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Labor Unions

The Labor Movement Has A Game Plan For The Biden Era

January 26, 2021 Jeff Schuhkre, In These Times. , ,
As the Democrats take control of the White House and both houses of Congress amid overlapping national crises, labor leaders say it is now more critical than ever that Washington deliver significant material gains for the working class. Democrats partly owe their recent electoral victories in places like Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia to the extensive get-out-the-vote efforts of unions like UNITE HERE and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which reached millions of Black and Latino voters.  After defeating Donald Trump and the Republicans at the polls, the labor movement does not intend to rest on its laurels.

The Freedom Struggle Is A Labor Struggle, Then And Now

January 14, 2021 Robin D. G. Kelley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
As we think, again, about the role of organized labor in the long Black freedom struggle, it is worth noting that in India at this very moment 250 million farmers, workers, students and allies have joined in what had been a three-month long protest against the Modi government’s neoliberal agricultural policies. The new parliamentary bills essentially eliminate state-run regulated agricultural markets, and allow direct transactions between farmers and private corporate interests — namely international commodity traders and conglomerates such as Walmart and Cargill. The new arrangements will destroy small farmers and force those who survive to enter into contracts with corporate global seed and agrochemical suppliers, traders, distributors and retail concerns.

Building Class Power By Fighting For The Common Good

January 13, 2021 Stephanie Luce, Organizing Upgrade. , , ,
As activists orient to the post-election landscape, we’re having lots of conversations about building power for the long term. We’re taking stock of the types of power we need and how they can reinforce each other – narrative, organizing, mobilizing, and electoral power, to name a few. And despite the decline in union membership and strength, workers’ collective bargaining power also offers a means of making gains for broader communities. “Bargaining for the Common Good” (BCG) makes this real. Unions that adopt a BCG framework incorporate community demands alongside their workplace demands in contract bargaining.

Transit Unions Join Forces To Win Safety Protections And Beat Back Layoffs

January 12, 2021 Richard Marcantonio, Labor Notes. , , ,
Transit workers have been hit hard by the pandemic. Last year at least 100 from the Amalgamated Transit Union and 131 from the Transport Workers lost their lives to Covid-19. Before Covid, transit unions in the Bay Area—six ATU locals, and one local each of TWU and the Teamsters—often faced their individual struggles in isolation. But during the pandemic, these locals united across the region and came together with riders to demand protections for all. That unity forced reluctant politicians to make Covid safety a priority. It also set the stage for the unions and riders to team up again to stave off layoffs. And there are more fights ahead.

University Of Michigan Strike Showed The Power Of Student Organizing

January 7, 2021 Kalena Thomhave and Matt Sehrsweeney, Waging Nonviolence.  , , ,
As the winter university semester is set to begin, the coronavirus is surging. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, like many universities reliant on tuition dollars, tried to reopen in September with a “public health-informed” semester, as the university called it. That meant a mix of in-person and remote classes and dormitories operating at about 70 percent capacity. Throughout the summer, the graduate workers union at the University of Michigan, the Graduate Employees Organization, or GEO, and Local 3550 of the American Federation of Teachers, had also been preparing for the fall semester by organizing against an unsafe campus opening in the face of a global pandemic.

A Critique Of The Rank-And-File Strategy

January 5, 2021 Jason Koslowski, Left Voice. , , ,
Kim Moody first gave a systematic statement of the “rank-file strategy” in a working paper for the socialist organization Solidarity in 2000. Since then he has kept on refining it, such as in 2017’s On New Terrain and in more recent essays. The DSA adopted a version of it as its official position on labor organizing, and Jacobin constantly discusses it. Labor Notes, influential among union militants, is built around some of its basic ideas. And it has been a regular point of debate for leftists. Most recently, Kate Doyle Griffiths wrote an important set of articles in Spectre about its strengths and limitations. Moody formulated the strategy during a time of defeat and decline for the struggles of the working class and the oppressed.

The ABC’s Of Google’s New Union

January 4, 2021 Clarissa Redwine, Collective Action in Tech. , , ,
Google workers have organized for pay equity, opposed unethical uses of machine learning, protested sexual assault, and more. Our small team at Collective Action in Tech has been archiving these organizing events for years. Now the workers of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are building worker power through a non-contract union they’ve named The Alphabet Workers Union. This isn’t the first time Google workers are unionizing. In 2017, Security guards at Google and Facebook had their union recognized and fought through a long contract negotiation. In 2019, Google cafeteria staff employed by vendor Bon Appetit won their union election.

Sara Nelson, The Labor Movement Leader We Needed Most

January 1, 2021 Esther Wang, Portside. , , ,
In January of 2019, weeks into Donald Trump’s government shutdown, Sara Nelson accepted the labor federations’ MLK Drum Major for Justice Award with a soaring, and startling, speech. The annual award doesn’t typically lead to national news headlines, but that year Nelson, the charismatic head of the 50,000-strong Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union, used the opportunity to boldly call for a general strike. “Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay,” she told the audience. “Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the labor movement waiting for?”

2020 Saw Resurgence Of Strikes Around the World

December 20, 2020 Candace Bernd, Truthout. , , ,
Like every other social movement in the U.S. this year, the compounding crises of 2020 proved a catalyzing force for the labor movement, compelling essential and frontline workers to join picket lines to ensure basic protections and increased pay as they continue to face disproportionate risks and increasingly perilous working conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But essential workers weren’t the only sector on strike this year: Prisoners and tenants across the country also withheld their labor and rent to fight for their fundamental human right to life and housing. Building momentum after major strike waves in 2018 and 2019, 2020 has cemented the strike’s resurgence as a crucial tactic for workers and organizers not only in the U.S. but around the world.

Workers Should Run The World

December 16, 2020 Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times. , ,
We chat with Erek Slater, a bus oper­a­tor for the Chica­go Tran­sit Author­i­ty, where he’s been work­ing for the past 15 years. Erek is a fam­i­ly man, a father, and a three-term elect­ed shop stew­ard and exec­u­tive board mem­ber of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union, Local 241. We talk about his work­ing life and all that goes into being a bus oper­a­tor, all the things that pas­sen­gers nev­er see — even though we depend on work­ers like Erek every day to live our lives. We also talk about Erek’s expe­ri­ence as a shop stew­ard and about his unshake­able com­mit­ment to hon­or, jus­tice, and empow­er­ing the work­ing class. In fact, it was because he stood up for these things that he was unjust­ly dis­missed from his job in May. 

As Racism Plagues Health Care, Unions Offer A Treatment

November 23, 2020 Alex J. Rouhandeh, The American Prospect. , , ,
Like many nursing homes across the country, the Genesis HealthCare center in Greenville, Rhode Island, primarily houses white residents and employs people of color. Adelina Ramos, who’s Cape Verdean, works at the center as a certified nursing assistant and faces a number of challenges common to the caregiving profession. Each day, she cares for 11 dementia patients on her own, with that number sometimes rising to 18 if a co-worker can’t come in. The job comes with long hours on her feet and the occasional risk of physical harm when dealing with aggressive patients.

Local Veterans, Workers Call Out Union Busting At VA

November 17, 2020 Union Advocate. , , ,
Local veterans and union members who staff the Minneapolis VA Hospital have been publicly calling out the Trump administration in recent months for understaffing in VA facilities and a string of attacks on VA workers’ rights. Members of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 260,000 VA workers, have rallied and demonstrated relentlessly at the busy intersection of Hiawatha Avenue and Highway 62, near the hospital. Their events are drawing support from activists in the Minnesota chapter of Veterans for Peace.

Organizing Rural Manufacturing Workers Matters

November 10, 2020 Cindy Estrada and Chris Schwartz, The Forge. , , ,
It’s no secret that the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has steadily declined over the past few decades, replaced largely by low-wage work in the service sector. But in many rural communities, manufacturing is still the most important part of the local economy. In fact, manufacturing jobs account for 21 percent of all earnings for rural communities, more than triple the income from farming work. Manufacturing represents a particularly important source of employment for workers of color in many rural communities. 

Alberta Is Closer Than Ever To A General Strike

November 8, 2020 Jeremy Appel, Read Passage. , ,
Canada - The powder keg of Alberta labour relations has finally exploded, in a good way. Yesterday, wildcat strikes popped up across the province from hospital support staff who learned last week that 11,000 of their own will be getting laid off.  According to reporting from Progress Alberta, there were at least 49 wildcat strikes across 35 municipalities in the province, from the major cities of Calgary and Edmonton to small towns such as Whitecourt and Cardston.  It was a spontaneous action, according to Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) president Guy Smith...

How Unions Can Lay The Ground For The Next Upsurge

October 18, 2020 Mark Meinster, Labor Notes. , , ,
As shown by authors like Dan Clawson in his 2003 book The Next Upsurge, unions tend to grow in spurts, as part of working-class uprisings that pose a deep challenge to the powers that be. The upsurges in the private sector from 1934 to 1939, when the CIO organized industry-wide, with sitdowns when necessary, and the AFL tried to catch up, and in the public sector from 1962 to 1972, when a wave of illegal strikes established the right to bargain, were rooted in militant worker action. The system began to lose legitimacy and workers got a sense of their collective power. Similar dynamics played out during the 1897-1904 upsurge in the U.S.
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