Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

The nation's crumbling infrastructure is in very serious need of rebuilding. There's absolutely no doubt about that.

Miles and miles of roads, highways and airport runways need to be repaired or replaced, as do miles and miles of railroad track. Many bridges and other public structures need to be fixed. So do many streets and many street lights, many water and flood control systems, many park and recreation and port facilities' high speed train systems need developing and so does very much more that's vital to our daily lives. Read more »

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Unions, as you might certainly expect, have been having a rough time during the current recession. How rough? Well, overall union membership declined by a whopping 771,000 over the past year.

The number of workers in unions is still large, around 15 million. But that's only a little more than 12 percent of the country's workforce. There is one bright spot: More than one-third of public employees are in unions.

The figures for workers in private employment, however, show that only about 7 percent of them are in unions, That's the lowest percentage of unionized workers in private employment since 1900. That's right - the lowest percentage in 110 years.

Unions are fighting hard to reverse the downward trend, and though many outside the labor movement openly doubt – or at least wishfully think - that it can't be done, I think they're wrong. The doubters are forgetting that it's been done before  - and done in the face of obstacles that were at least as great as those confronted by union adherents today. Read more »

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist who has covered political and labor issues for a half-century as a reporter, editor , author and commentator. Visit him at his website, www.dickmeister.com.

OK, the election is over and labor, Democrats and the other good guys came up a bit short. But what now? What next for the good guys?

 Well, for starters, organized labor and its Democratic Party allies must be ready to block Republican plans to try to enact legislation that would cut taxes for the very wealthy, slash Medicare funding, and possibly even privatize Social Security. I know that may sound alarmist and far-fetched. But that's what Republican leaders are actually talking about.

After all, the GOP's anti-labor corporate allies spent nearly a billion dollars on the election and they damn well want their money's worth.  Larry Cohen, president of the communications workers union, thinks it's getting like the way elections were 100 years ago when the big trusts and robber barons made sure their voices were the only ones heard during election campaigns. Read more »

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Unfortunately, as we all know – or should know – working women generally make less than working men, currently 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. But now come new census figures showing that in at least one regard, women are forging ahead of their male counterparts. They're doing much better than men among higher paid workers.

It turns out that the number of women with six-figure incomes is rising at a much faster pace than is the number of men making six-figure incomes. Read more »

Dick Meister. former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeistersf.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Whoopie! Our valiant Giants are in the World Series again, for the fourth time since they moved to the city from New York in 1958. Pretty exciting, the first series for the Giants since the 2002 series that was won, alas, by the New York Yankees.

Pretty exciting stuff coming up in this year's series too, Giants vs. Texas  Rangers. But it was more than excitement that swept San Francisco during that first SF Giants World Series and the regular season leading up to the series.  It was near-hysteria. As a young reporter for the SF Chronicle in those days, I felt it up close and very personal. Read more »

Dick Meister. former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeistersf.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

So, as the Washington Post 's Paul Farhi reported recently, hunter Harry Whittington is still suffering from the effects of  being shot accidentally by hunting partner Dick Cheney in Texas four years ago.

I'm sure we're all sorry about that, about how Whittington still has the lead pellet that pierced his larynx when the then-vice president swung around abruptly and fired away at a flight of quail. We're of course sorry, too, about the 30 or so other pieces of shot still inside Whittington out of some 200 that slammed him, and the scars he bears. Read more »

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Never have the nation's younger workers been more in need of unionization. And never have the nation's unions been more in need of the membership growth that recruiting younger workers can bring them.

Here's how it looks, and it's not a pretty picture for labor: Last year, unions lost 10 percent of their members in private employment -  the biggest drop in more than 25 years.  That cut union membership by 834,000 workers, down to 15.7 million workers.

Which means that overall, counting public as well as private employment, unions now represent only a little more than 12 percent of the country's workers. Just 20 years ago, 20 percent of all workers were unionized.

So, how can organized labor add significantly to its numbers and thus add significantly to labor's political and economic strength. Read more »

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions know what they must do to grow and strengthen the labor movement for the benefit of all Americans. They must recruit and train millions of young workers, particularly young women and minority workers.  It is they who will join with others to shape our future.

Union organizers are already focusing clearly on reaching out to young would-be members who are often skeptical of union promises to help them win, not only better pay and working conditions, but also a meaningful voice in community affairs. Read more »

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

It's Hispanic Heritage Month, an excellent time to remember three of the most important Hispanic labor leaders in U.S. history. All three were engaged in the much needed and very tough job of organizing and improving the generally poor conditions of the nation's largely Latino farm labor force.

Cesar Chavez, of course, is one of the farm worker leaders we should particularly honor. Another is Dolores Huerta, who joined Chavez in founding the United Farm Workers union – and who, in fact, is still organizing and otherwise helping Latino workers, particularly women.

The third leader who's especially deserving of honor is the lesser known but no less important t pioneer farm labor organizer, Ernesto Galarza. Despite his important work, Galarza has been largely forgotten – though certainly not by me.  He's been dead now for a quarter-century, but I recall him well from my days as a reporter covering farm labor: Read more »

Sidebar to The pummeling of SF Labor

Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman? Barbara Boxer or Carly Fiorina? For labor voters, the choice should be obvious.

All too often, we're faced with choosing between the lesser of two political evils, but not this time. Democrat Jerry Brown has proven throughout his long political career to be one of the best friends labor has ever had, and shows no sign that he'd be anything else if returned to the governorship in November.

I particularly recall the great political skill Brown demonstrated in convincing the State Legislature to enact what is still the only law outside Hawaii guaranteeing farm workers the collective bargaining rights granted most non-agricultural workers in the 1930s. Read more »