Organize!

Whether we are engaging in acts of resistance or creating new, alternative institutions, we need to create sustainable, democratic organizations that empower their members while also protecting against disruption. This section provides articles about effective organizing, creating democratic decision-making structures, building coalitions with other groups, and more. Visit the Resources Page for tools to assist your organizing efforts.

North American Wobblies Hold 2022 Organizing Summit

October 24, 2022 It's Going Down. Organize! Illinois, IWW, Organizing, Worker Rights and Jobs

Chicago, Illinois - On the first weekend of October, Wobblies from across North America converged on the grounds of a Marriott hotel in suburban Chicago. The plan for the two-day summit came in the form of several workshops solicited by North America IWW’s Organizing Department Board and suggested by attendees. A total of fourteen Wobblies presented on topics ranging from nonprofits, to tipping, to interviewing IWW members about their organizing. The first workshop I attended was a “Grievance Sort and March on the Boss,” facilitated by Jenni and Louisa of the Organizer Training Committee. We were assigned to small groups of four or five and given a range of grievances, from the mundane (“I don’t like the music that plays at work”) to the potentially life-altering (“my boss makes us work faster and faster regardless of safety”).

Kansas Chipotle Workers Latest To Launch Union Drive

October 23, 2022 Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. Organize! Chipotle, Kansas, union busting, Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

Lawrence, Kansas - Employees at a second Chipotle location are unionizing, this time in Lawrence, Kansas. The young workers are forming an independent union, and facing harsh—and likely illegal—pushback from management. A majority of workers’ signatures were collected on a petition to submit to the National Labor Relations Board, only to have that petition thrown away by management. So now they’re filing an unfair labor practice charge as they push to form a union. Quinlan Muller has worked at Chipotle for four years, at three different stores. “The Mass Street location is one of the most difficult stores I’ve worked at. We are understaffed, employees aren’t properly trained, and it’s not, like, the cleanest compared to other Chipotles.”

Swapping Stories At The Alabama Troublemakers School

October 22, 2022 Adam Keller, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Numerous unions and organizations were represented, with the Communications Workers (CWA) and Raise Up the South in particular showing up in a big way. There were some familiar faces from the Professional and Technical Employees, Hometown Action, the Mine Workers, Retail and Department Store Union, Birmingham Democratic Socialists of America, Starbucks Workers United, United Campus Workers, and more. In how many other spaces will you find worker-led discussion and workshops with participants ranging from line cooks to rocket scientists in the same room? Folks from call centers to coal mines were learning from each other and swapping stories. There’s something very powerful about that and I think it’s pretty damn cool.

Johns Hopkins University Graduate Students Organize For A Living Wage

October 21, 2022 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. Organize! Higher Education, Johns Hopkins, Student Activism, Worker Rights and Jobs

The life of a graduate student looks much closer to that of an average worker than many universities care to admit. After completing core courses, most students at this level devote the equivalent of full time working hours or more towards research. Levels of compensation and protections vary across the country, but many graduate students are simply handed paltry stipends that hardly cover their needs, and ultimately amount to pathetic hourly wages. At Johns Hopkins University, many graduate students are producing much-needed research on the COVID-19 pandemic. These students produce vast profits for the university, but don’t even receive a living wage for their innovative and lucrative research. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez interviews Johns Hopkins graduate students.

Ballots Are Out In UAW Election, With Contrasting Visions Of Unionism

October 20, 2022 Jane Slaughter and Barry Eidlin, Labor Notes. Organize! Auto Workers, UAW, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Stakes are high in the United Auto Workers, with two polar-opposite visions of unionism up for leadership. On Monday ballots were sent to UAW members for the union’s first direct election of top officers. The rank-and-file vote comes about because members voted last fall to switch to that system, instead of having a far smaller number of convention delegates elect top leaders, as the UAW has done until now. The opportunity to let members decide was ordered by the U.S. Justice Department’s monitor, installed in 2021 to oversee remedies to the union’s blatant corruption. Over the past five years, more than a dozen UAW officials have pleaded guilty and gone to jail for embezzlement and other crimes, including two presidents. President Dennis Williams, for example, got the union to build him a $1.1 million lakeside “cabin” to ease his retirement.

Inside The Fight To Unionize Delta Air Lines

October 16, 2022 Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times. Organize! Airlines, Delta, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

“Flight attendants at Delta are currently pushing to form a union at the only major airline in the US where flight attendants are not unionized,” journalist and friend of the show Michael Sainato recently wrote in The Guardian. “The aim is to allow the airline’s 23,000 flight attendants to vote on whether to unionize with the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) and will face fierce opposition from an airline that has fought previous efforts.” Delta has fiercely fought off unionization efforts in the past, but workers and organizers are confident that this time they’ll get a victory. We talk with Jonnie Lane, who works at Delta and has been a flight attendant for the past 15 years, about her path to working in the airline industry, what it’s been like working as a flight attendant before and during COVID-19, and what a union would mean for Jonnie and her coworkers.

Oakland Landlord Steps Up Harassment At Building On Rent Strike

October 13, 2022 It's Going Down. Organize! California, Housing, Landlord, Protests, Rent Strike

Three weeks into the rent strike, instead of negotiating in good faith, FPA Multifamily/Trinity dramatically escalated its harassment and intimidation efforts against the RoM council. On Weds., Sept. 21, a council member approached an on-site manager to complain about harassment of his partner and children. Management called the cops and the tenant was arrested on a baseless charge. FPA Multifamily/Trinity issued the family an eviction notice. Immediately after the arrest, in what was widely understood as a threat, FPA Multifamily/Trinity issued all tenants a notice demanding rent paid in full, and dispatched “inspectors” flanked by armed guards in tactical gear to aggressively doorknock tenants, demanding entry to their units. The arrest was clearly a retaliatory measure in a broad harassment campaign against organized tenants exercising their rights, and an attempt to exploit loopholes in local eviction restrictions.

Coal Workers In Australia Are Taking Their Destiny Into Their Own Hands

October 7, 2022 Léo Roussel, Equal Times. Organize! Australia, Coal, Just transition, Worker Rights

The coal industry is to Australia what the Second Amendment of the US Constitution (granting citizens the right to bear arms) is to the United States: it would be hard to imagine the country without it. With fossil fuels still accounting for 92 per cent of Australia’s energy mix, including 29 per cent for coal in 2021, the industry is still vigorously defended by lobbies, even in parliamentary circles and the corridors of ministries. Australia’s conservative former prime minister Scott Morrison famously held up a piece of coal in Parliament in 2017, when he was finance minister, admonishing his colleagues not to be afraid of it. When he became prime minister, he also directly surrounded himself with lobbyists like John Kunkel, former vice-chairman of the Minerals Council of Australia, who he appointed chief of staff in 2018.

‘Our Health And Safety Is Not A Priority Here’

October 5, 2022 Luis Feliz Leon, The Real News Network. Organize! health, Refresco, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Nearly 240 factory workers at the world’s biggest independent bottler, Refresco, in Wharton, New Jersey, have been fighting for years to improve working conditions and win recognition of their union after voting twice to unionize their workplace. Now, after winning their second election, Refresco workers are finally starting negotiations with the company. Refresco filed numerous appeals and stalled the bargaining process for as long as possible by claiming the election had been improperly run. The National Labor Relations Board did, in fact, overturn workers’ first union victory in June 2021. The reason? An agency staffer conducting the election was five minutes late to the proceedings and the resulting number of workers who didn’t vote due to the delay exceeded the margin of victory for the union.

Non-Tenure-Track Skidmore College Faculty Votes To Unionize

September 30, 2022 Andrew Waite, Portside. Organize! Education, New York (NY), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Saratoga Springs, New York - In a major milestone for an organizing effort that began in 2018, full-time and part-time, non-tenure-track faculty and other Skidmore College staff voted this month in favor of unionizing. The National Labor Relations Board conducted two separate mail-in elections – one for full-time staff and one for part-time staff – and 65% of full-time staff voted to join with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 200United, while 67% of part-time employees voted in favor of joining the union, according to an SEIU news release. The votes, announced Sept. 27, affects approximately 215 full-time and part-time non-tenure-track faculty, librarians and accompanists who make up nearly half of Skidmore’s total faculty, according to SEIU.

Before Your Strike Vote, Consider A Practice Strike Vote

September 28, 2022 Labor Notes. Organize! Chicago, Education, Illinois, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Chicago, Illinois - Leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union were pretty sure they would need to strike the school district in the fall of 2012 to win what students and educators deserved. But they had come into office only two years before, and begun helping members organize themselves from the bottom up. They needed to find out just how willing and able members were to strike. The state legislature had deliberately made it hard for Chicago teachers to walk out. In 2011 it passed a bill requiring CTU to get yes votes from 75 percent of all members (not just of those voting) before calling a strike. This was supposed to be impossible. “In effect they wouldn’t have the ability to strike,” gloated Jonah Edelman of the corporate “reform” group Stand for Children, which pushed for this rule. Edelman’s group had researched past contract votes and found 48 percent was the greatest share of the membership CTU had been able to muster.

Mutual Aid Emerges As A Critical Survival Tool In Puerto Rico

September 27, 2022 Zane McNeill, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Hurricane Fiona, Mutual Aid, Puerto Rico, US Imperialism

A network of mutual aid groups in Puerto Rico were quick to react when the island lost power on Sept. 18 before being hit by Hurricane Fiona. Nearly 750,000 people are still without power a week after the storm caused mass flooding, landslides and property damage. Mutual aid groups like the feminist community-based organization Taller Salud, the collective sustenance and solidarity group Brigada Solidaria del Oeste and LGBTQIA+ support group Waves Ahead have provided Puerto Rico residents with direct economic aid, as well as emergency essentials like first-aid kits, water filters, solar lamps, nonperishable food, toiletries and water purification devices. Puerto Rico’s infrastructure system had not yet recovered from Hurricane Maria in 2017, which caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people and decimated the island’s health care, water and power systems.

Home Depot Workers Form Independent Union

September 22, 2022 Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. Organize! Home Depot, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - On September 19, workers filed a petition to organize a union among 276 workers at a Home Depot in northeast Philadelphia. If successful, the independent union would be the first at the home repair chain, the fifth-largest private employer in the U.S with 500,000 employees. Vince Quiles, who’s worked at the store for five years, says the union effort gathered over 100 signatures for an election in just five weeks. At the beginning of the pandemic, Quiles was promoted to supervisor in the plumbing department. Plumbing is the highest-volume section of the store, with around 6,000 sales per day, but the company did little to prepare him. “No training, no staff,” says Quiles. “They said, ‘You’re good with people, go figure it out.’”

ManiFiesta 2022 Ends With A Call To Change The World As We Want It

September 21, 2022 People's Dispatch. Organize! Belgium, International Solidarity, Left Politics, Transformation

The ManiFiesta 2022 festival, organized at the Wellington racetrack in the Belgian city of Ostend from September 17-18, concluded with a resolve to mobilize for alternatives for the future. The 12th edition of ManiFiesta was organized by the Solidarity magazine and Medicine For the People (MPLP). Over 14,000 people participated. Around 160 events including political discussions, speeches, debates, book fairs, exhibitions, a food festival, and 35 concerts were organized as part of the festival. Raoul Hedebouw, president of the Workers Party of Belgium (PTB/PVDA), Bolivian Vice-President David Choquehuanca, Chris Mitchell from the Enough is Enough movement in the UK, Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, Holocaust survivor Simon Gronowski, British economist Grace Blakeley, author and PTB leader Peter Mertens...

Independent Unions Are Great—And Proof of Labor’s Broken Institutions

September 20, 2022 Hamilton Nolan , In These Times. Organize! Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

This year has brought a lot of stirring labor victories, a pace of union campaigns and strikes so frenetic that it’s easy to collapse in a puddle of undifferentiated cheering for stuff. The most important trend, though, has been the sudden rise of independent unions — organizing drives at untouched companies led by the workers themselves, not affiliated with any existing major unions. The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) has been the biggest example of those, and an endless stream of others seem determined to follow in its footsteps. An independent union drive succeeded at Trader Joe’s, and they’ve popped up everywhere from Apple to Chipotle to Geico. Geico! The rise of all of these independents is inspiring. It is the flowering of seeds that were planted by 40 years of rising inequality, and by the work of an entire generation of labor movement activists pushing unions as the solution. If we are being honest, though, the story of these independent unions is also a story about the brokenness of organized labor’s existing institutions. If we ignore half of the story, we won’t learn anything from this moment.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources