Labor Movement

Dan Osborn Challenges Nebraska’s Political Establishment

March 16, 2024 Steve Early, Barn Raiser Media. Organize! Elections, Labor Movement, Nebraska, Working Class

Recent studies of lawmakers in the United States have found that less than 2% of those serving on Capitol Hill held blue-collar jobs before they were elected. That percentage drops even further among the nearly 7,300 state legislators across all 50 states, according to researchers at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago, who found that only 81 of those legislators were previously employed in working-class jobs. Dan Osborn, a 48-year-old building trades worker, is a rare example of a candidate working to increase those numbers.

Union Members Step Up And Dig In For Palestine Solidarity

March 6, 2024 Bahaar Tadjbakhsh, Labor Notes. Strategize! Ceasefire, Labor Movement, Palestine, San Francisco

When street protests seem ignored by the war machine, what are union members to do? In the San Francisco Bay Area, unions and rank-and-file networks are using direct action and endorsement-revoking campaigns to target the politicians who are still shipping weapons to Israel for its scorched-earth campaign. Meanwhile we’ve held a teach-in and launched campaigns to boycott Israeli goods and divest our pensions from the occupation. Nearly six months in, Israel’s invasion of Gaza is responsible for 30,000 Palestinian deaths and counting. Across the U.S., more than 100 union locals, six internationals, and the AFL-CIO have called for a ceasefire.

The Most Important Labor Story Right Now Is In Minnesota

March 4, 2024 Sarah Jaffe, In These Times. Strategize! Labor Movement, Minnesota, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Andrea Villanueva was in bargaining five days ago, negotiating a new contract for herself and 500 other retail janitors who clean some of the Twin Cities’ most recognizable stores. A group of building security workers, also members of Villanueva’s union SEIU Local 26, were also in negotiations in the same building. The workers bumped into one another in the hallways as the day went on — stopping to cheer each other on and express their solidarity. Local 26 is just one of a major network of unions and community groups in Minneapolis and St. Paul that lined up bargaining processes for new contracts — and in some cases, strike votes — around a March 2 deadline

Major Strike Activity Increased By 280% In 2023

March 4, 2024 Margaret Poydock and Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute. Resist! Labor Movement, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Last year saw a resurgence in collective action among workers. More than 16.2 million workers were represented by unions in 2023, an increase of 191,000 from 2022. Workers filed petitions for union elections in record numbers and captured significant wage gains through work stoppages and contract negotiations. Further, organizing efforts continued in a variety of sectors—including health care, nonprofits, higher education, museums, retail, and manufacturing (Shierholz et al. 2024). Strikes were among the more prominent forms of collective action in 2023. A strike is when workers withhold their labor from their employer during a labor dispute.

What was the CIO?

February 26, 2024 Andrew Elrod, n+1. Strategize! CIO, Democrats, History, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

After decades of defeat, workers are on the move again. Many of those interested today in a revived labor movement know that unions once exercised real sway over the national economy and politics in the US. And the distant memory of how the labor movement was built holds great symbolic power: as thousands of union organizers have asked in meetings, how did they do it in the 1930s? The United Auto Workers named and conceptualized their recent, triumphant “Stand-Up Strike” in explicit homage to their union’s breakthrough sitdown strikes of 1936–1937.

The 2023 UAW Strike: A Turning Point In Labor History?

February 23, 2024 Nelson Lichtenstein, New Labor Forum. Strategize! History, Labor Movement, Strikes, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

How transformative was the strike that the United Auto Workers concluded in November 2023, when it shut down factories at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, which now incorporates Chrysler? The UAW has been in existence for nearly 90 years, during which three contests with capital have defined the character of the union and–because of its vanguard role–the expectations and standards for millions of other workers. Should we add last Fall’s brilliantly led and highly successful “stand-up” strike to that list? The great sit-down strikes of 1937 founded the UAW and ensured that, for more than a decade, shop militancy and leftwing politics would define a union representing upwards of a million workers in America’s most important industry.

New National Labor Network Formed To Expand Support For A Ceasefire

February 18, 2024 United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. Organize! Anti-War, Ceasefire, Israel, Labor Movement, National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC), Palestine

Seven national unions and over two hundred local unions today announce the formation of the National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC) to “end the death and devastation” in the Middle East, and to expand support for the ceasefire among unions nationally. Together, unions calling for a ceasefire represent over 9 million union members – more than half the labor movement in the United States. The NLNC launch comes on the heels of a statement calling for a ceasefire released by the AFL-CIO last week - the largest federation of unions in the United States. The NLNC is launching their website (laborforceasefire.org) with a call for unions and union members to sign the ceasefire letter to continue expanding labor’s ceasefire movement.

Unions Added 139,000 Members In 2023, But Density Remains Stubbornly Low

February 16, 2024 Elizabeth Donald, Portside. Educate! Gender Disparities, Labor Movement, Racial disparities, Unions, Worker Rights

Unions added 139,000 more workers in historic gains in 2023, but union density remains stubbornly low, with only 10 percent of American workers represented by a union as of the end of the year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. This is an all-time low and a big surprise to many, given the historic strikes by auto workers, Hollywood creatives and Kaiser healthcare workers, according to a Washington Post analysis. Union density vs. union membership is a frustrating comparison. Even with the historic membership growth, the country added 2.7 million jobs in 2023, many of them non-union, meaning the membership growth couldn’t keep up with the overall jobs numbers.

The AFL-CIO Can Be Reformed, Locally And From The Bottom-Up!

February 15, 2024 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. Organize! AFL-CIO, Democracy, Labor Movement, Vermont

Changing the leadership, structure, or functioning of any U.S. labor organization is no easy task. Activists and experts have long argued about whether dysfunctional unions are best reformed from the top-down, bottom-up, or some mix of the two approaches. For the past 65 years, the main locus of union democracy and reform struggles in the U.S. has been local unions, which hold leadership elections every three years and are closest to the membership. Thousands of rank-and-file workers have campaigned for more militant unionism by running for and winning local office. Some have had the backing of national networks of like-minded dissidents, including Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a TDU-inspired reform caucus within the United Auto Workers.

Minnesota Is Headed For A Workers Vs. Bosses Showdown

February 13, 2024 Amie Stager, Workday Magazine. Resist! Labor Movement, Labor Spring, Minnesota, Worker Rights and Jobs

This spring, thousands of workers across Minnesota will have expired contracts all at the same time. Among them are healthcare workers, janitors, security officers, airport workers, construction workers, educators, education support professionals, and public workers. Organizers within Minnesota’s labor movement are making use of this unique moment to exert joint pressure on employers across sectors to meet workers’ demands. Over the past decade, unions and community groups in Minnesota have been creating partnerships with a shared analysis of power, and holding employers and leaders accountable, all while building an alignment strategy that they say grows their organizations and wins more for their members.

AFL-CIO’s Ceasefire Call Shows Power Of The Movement For Palestine

February 12, 2024 Otto Fors, Left Voice. Resist! AFL-CIO, Ceasefire, Israel, Labor Movement, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity

On Thursday, the AFL-CIO called for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. The statement came after months of silence, during which the largest union federation in the United States had gone as far as to force a Washington-based labor council to remove its ceasefire resolution. The AFL-CIO’s call shows that the movement for Palestine and rank-and-file ceasefire organizing has forced labor to shift its position on the assault — and this movement must go further. The AFL-CIO’s statement comes after more than 28,000 Palestinians — 40 percent of whom are children — have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

How We Move Forward Together: The Rank And File Project

January 30, 2024 Abdullah F., Cyn Huang and Marsha Niemeijer, Convergence. Strategize! Democracy, Independent Politics, Labor Movement, Socialism, Unions, Youth Activism

Most major advances toward a more equal and just society come about because organized working people use their power to disrupt capitalist profits. And we think that’s the only force that can ultimately end capitalist exploitation and establish a truly democratic society. For that reason, many on the Left see labor unions as essential to making radical change. But unions today are often top-down and undemocratic in structure, weak, defensive and even conservative in their politics. The labor movement lacks a coherent, organized left-wing leadership that could help re-found the movement on a democratic, class-struggle basis.

How Can Workers Organize Against Capital Today?

January 26, 2024 Benjamin Y. Fong, Catalyst. Strategize! Book Review, Capitalism, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Labor Power and Strategy, the new book edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perušek, officially aims to provide “rational, radical, experience-based perspectives that help target and run smart, strategic, effective campaigns in the working class.” But by the end of it, it is difficult to avoid the sneaking suspicion that Olney and Perušek have a different goal: to make clear just how far organized labor is from having a strategic conversation about its present impasse. The book is organized around an interview with economist and historian John Womack about the twin needs for an analysis of the weak points (or “choke points”) in contemporary industrial technologies and for the labor movement to exploit that analysis to cause disruption and gain leverage.

One In Ten US Workers Belong To Unions

January 24, 2024 Jake Rosenfeld, Scheer Post. Educate! Labor Movement, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union fell slightly to 10% in 2023, from 10.1% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a scholar of organized labor, I’m not shocked by this slight decline, although if there was ever a year to expect the unionization rate to increase, it was 2023. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation that unites 60 unions, has proclaimed 2023 “the year of labor.” She wasn’t exaggerating. Successful walkouts by Hollywood actors and screenwriters, autoworkers and health care professionals demonstrated how effective strikes can be in achieving union gains.

Organizers Speak Out As Employers Investigations Hit Record Lows

January 12, 2024 James Anderson, Barn Raiser. Strategize! Farmworkers, Labor Movement, Migrant Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

Sixty years after Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the National Farm Workers Association, agricultural workers—especially migrants—continue to be subjected to widespread abuses, including wage theft and dangerous working conditions, due to lax enforcement of labor regulations, concerted efforts by employers to skirt the rules that are in place and a political-economic system that favors employers. Despite these challenges, labor organizations have helped farmworkers stand up for themselves and together with other workers, with some success. Although migrants working temporary and seasonal jobs on farms are legally protected by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) under the H-2A visa program, legal protection does not necessarily translate into workplace protections, especially absent a union presence.

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