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For much of the 20th century, America's unions were known for their fierce and relentless advocacy of manufacturing workers -- mostly men, working relatively high-paying, blue-collar jobs at steel mills and auto plants. But as the U.S. has moved from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one, the face of ...

It was supposed to be a protest to advocate workers' rights, but a gathering of union members in Lansing, Mich., last week reportedly resulted in thousands of dollars of damage to equipment belonging to small-business owners, including Clinton Tarver, owner of Clint's Hotdog Cart and Casual Catering. Tarver ...

On Black Friday this year, workers in 1,000 Walmart stores in 46 states made history of sorts, becoming the first time Walmart workers had an organized strike. Six days after, workers at fast food outlets in New York City organized their own walk outs, marking what some experts said was the first ...

It should come as no surprise that activists on the left are pushing for unions to adopt new strategies to broaden their appeal -- and clout. After all, the number of Americans who are part of an organized union has dropped from a third of the country's workers in the 1950s to only about a tenth last year. ...

Thousands of Michigan teachers skipped school Tuesday to protest new right-to-work laws that were signed by Gov. Rick Snyder. About 12,500 attended the protest and three were arrested according to the Detroit Free Press. ...

By James MacPherson BISMARCK, N.D. -- Home improvement retailer Menard Inc. says that it will hire workers from its home base in Wisconsin and fly them to North Dakota to staff a store in Minot, which is near the state's booming oil patch, a region that has more jobs than takers. The company said in a ...

Employers often go to great lengths to woo clients, treating them to lavish dinners and the best seats to major sporting and theatrical events. But how many would demand an employee take clients to strip clubs and procure sexual favors -- and fire the worker for refusing? ...

Employees have been victims of all kinds of discrimination -- sex, race, religion, age, weight. But a New York City firefighter, Anthony Harper, is alleging that he was ostracized by his co-workers because of his diet: He's a vegetarian. ...

By her own account, Tara Tan was a hard worker, pulling 80 to 100 hours a week as a manager at the upscale Standard hotel in New York City's trendy Meatpacking District. But when it came time for Tan to take time off to have her second child, she was denied maternity leave and forced to give birth to her ...

Your co-workers may not always be what they seem. Take, for instance, the experience of the staff at an LA Fitness in Deerfield Beach, Fla., who viewed head janitor Michael J. Webb as the gym's "indispensable man, the go-to Mr. Fix-it," according to reporting by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "He was like an ...

Nearly 50 years ago the U.S. passed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing segregation and banning gender and race discrimination, and in so doing, it remade the country forever. But on the score of creating a more equal and integrated workplace, how has the country actually fared? How much has really changed? ...

Update: This story was updated on Oct. 8 at 11:30 a.m. EDT. In recent years, there has been a steady stream of lawsuits from workers -- many of them successful -- claiming that mold made them seriously ill. ...

When you pit two graduates of Harvard Law School against each other in a debate, it should come as little shock when the end result is a night dominated by stats. And that's what the first 2012 presidential debate between Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney was -- high on policy. ...

As the 2012 presidential election enters the home stretch, there seems to be little doubt that jobs and the economy will dominate not only the presidential debates but also the national conversation. Just what should the next president do to get the national unemployment rate to below 8 percent, where it ...

All offices share a few rules: You shouldn't make racist or sexist remarks, even if you privately espouse such views. You can have arguments, but getting physical is not OK. And you never covertly take sexual photos of people at work, much less post them on the Internet. ...

Budget cuts are the norm across the country. But you'd think this one wouldn't have been a make-or-break expenditure: For 15 years, the Greater Lawrence Educational Collaborative, a nonprofit public entity located outside Boston, paid $12 a week to Mark Stanganelli to polish silver at a Wyndham resort in ...

Getting caught for stealing while on the job is grounds for firing at most workplaces. But when you are a policeman, and you've been accused of stealing from a Goodwill store while out on patrol (and it seems to be caught on camera), you may want to head for the exit before the investigation formally wraps ...

It was perhaps the least appropriate time to make a threat to a co-worker using a "Batman" reference. But in late July, Neil Prescott's bosses at Pitney Bowes told him over the phone that he was being fired, he apparently was livid. "I'm a Joker and I'm gonna load my guns and blow everybody up," Prescott, 28, ...

Well, no one should be surprised by this. A Gallup/USA Today poll released Monday examined voters' top concerns this election year and found job creation came out on top. Asked to rank 12 different categories, a whopping 92 percent of respondents rated job creation "extremely or very important." ...

For professional athletes, taunting comes with the territory. So Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford probably didn't expect the catcalls to end during his stint this summer with the minor league Portland Sea Dogs while recovering from a wrist injury. But when an off-duty police officer allegedly hurled an ...