Most Recent Posts

When clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reached an impasse in talks with management over job security last week, they took what has become something of a rare step — they went on strike.

Once a mainstay of the labor arsenal, strikes have largely fallen off since the early 1980s. So a recent spate of high-profile work stoppages, including by Chicago teachers, non-unionized Walmart workers and New York City fast-food employees, has some experts wondering if we're seeing a resurgence of the tactic.

Thomas Kochan, co-director of the Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks years of pent-up frustration over stagnant wages and diminishing benefits has finally hit the boiling point.

Labor Actions

Work stoppages have fallen off precipitously since the early 1980s, according to data from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Number of work stoppages involving 1,000 or more employees, 1961-2011

Sgt. Marilyn Gonzalez and her daughter, Spc. Jessica Pedraza, served together in Kuwait and Iraq from January until December of 2010. But they weren't both supposed to go then.

They were in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, in the same company, but they had different jobs.

In 2010, Gonzalez was ordered to deploy to Iraq, but her daughter was not. Pedraza decided to put college on hold and changed her job in the military so that she would be sent to war with her mom. They didn't need supply specialists, but they did need a truck driver.

"When you told me that you wanted to deploy, I was so angry," Gonzalez, now 44, tells her daughter.

But Pedraza, now 22, said she couldn't stay home worrying.

"Whenever I would go out on a mission, you would go in my room and make my bed, and sometimes you would come back from your missions and catch me sleeping on your bed," she says.

Courtesy of Jessica Pedraza

The mother-daughter duo on one of the trucks they drove in Iraq in Camp Speicher, Tikrit, Iraq.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint announced Thursday that he is resigning his seat from South Carolina to become president of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. What will his departure mean for the Senate and for South Carolina?

In stories by four noted authors, this year's edition of Hanukkah Lights showcases some of the program's most touching and insightful moments: Two teenagers find the formula to bridge a bitter family divide; the life of a cynical young reporter is changed by a single mysterious encounter; a reluctant grade-school student stands up for his heritage, and is wounded in the line of duty; and a despairing mom reconnects with her distant yet devoted daughter. Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz bring these generation-spanning tales to life.