Labor Movement

‘Dirty Dozen’ Dangerous Employers Named For Workers Memorial Day

April 27, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Jenny Brown, and Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Educate! Corporations, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

April 28 is Workers Memorial Day, commemorating those killed, sickened, or injured on the job. As part of a week of events, today the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health is releasing its “Dirty Dozen” report. Here are four of the employers COSH has picked out for the “Dirty Dozen” distinction in 2023 because they run unsafe workplaces, endangering workers and the public: Swissport, Packers Sanitation, the Class I railroads, and FedEx. Some also have attempted to silence workers who speak up about hazards or are trying to organize a union to make the workplace safer.

UFCW Convention: Reformers In Motion

April 25, 2023 Chris Bohner, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Labor Movement, UFCW, Worker Rights and Jobs

The United Food and Commercial Workers is one of the country’s largest unions, with 1.2 million members in the U.S. and Canada, two-thirds of whom work in grocery stores. Like other unions, it has lost membership over the last decade, but it has managed to double its assets. Reformers in the union are asking why. The UFCW caucus Essential Workers for Democracy has proposed a slate of amendments to expand rank and file power in the union and put resources into organizing and strike action. The proposals will be considered at the union’s convention starting today in Las Vegas. The convention is held every five years.

How Do We Develop Strategies That Help Workers In Struggle Win?

April 21, 2023 Stewart Acuff, Portside. Strategize! Labor Movement, popular power, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

How do we use organizing for collective power and solidarity, to win steps toward new power over our own lives? Labor Power and Strategy is a compelling take on this question, and the dialogue between organizers and educators is the kind of far reaching discussion we need to advance our workers movement.

Internal Wells Fargo Document Reveals Angst Over Union ‘Resurgence’

April 19, 2023 Josh Eidelson, Portside. Organize! Banks, Labor Movement, Unions, Wells Fargo, Worker Rights and Jobs

Wells Fargo & Co. leaders are privately expressing increased concern that a years-long effort to unionize the bank’s employees could soon start notching victories — and have made plans to spend millions addressing the “pain points” that can fuel organizing efforts. The lender has seen “an increase in organizing activity” by employees working with the Communications Workers of America, according to an internal PowerPoint presentation viewed by Bloomberg News. That comes amid what it called a broader “resurgence” of US union activity. “Public approval of unions has increased,” the document reads. “And a new generation of employees with activist experience successfully unionized parts of major companies with no prior history of unionization.”

The First Signs Of An Ecological Class Struggle In Germany

April 10, 2023 Franziska Heinisch and Julia Kaiser, Green Left. Strategize! climate crisis, Germany, Labor Movement, Solidarity

On the occasion of the global climate strike on March 3, a special political alliance took to the streets in Germany: side-by-side, climate activists and public transport workers went on strike. In at least 30 cities, climate activists visited workers' pickets and brought them along for joint demonstrations. According to Fridays for Future (FFF), a total of 200,000 people participated in the nation-wide protests. The way employers reacted showed that this alliance of workers and climate activists is a potential threat to the ruling class. Steffen Kampeter, CEO of the Confederation of German Employers (BDA), publicly denounced them on the morning of the joint strike day as “a dangerous crossing of the line”.

Auto Workers Convention Lurches Towards Reversing Concessions

March 30, 2023 Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. Organize! Auto Workers, Democracy, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

The brand-new leaders of the United Auto Workers are making ambitious demands but face stiff organizing challenges as they seek to jump-start the union, ahead of a momentous contract expiration this September at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler). At the union’s Detroit convention this week, hundreds of delegates–often local leaders–signaled they were less ready than the members to welcome the reform leadership. But there was unanimity that it’s time to finally recoup the divisive contract concessions granted in the 2007-2009 recession. Under those contracts the then-ailing automakers were allowed to hire new workers at close to half pay and no pension.

How Rank-And-File Labor Organizers Can Transform Unions

March 30, 2023 Vince Quiles, The Real News Network. Organize! Democracy, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

For the past five years, Tevita Uhatafe of TWU Local 567 has dedicated himself to advancing the labor movement. Known affectionately as “Mic Guy,” Uhatafe has traveled from coast to coast to rally in solidarity with striking workers in multiple states. Uhatafe entered the union movement as an outsider without family connections, but has nevertheless risen as a rank-and-file leader. He is now the Vice President of the Texas AFL-CIO. Vince Quiles, lead organizer of Home Depot Workers United, sits down with Tefita Uhatafe for an organizer-to-organizer conversation on their respective stories, the barriers impeding deeper solidarity in the labor movement, and why unions so desperately need rank-and-file leadership today.

Beyond Fatalism: Renewing Working-Class Politics

March 26, 2023 Sam Gindin, The Bullet. Strategize! Canada, Labor Movement, Politics, popular power, Working Class

“We need to ask ourselves,” Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz stated in the third edition of From Consent to Coercion, “whether free pertains to those who do business or whether it pertains also to the majority of Canadians who do not do business.” Their book, now a classic, focused on a critical expression of the tension between liberal democratic principles and capitalist realities: the substantive right of workers to strike. Canadian workers were officially granted the basic democratic right to form unions, but the substance of that right – the withdrawal by workers of their labour power – was regularly suspended when workers successfully used it.

Making Campuses Platforms For Labor Renewal

March 21, 2023 Joseph A. McCartin, CounterPunch.org. Organize! Higher Education, History, Labor Movement, Labor Spring, Worker Rights and Jobs

Everywhere you look this spring, you’ll find evidence that campuses are becoming sites of labor organizing and struggle. In recent months, faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago staged recently a successful week-long strike, adjunct faculty at the New School won a three-week strike, 50,000 graduate assistants staged a six-week strike across the entire University of California system, staff at American University struck, and undergraduate workers at a growing number of campuses have begun organizing unions and, in some places, even preparing to strike. And this is just a small sampling of what has been afoot.

Auto Workers Region 9 Winner On Rebuilding A Fighting Union

March 9, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Elections, Labor Movement, UAW

Reform challenger Shawn Fain appears poised to win the presidency of the United Auto Workers, defeating incumbent Ray Curry for the union’s top leadership spot. With more than 137,000 votes counted, Fain has a lead of 645 votes; the counting of the remaining challenged ballots will resume March 16. If Fain wins, challengers to the ruling caucus will hold not only the presidency but also a majority on the union’s international executive board. UAW Members United ran on a platform of no corruption, no tiers, and no concessions. It’s a watershed after nearly 80 years of the Administration Caucus’s stranglehold on power—defined by corruption scandals, diminished bargaining power, and a multi-tier wage system that wrecked worker solidarity.

Why Veterans In Labor Should Not Be Ignored

March 4, 2023 Steve Early, Working-Class Perspectives. Strategize! Identity Politics, Labor Movement, Veterans, Worker Rights and Jobs

Even in the era of identity politics, one category of identity has largely been ignored: what UK journalist Joe Glenton calls “veteranhood.”19 million former soldiers — most of them working class — share a strong sense of personal identity as vets, but the media usually notices them only when they are involved in right-wing militias, white supremacist groups, and other MAGA-land formations. Some have noted their over-representation in U.S. law enforcement, which does reinforce militarized policing, along with the better known Pentagon-to-police equipment pipeline.

Unions Safeguard Workers’ Sweat Equity

March 1, 2023 Tom Conway, In These Times. Strategize! Labor Movement, Steelworkers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Last year, Mark Glyptis and dozens of other union leaders went into contract negotiations with the Cleveland-Cliffs mining company determined not only to win wage and benefit enhancements for their coworkers, but also to protect thousands of family-sustaining steel mill jobs for years to come. The United Steelworkers (USW) negotiating team ultimately delivered a historic contract requiring the company to invest $4 billion in 13 union-represented facilities, including about $100 million at the Weirton, West Virginia mill where Glyptis and his colleagues rely on ever more sophisticated equipment to make precision tin plate.

Trade Unions Can Beat The Far-Right

March 1, 2023 Taj Ali, Tribune Magazine. Strategize! Far Right, Labor Movement, Trade Unions, Unions

When my dad grew up in Luton in the 1970s, many of the roads I walk through today were a no-go for British Pakistanis. They were places where racist attacks were commonplace, and it was only sustained campaigning by an older generation that turned them around. Sadly, however, that fight endured. When I was eleven years old, I was told by a schoolteacher one day to stay indoors because the English Defence League were marching in town. Luton was later plagued by Britain First and other far-right groups. Last week, Patriotic Alternative targeted the town, plastering it with white nationalist Great Replacement Theory rhetoric. In the neighbouring town of Dunstable, the group was also active, whipping up fear about the housing of asylum seekers in hotels.

ILWU Alums Tackle Labor Power And Strategy Questions

February 28, 2023 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. Strategize! Direct Action, Labor Movement, Solidarity, Supply Chain, Unions

Workers in the logistics industry often make headlines when their handling of goods is disrupted by pandemic conditions or labor conflicts. Thanks to global supply chains, many consumer products are now manufactured in one country, shipped by sea, rail, or air to another country, unloaded and trucked to huge distribution centers (aka “warehouses”), and then delivered to retail store chains or directly to customers at home by on-line retailers like Amazon. When workers in any one link in this supply chain have a fight with their boss—on the docks, at a trucking company or railroad, or even in a single newly organized warehouse—their chances of winning are greater if they occupy a strategic “choke point” or can enlist labor allies, at home or abroad, who do.

Strikes Up 52% In 2022: Labor Action Tracker

February 26, 2023 The ILR School. Educate! Labor Movement, Strikes, Worker Rights

The Cornell-ILR Labor Action Tracker is a comprehensive database of work stoppages. The project began in 2021 and is led by Johnnie Kallas, Ph.D. ’23, to provide a fuller picture of worker activity to inform policymakers, the public and others about workplace conflict. The data collection is unique to the ILR School, he said. Due to funding cuts by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics excludes work stoppages of fewer than 1,000 workers from its database. It is imperative to have reliable data on strike activity, by union and non-union workers in stoppages of all sizes, to keep journalists, policymakers, activists and scholars informed about labor activism and unrest across the United States,” Kallas said.

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