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Labor Movement

Milwaukee Unionists And Others Stand With Palestine During LaborFest 2024

September 9, 2024 Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
Milwaukee, WI – On Monday, September 2, the Milwaukee Area Labor Council (MALC) and other unions such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA) hosted LaborFest, an annual celebration held in commemoration of Labor Day. Hundreds of workers and union supporters turned out for the occasion. The first portion of the day’s events saw the traditional mass march featuring rank-and-file workers mobilized by unions spanning the spectrum of organized labor, from trades workers to letter carriers to communications workers and everything in between.

Over 10,000 Hotel Workers In The US Are On Strike

September 4, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Over 10,000 hotel workers went on strike early Sunday morning across the United States in pursuit of fair wages, better working conditions, and more staff to help. As working people across the United States are increasingly squeezed economically, hotel workers are coming together on the picket line under the slogan “one job should be enough!” Workers are on strike at hotels across 9 different cities in the US, including Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, Greenwich. Workers are also striking hotels in Honolulu and Kauai in Hawai’i. On Monday morning, 200 more hotel workers walked off the job in Baltimore.

Building A Labor Movement In The United States To Win Worker Rights

September 2, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , ,
For Labor Day, Clearing the FOG speaks with Rand Wilson, a long time labor organizer who began his career with Tony Mazzocchi and the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and who has been involved in many campaigns to build worker power in the United States. Wilson speaks about the current challenges for workers, including the way contracts are negotiated, labor laws that prohibit strikes, antiquated union structure and union busting by employers. He comments on the call by UAW for a general strike on 2028 and he describes a new campaign, CHIPS Communities United, and what people can do to support workers where they live.

Labor Militancy Is The Only Way To Increase Union Membership

September 1, 2024 C. J. Polychroniou, Common Dreams. , , ,
With Labor Day 2024 upon us, it is important to critically reflect on the current state of the U.S. labor movement and the challenges that it faces in an environment where Big Business dominates the economy and mainstream society continues to abide allegiance to the values of a Lockean political culture in which ruthless individualism reigns supreme. To put it mildly, without a strong labor movement and a public spirit guiding our institutions, the country will never succeed in realizing the vision of a just and fair society. However, the news on the labor front is not very encouraging. The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union has been declining since the early 1980s—an era which coincides with the full swing of the neoliberal counterrevolution and deindustrialization.

Worker Coops Bring Undocumented Workers Into The Labor Movement

August 28, 2024 Tareq Saghie, Labor Notes. , , , ,
How can immigrants without work authorization avoid being hyper-exploited, and instead find work where they have some autonomy and collective power to raise standards? A movement that has been incubating in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, might offer some answers. Sunset Park boasts one of the highest concentrations of worker cooperatives in the United States. This business model, brought to the neighborhood by the Center for Family Life, guarantees all members standard and legal wages, a voice in their company’s governance, and control over their schedules. Since members are business owners, not employees, they also do not need work authorization.

The Win For EV Workers In The South You Didn’t Hear About

August 17, 2024 Ella Fanger, Portside. , , , , ,
Organized labor is in the midst of a fierce campaign to make inroads at auto manufacturers in the South, most recently at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, where on May 17, 56% of workers voted narrowly against joining the United Auto Workers. But a few months before the unsuccessful vote at Mercedes, workers 100 miles away at an EV bus manufacturing plant in Anniston, Alabama, unionized and won a historic contract. In January 2024, the majority of the around 600 workers at a plant run since 2013 by New Flyer, the largest transit bus manufacturer in North America, signed a union card to join the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA).

The 90th Anniversary Of The 1934 Truckers’ Strike

August 12, 2024 Isabela Escalona, Unicorn Riot. , , , , ,
Minneapolis, MN — On July 27, workers, descendants of the strikers, and the local labor community came together at Wabun Park in Minneapolis to honor the 90th anniversary of the 1934 Truckers’ Strike that brought Minneapolis to a standstill and served as a spark for radical and militant labor struggle across the country. The strike lasted about three months, as Teamsters Local 574 truckers demanded a fair wage and official recognition of the union. The trucking companies had the support of the Citizens Alliance, an anti-trade union organization that sought to break the strike. The strike’s impact reverberated throughout the city, bringing much of the Minneapolis economy to a halt.

Schools For Struggle: For A Workers’ Education Movement

August 6, 2024 Daniel Judt, Portside. , , , ,
In December of 1936, a day into their historic sit-down strike at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, autoworkers set up a school. Surrounded by idle machines, freed from the foreman's gaze, they took classes in public speaking and labor journalism, in political economy, in the history of the labor movement. This was not a spontaneous idea. Some of the key players in the strikes—the nascent United Auto Workers (UAW) union's education director and several rank-and-file organizers, as well as its future president, Walter Reuther, and his brother, Roy—had spent time at Brookwood Labor College, a small independent school for workers who wanted to radicalize the labor movement.

New ‘Battery Belt’ Opens Organizing Front In The South

August 3, 2024 Ben Carroll, Labor Notes. , , ,
Towering cranes pierce the sky, contrasting with the rural surroundings. It’s an early morning in June, the air already gauzy and thick, and construction is humming at the Toyota Battery mega-site in Liberty, North Carolina. Trucks and other heavy machines dart in and out of the complex. A line of food trucks is tucked around the corner, alongside a dozen tour buses used to move workers. Production is slated to begin in 2025. By 2030, when the 7 million-square-foot complex is fully operational, it will have 14 production lines—10 dedicated to batteries for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electrics, and four for hybrid electric vehicles—operated by 5,100 workers. The total population of Liberty is 2,655.

Leadership In AFSCME DC 37 Is Stifling Rank And File Engagement

August 2, 2024 Duncan Freeman, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Members of District Council 37's Local 3005 in New York City say that attempts to mobilize their coworkers over the last two years have been stonewalled and met with apathy by union leadership. Current and former members say that since the pandemic, they have presented proposals to create a membership committee, speak out about city budget cuts, fight for telework rights and other efforts and that all were slow-walked or shot down by the union’s president Jeff Oshins. Most recently, some members have wanted to introduce motions calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and for the New York City Employees' Retirement System to divest from Israeli bonds and securities.

Debt Is Wage Theft, Debt Steals Leisure Time, Debt Can Suppress Strikes

August 2, 2024 Jason Wozniak, Sara Nelson, Brittany Alston, Olivia Schwob, Jackson Potter and Teresa Romero, In These Times. , , ,
Debt is fundamentally a labor issue. When labor is weak and unionization low, workers are forced to take on debt to offset costs for necessities like healthcare, housing and food. The more debt we have, the more we are compelled to work under the bosses’ conditions — rather than fighting for our own. Interest-heavy loans act as a regressive kind of pay cut, reaching deep into workers’ take-home earnings. Just to keep up with debt payments and interest, workers take on more hours and multiple low-paying jobs. And data shows debt can make workers more unlikely to strike.

A Just Transition Guaranteed By International Law Is Within Reach

July 6, 2024 Ruwan Subasinghe and Jeff Vogt, Portside. , , ,
In 2021, we argued that the core elements of any conceptualisation of a just transition is already well-rooted in international human rights law. We contended that a just transition should not be considered merely as an abstract public policy concept but rather as a human right. Since that time, there have been major legal and policy developments forging momentum towards a standalone human right to a just transition. On 31 December 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued Resolution No. 3/2021 Climate Emergency: Scope of Inter-American Human Rights Obligations.

Union Jobs, At Your Fingertips

July 4, 2024 Stand, Portside. , , ,
Union workers make more than non-union workers, on average by more than 10%. For women, that differences is more than 20%. That’s a crucial pay bump for many working people, not to mention the job security, workplace protections, and earned respect that come with a union contract. These differences can be life changing. Wanting a union job is one thing — but finding a union job is another. Enter the Virtual Union Hiring Hall, a collaborative project between the Presidents’ Organizing Initiative (POI) housed at the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council (MLK Labor) and Partner in Employment (PIE).

Illinois Amazon Drivers Strike, Demand Union Contract

June 28, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Amazon drivers at the DIL7 delivery station in Skokie, Illinois, struck June 26 over the company’s violations of federal labor laws. A hundred drivers have organized with Teamsters Local 705 and are demanding that Amazon recognize and bargain with their union, after presenting cards signed by a majority of the workforce. They’re nominally employed by a contractor, Four Star Express Delivery. But “every Amazon driver knows who our true employer is,” said driver Luke Cianciotto in a union statement. “We wear their uniforms and drive their trucks.” Four Star Express is one of 2,500 “delivery service partners” that carry out package deliveries while Amazon retains full control.

If The AFL-CIO Gets Away With A Vermont Purge, It Won’t Stop Here

June 27, 2024 Ellen Kaye, Katie Maurice, and Jeremy Rathbun, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Vermonters have a special relationship with direct participatory democracy. The first Tuesday of every March, in towns big and small, citizens gather in person to do the business of their community the old-fashioned way—face to face, one person, one vote. Everyone can have the floor to speak their opinion, from an elected officer to the worker who hauls the garbage. Everyone has the same rights. This type of governance is something that we in the Green Mountain State take seriously and hold dear to our hearts. And it is one of the founding principles of the United! slate of the Vermont State Labor Council.
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