John Funiciello

The handwriting was on the wall a few weeks ago when Solidarity America reported that President Obama’s new labor secretary, Hilda Solis, delivered the graduation speech at the National Labor College and didn’t even mention the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Now, a handful of so-called moderate Democrats have broken ranks with the rest of…

In the last century, a United States senator suggested that, in America, “mediocre” people needed representation on the Supreme Court and that representation would come in the form of confirmation of a “mediocre” judge by the Senate. The senator was Roman Hruska, a Republican from Nebraska, and he was referring to the nomination by President…

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is arguably one of the most significant pieces of labor legislation to benefit American workers that has been proposed in about three generations. And, since there has not been too much time wasted on the subject in the daily papers and on the nightly news, we have to search…

From time to time, the powers-that-be give us a new set of “burning questions” to chew on, mull over for a while, then they’re on to the next set, with a different set of burning questions to take our minds off the last set. Inevitably, this happens before the current set of burning questions is…

If the New York State Senate were not in chaos, it would be considering a bill that would rectify in small measure the imposition of second-class status on farm workers that was perpetrated in America some 75 years ago. They’re not the only workers to have been left out of the Wagner Act, to be…

There’s a plan afoot that supposedly mixes center, right, and (sort of) left politics to reform the U.S. education system and it features such luminaries as Newt Gingrich; the failed congressional revolutionary and part-time historian; Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor and billionaire, and Al Sharpton, the reverend and self-described civil rights activist. All three…

Considering the advancement of workers in America through the labor movement and the union movement – which has been, in the aggregate, a non-violent one – it’s hard to believe that the powerful people of the country have become so fearful of the Employee Free Choice Act. Throughout the history of unions in the U.S.,…

This is the year in which the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicted that 1 billion humans will be undernourished across the earth. At the end of last year, there were 963 million who lacked the food necessary to keep them alive and functioning at full capacity. Hunger has a way of sapping…

It’s significant that President Obama cited “empathy” as one of the attributes that he would look for in a U.S. Supreme Court nominee. Significant, because that quality seems to be lacking in the halls of power in America, including the court, itself. Predictably, the chatterers on the nation’s air waves, who provide the delivery system…