There’s serial killer on TV who happens to be named after my dog Dexter. As many of you know, my dog Dexter is a 100 percent union dog because we adopted him from the West Valley Animal Shelter, a city run facility with union employees.

Let me be clear, Dexter is not a serial killer nor does he play one in our household. Yes, he has put a big hole in our dog food budget (thankfully I can buy union-made dog food!), but he’s really just a loveable lug. Recently, though, we’ve been having problems with Dexter – he keeps throwing up in the house. We think it’s because he’s eating too much junk. He has a bad habit of finding weird stuff on the street when we take him on walks and gobbling it down before we can stop him. I’ve scheduled a check-up with the vet next week and, no, it won’t be a unionized veterinarian. Sorry, no such thing (yet!), so, I’ll have to take a pass on the Buy Union! challenge on this particular issue.

It’s been three months since I first began the Buy Union! challenge. To be honest, a part of me was dreading the challenge because I wasn’t sure I could do it.  Like most of us, I had become relatively thoughtless about how I spent my money — even while publishing a Buy Union! directory:  Los…

Sometimes I complete my Buy Union! challenge without even knowing it. That’s always a fun surprise – finding out certain things we do regularly are unionized. For instance, travel. I had to fly to San Francisco on business recently with several members of the Senders Group team and I was delighted to find out the…

No, this blog is not about the post-election hangover. (California actually did rather well, thank you very much. The rest of the country? Not so much.) This is an honest-to-goodness post New Year’s hangover, following a wild night out of drinking, dancing and partying up a storm. (Whoo hoo!!!!) Okay. Maybe it wasn’t that wild,…

Let’s face it. 2010 was a pretty tough year for most of us. Between the economy and everyone in the United States beyond the borders of California embracing the Tea Party’s mantra of blaming the unions for all their ills … it was a rough year and one that I’m glad to see go. Still,…

So, we had the annual office party over the Holidays. We’re a small office of twelve people (including part-timers), but each year we make a go of it and invite the spouses and significant others and do our best to have a good time after another long year of fighting the good fight in support of labor.

For 20 years now I’ve been a labor member and activist. I work on labor issues and with the publishing of LA Labor 411 and www.lalabor411.org,  I am reluctantly becoming one of the foremost experts on what is and what is not union-made…

..and there is still so much I don’t know.

I decided to do an experiment. Since this Buy Union! challenge has started, it hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve been finding ways to save money. A lot of it has been buying what union-products I can find on sale and by using coupons. In fact, I got so excited during my research about finding so many coupons for union-made goods and being able to save all that money, I decided it would be a good idea to make it a regular feature on our www.LALabor411.org web site.