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.

Leftist Parties In Turkey Form New Political Coalition

August 27, 2022 People's Dispatch. Organize! Left Politics, NATO, Secularism, Türkiye

On August 20, left-wing organizations in Turkey formed the Union of Socialist Forces, a new electoral alliance. The alliance comprises the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), the Revolutionary Movement (Devrim Hareketi), the Left Party (Sol Party) and the Communist Movement of Turkey (TKH). In a press conference organized in Ankara last week, the Union of Socialist Forces launched its manifesto regarding the 2023 general elections. The press conference was attended by Ozan Yılmaz of TKP, Ercan Bölükbaşı of Devrim Hareketi, İsmail Hakkı Tombul of the Left Party and Umut Kuruç of TKH. The Union of Socialist Forces has resolved to end the conservative regime in Turkey led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Workers At MOM’s Organic Market In Baltimore Vote To Unionize

August 27, 2022 Khiree Stewart, WBAL. Organize! Baltimore, Maryland, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Dozens of workers at MOM's Organic Market in Hampden voted Friday night to unionize. The vote is the latest in a string of pro-labor pushes from employees in the greater Baltimore area. Workers at MOM's Organic Market voted 58-5 to join Teamsters Local 570. "It was truly an honor to do this with my coworkers. I'm so glad that we get to secure a dignified workplace for right and for future MOM's workers," said MOM's employee Kelsey Oppenheimer.

Trader Joe’s Union Campaign Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

August 27, 2022 Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. Organize! Strikes, Trader Joe’s, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Trader Joe’s workers in Minneapolis won their union in a landslide vote August 12, making theirs the second store to go with the new, independent Trader Joe’s United. The win raises the question of whether the grocer, with its 530 locations and progressive image, could be the next Starbucks. It seems that Trader Joe’s management is considering becoming the next Starbucks in a different sense: closing stores and harassing workers out of union drives. A store in Boulder, Colorado, had a vote lined up for this week, but workers seeking affiliation with Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 there withdrew their petition the day after filing charges against the company for coercion and intimidation. The Trader Joe’s drives reflect an emerging theme of recent new organizing: independent versus affiliated unionism.

UPS Is Firing Union Activists In The Middle Of Contract Negotiations

August 26, 2022 Luigi Morris and Sou Mi , Left Voice. Organize! Retaliation, Unions, UPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

During the first week of August, UPS Teamsters organized rallies across the country with thousands of workers to kick off their 2023 contract campaign. From now to July of next year when the current contract is set to expire, UPS workers will be fighting for their demands and preparing to strike if they are not met. Among those demands are: air-conditioned trucks, no more excessive overtime, an end to the two-tier system of “22.4s,” higher part-time pay, more full-time jobs, an end to harassment, and an end to outsourcing. If UPS Teamsters don’t reach a suitable agreement with the company, over 340,000 workers could go on strike, bringing UPS — which moves 6% of the U.S. GDP — to a grinding halt. It is no surprise that the bosses are afraid.

REI Workers At Berkeley Store Vote To Unionize In Another Win For Labor

August 26, 2022 Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post. Organize! California, REI, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Berkeley, California - REI employees in Berkeley, California, have formed the outdoor retailer’s second union, extending a winning streak for organized labor at largely non-union companies. Workers at the Berkeley store voted 56 to 38 in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union in a mail-in election this month, according to a vote count held Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board. Employees at REI’s store in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City were the first to unionize earlier this year. “As we have said throughout this process, REI believes in the right of every employee to vote for or against union representation,” the company said in a statement following the vote count. “We fully supported the vote process in Berkeley and will continue to support our employees going forward.”

A Chipotle Restaurant In Michigan Becomes The First To Unionize

August 26, 2022 Ayana Archie, KTEP. Organize! Chipotle, Michigan, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Lansing, Michigan - A Chipotle restaurant in Lansing, Mich., voted Thursday to unionize, making it the first of the chain's nearly 3,000 locations to do so. The employees are seeking improved schedules and higher wages, and first filed for a union election July 5. "Today's victory is an amazing moment for our team that has worked so hard and spent many months organizing," said Samantha Smith, 18, a crew member who has worked at the location for over two years. "We set out to show that our generation can make substantial change in this world and improve our working conditions by taking action collectively. Employees at the location first filed for a union election July 5. They are being backed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union with 1.2 million members across professions such as warehouse workers, pilots, public defenders and more.

Graduate Students Across The US Are Organizing For Abortion Rights

August 23, 2022 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Organize! Abortion, Democrats, Education, Student Activism

This week, graduate students from more than fifty colleges and universities across the United States launched the Graduate Student Action Network (GSAN), a coalition centered around fighting for abortion rights and other forms of reproductive justice. GSAN’s first action is to coordinate a National Student Day of Action for abortion rights, to be held on October 6, the anniversary of the day a federal judge first blocked the draconian anti-abortion law in Texas. The network includes graduate student unions, graduate student governments, and student advocacy organizations like Socialists of Caltech and CUNY For Abortion Rights.

Independent Unions Can Help Break Through The Economic Crisis

August 22, 2022 Shaun Richman, Jacobin. Organize! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, History, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In a period of extreme social and economic crises, when the major labor unions have reduced their organizing programs to a fraction of what they once were and the courts stand athwart any effort to protect workers’ interests, scrappy new independent unions raise hope against hope that maybe — just maybe — workers can fight back and win. I’m writing, of course, about the early 1930s. A newly published book finds some surprising parallels between that era and our own. An eleventh volume in the prolific Marxist labor historian Philip S. Foner’s History Of The Labor Movement In The United States has just been published, after it was discovered that Foner had completed the manuscript before he died in 1994. Subtitled The Great Depression 1929–1932, the book covers a period in which the established unions of the American Federation of Labor were not conducting many organizing campaigns or strikes and had little idea how to successfully contest for power in the large mass production industries that played a dominant role in American life.

World Humanitarian Day: A Need For Common Actions

August 22, 2022 Rene Wadlow, Association of World Citizens. Organize! Human Rights, United Nations, Workers, World Humanitarian Day

Sergio de Mellow had spent his UN career in humanitarian efforts, often with the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and at other times as Special Representative of the UN Secretary General. As an NGO representative to the UN in Geneva and active on human rights issues, I knew him during his short 2002-2003 tenure as High Commissioner for Human Rights. Many of us had high hopes that his dynamism, relative youth (he was 54) and wide experience in conflict resolution efforts would provide new possibilities for human rights efforts. His death along with the death of others who had been Geneva-based was a stark reminder of the risks that exist for all engaged in humanitarian and conflict resolution work.

Lessons From A Radical Past: One Man’s Journey Into The Factories In The 1970s

August 20, 2022 Peter Olney , In These Times. Organize! History, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

A national direct election will be held in the fall for the United Auto Workers (UAW), which held its 38th constitutional convention the week of July 25 in Detroit. Once an industrial union power with almost 1.5 million members in 1979, the union has been reduced to roughly 400,000 active members (though it has nearly 600,000 retirees) — and about a quarter of its members are graduate teaching assistants and other university workers in higher education. The union, for decades, has been governed by the Administration Caucus, which perpetuated its rule by tightly managing the conventions to elect union officers (though the leadership of UAW has been resistant to charges that it is undemocratic). But after the federal government brought suit against the union’s leaders for rampant corruption, the settlement reached in 2020 forced the union to give members a vote on whether to directly elect officers.

As Enough Is Enough Launches, The Working Class Is Fighting Back

August 20, 2022 Joe Glenton, The Canary. Organize! Class Struggle, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Organised workers are on the move. After years of stagnancy, UK trade unions are starting to ramp up activity again. Needless to say, there’s been little help from the Labour Party. But the waves of strikes are unmistakeable signs of rising working class militancy. The increased popularity of trade union leaders, such as the RMT’s general secretary Mick Lynch and Unite’s Sharon Graham, suggests the post-Corbyn hangover is easing. At the launch of the Enough is Enough campaign on Wednesday 17 August, Lynch told the audience: “The working class is back.” Enough is Enough (EIE) is a new force in the class war. Its supporters include a number of socialist MPs, such as Zarah Sultana and Liverpool’s Iain Byrne. The Tribune, Acorn and the Communication Worker’s Union (CWU) are also backers.

UPS Says No To Air Conditioning, But Here’s A Surveillance Camera

August 19, 2022 Elliot Lewis and Matt Leichenger, Labor Notes. Organize! Heat stroke, Surveillance, UPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

On June 25, 24-year-old UPS driver Esteban Chavez Jr. collapsed in the back of his truck while working, and died. Temperatures in the Los Angeles area that day were in the high 90s. Hundreds of other UPS workers around the country suffer from heatstroke every summer, as UPS refuses to install air conditioning in its trucks or warehouses. In our own Teamsters Local 804 in New York City, a supervisor even told a driver who was suffering heatstroke while working not to call an ambulance, and tried to keep him from filing a workers comp claim. Later that day the driver was hospitalized for heatstroke. And, though we have a contractual right to have at least fans in our trucks, in New York City UPS refused to install fans for months.

Albany Amazon Warehouse Workers File For Union Election

August 18, 2022 Gwynne Hogan, Gothamist. Organize! Amazon, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

New York - Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center just outside of Albany filed petitions requesting a union election, the National Labor Relations Board confirmed this week. The Amazon Labor Union, the group of former and current employees that formed Amazon’s first union at a warehouse on Staten Island, filed to represent roughly 400 workers at the facility in Schodack, according to Kayla Blado, a spokesperson for the NLRB. The NLRB will tally up the union cards in the coming days to verify the union surpassed the 30 percent threshold required to hold an official vote, Blado said. “We are incredibly excited and proud,” said Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for the ALU, in a statement. The group planned to address the public outside the NLRB offices in Albany on Wednesday afternoon.

Refugees Are Being Stranded In NYC

August 16, 2022 Sam Carliner, Left Voice. Organize! Democratic Party, Immigration, New York (NY), Republican Party, Texas

For several days, buses have been dumping refugees from Texas in New York City, along with buses that have been going to Washington D.C. for months. Mutual aid groups are receiving these refugees and providing them with mental health, legal support, and other resources. This mutual aid has formed in the absence of a citywide policy to welcome refugees. In recent years, more and more refugees from Latin America are migrating to the United States. This increase in migration is a direct result of the climate crisis and centuries of imperialism ravaging and underdeveloping the Global South. Wealthy countries in the Global North are responding with callous disregard for the basic right to migrate, even as they create the conditions for it. For example, many of the refugees are migrating from Venezuela, a country being economically devastated by some of the most intense U.S. sanctions regimes.

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