Urbana Champaign, IL – At 8:00 a.m., Nov. 16, hundreds of teaching assistants rallied in a cold, driving rain on the campus of the University of Illinois. The members of the Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) set up pickets in front of all doors of the four main lecture buildings on campus. Natalie Havlin, co-chair of the GEO steward's council, said 1000 people joined in the spirited circles.

Stephanie Weiner of the Network to Fight for Economic Justice presented $1,500 to SK Hand Tool striker John McHale. The money was raised October 3, at the 'We Say Fight Back' conference in Chicago, where trade union, community, immigrant rights, and student activists came together to found the Network to Fight for Economic Justice. SK Hand and Tool strikers were prominent in the conference and attendees vowed to build support for the strike.

Chicago, IL – On Friday morning, July 31, 30 workers walked the picket line at S-K Hand Tools on Chicago’s southwest side. The picket included several retirees and laid-off workers. The four hour strike by Teamsters Local 743 was provoked by unresolved grievances. Norma Trinidad, a 23-year employee stated, “Everyone is here, current workers, people laid off, people who retired years ago – we are all here fighting for respect!”

Plainfield, IL – “This whole fight was about respect,” said Al Guzman, one of almost two hundred Service Employee International Union Local 1 members who struck S & G Packaging in Plainfield, an outer Chicago suburb, during May and June. “We fought for respect inside the plant and we fought for respect on the picket line.” The 4-week long strike was the high point of a contract campaign that started last October.

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following letter of solidarity from the Salvadoran Labor Front, a federation made up of 27 trade unions, to striking members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. We urge other unions in the United States and internationally to offer similar support.

Athens, Greece -Demanding “No to anti-people politics,” tens of thousands of workers, students and youth rallied across Greece in mid-December to open a 24-hour general strike that virtually shut down the country’s businesses and industry. The strike was called by the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) and the General Trade Body of Greece (GSEE) in response to proposals in the 2006 budget that would cut public services including health care and education, abolish the eight-hour work day, decrease pensions and benefits and open up at least eight Sundays a year for work.