Zwichenzug Holding Zone

Starbucks workers here have organized a union with the Industrial Workers of the World IU/660 and have submitted union cards today to the NLRB for a certification election.

The workers are poised to become the first Starbucks Baristas union certified in the country. Starbucks Baristas at the 36th and Madison location in Midtown Manhattan have come together in an effort to raise themselves out of poverty as well as to achieve respect and dignity on the job. The workers are calling on Starbucks to obey the law as the election approaches.

Those taking part in the unofficial action included 20 officers in three full-time stations in Somerset. A fire service spokesman said: 'Because the action is unofficial it is difficult to know when it will end - it could be today, tomorrow or in a couple of days.'

To many observers, however, the lesson of the election was that economic disparities could no longer be trumped by appeals to Hindu unity. In fact, in a sign that Hindu nationalism may be on the wane, voters seemed fatigued with identity politics. The BJP fared poorly in regions most affected by the violent controversies surrounding Hindu nationalists' struggle to unite their brethren around a sense that India is first and foremost a Hindu nation.

U.S.-trained Colombian troops, backed by U.S. intelligence and private contractors, unleashed the offensive to stop rebel attacks on a pipeline that Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. depends on to transport oil. They also had another goal, company officials said: secure an area deep in the heart of rebel territory so Occidental could explore a new field believed to hold 20 million barrels of oil.

Mars presents tough challenges for both greenhouses and their plant inhabitants. The Red Planet's temperature extremes - which can range from 50 degrees F. in the day to more than negative 200 degrees F. at night - could crack the shell of a greenhouse, and could make the internal environment too cold to sustain the plants.

Seven days after the AMWU set up a picket, a boltcutter was used to gain entry to Johnson Tiles, where Johnston was seen holding a camera to 'take photos of the scabs'. His voice was heard by witnesses and others saw his 'red whiskers from his beard poking through' a balaclava.

Every generation gambles, but how they gamble says something about the spirit of the age. Why are yuppies-in-the-making suddenly interested in poker, a game most of us grew up associating with either paneled basements and cheap cigars or Rococo Old West saloons filled with bolo-tied card sharps? The answer may be that the popular image of the game has undergone a subtle recasting--one with a great attraction to ironic youngsters like me who find in the game the same slightly glamorous, slightly seedy, go-getter spirit that characterized the Internet boom. It makes sense that today's college-educated young adults, especially young men, choose poker. Strategy-oriented, individualistic, and embedded in a nice masculine mythology, poker is the perfect game for the revenge-of-the-nerds generation looking to square their intelligence with their inner maleness.

A Massachusetts labor union with about 6,000 members has amended its benefits plan to exclude gay married couples from receiving health and pension benefits, a move denounced by some other union leaders. Trustees and administrators of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103 benefits plan issued a clarification of the phrase "dependent spouse" to mean "a person of the opposite sex."
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The move to deny same-sex couples the benefits that opposite-sex couples receive is legal, according to a lawyer who specializes in employee benefits. Employers and unions whose benefit plans are covered under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security act can choose whether to extend benefits to same-sex spouses, said Matt Giuliani.

A ruling handed down by a regional office of the Labor Relations Board may spell the end to union representation at the Jefferson Tyson plant. In a 27-page document, the LRB ruling states that all 'replacement workers' hired by Tyson during the strike are 'permanent.' When striking union workers returned to work at Tyson in February they sent a letter to the company demanding that replacement workers be assessed initiation fees and dues. That prompted one replacement worker to lobby the labor relations board to deauthorize the union at Tyson.

Speaking to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mrs. Reagan noted that Alzheimer's had taken her husband Ronald Reagan 'to a distant place where I can no longer reach him and share our 52 years.'

She added after accepting the group's 'Care Giver's Award,' 'Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this.

'We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more.'

'What we have observed are situations from a human point of view that are degrading in treatment and in some incidents tantamount to torture,' Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of ICRC operations, told journalists.

'Our findings do not allow us to conclude that what we were dealing with...were isolated acts of individual members of coalition forces. What we have described is a pattern and a broad system,' he said.

Despite the lousy prognosis, Mansell and a small band of organizers wagered their job security, work relationships and emotional wellbeing in service to the cause. Their reasons vary.

"Healthcare is probably the [main] thing," Mansell explains. "I’m tired of feeling like every week I go without getting in an accident, or getting really ill, like I won the lottery."

In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence. There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore.