This is the Labor History of the Mohawk Valley written by Council Secretay Jay Hagenbuch, based on research by Gerry Goodrich, a student of Cornell University School of Industrial Labor Relations.   

          Someone said, “If you don’t know where you came from, you can’t know where you’re going.” So, this is a capsule history of our local labor movement.   All locations mentioned, while they may be unfamiliar to the reader, are located within our jurisdictional area.

  

The Central New York Labor Council was formed in 1882 as the Utica Trades and Labor Assembly and has functioned continually since then.  While other central bodies were formed before this date, we believe we are the oldest continually operating central body in the U.S.  Our e-mail address is cnylaborcouncil@gmail.com

UAW 2243 Donate to the Central New York Veteran’s Outreach Center in Utica

A very good article from Matt Taibbi in the Rolling Stone here. This is a very appropriate topic in light of the events in Wisconsin this week. The system is very quick to go after the perceived excesses of the unions and the people and to blame on them for our current economic malaise while at the same time being totally silent about the excesses of those who created this mess. Fraud and deception are the major contributing factors behind our problems, yet they rarely get any coverage and, as Taibbi points out, outside of Madoff, there’s been no one placed in jail for this. It’s not even discussed and that confirms that the conspiratorial silence also extends to the media. Of course, that’s no surprise to some of us.