We’ll start the Labor Blog Roundup this week with Miss Laura at Daily Kos. She’s writing about Human Rights Watch’s Wal-Mart report. A key quote: “the cumulative effect of Wal-Mart’s panoply of anti-union tactics is to deprive its workers of their internationally recognized right to organize.” Of course, after this story, I don’t know that they could sink any lower.  

Miss Laura’s also done a series of posts on class issues that I want to blog about. The most recent concerns gender and pay.  Given that teaching is too often viewed as “women’s work,” that the vast majority of teachers still are women, and that teaching is pretty much the lowest paid of the professions, I think she’s on to something.

Trapper John blogs on the real history of Labor Day and why we do what we do.  “...we've got no excuse not to keep fighting.” 

While the nation’s eyes are rightly on the conflict between Congress and the President on the Iraq War, its worth noting that President Bush didn’t just veto funding for the war, he was simultaneously vetoing a higher minimum wage, which was contained  in the budget.

in a moment of synchronicitous labor history blogging, both  eskay espresso and Sherman Dorn are writing about Margaret Haley, who as much as anyone is responsible for the founding of the AFT. Eskay appears to be a member of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association. Dorn is, well, a historian.