of self-described superheroes have formed to protect sex workers from the serial killer menacing the New York area.

USA Today reports that some Federal workers are more likely to die than be laid off.

A new state law is making it a felony to assault a city sanitation worker.Sponsors of the bill say the city's garbage haulers face potential harassment for simply doing their jobs and some have been assaulted.The law provides sanitation workers with the same protection as police officers and firefighters and includes stiffer penalties for those who attack the workers.Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill Friday, and it will take effect 30 days from then.