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Unions

What Do We Do Now? First, Gather To Talk

May 1, 2025 Barbara Madeloni, Labor Notes. , , ,
I don’t have new words for the dizzying abuses of unions, immigrants, and all working people emanating from the White House in the last three months. Like many people, I’ve been cycling through anger, despair, and dismay. The dismay is less about Trump than about the weak and ineffective union response. Between overreliance on lawsuits and calls to “fight back” or even strike with no clear plan, unions have not shown up. I keep wondering, where are the leaders? I get that it’s overwhelming. Trump’s actions are designed to knock us off balance, to keep us hopeless, divided, confused, and afraid. But as organizers we also know what to do when bosses and the billionaires do this.

Unpacking Trump’s Attack On Federal Sector Unions

April 30, 2025 Nicholas Handler, Portside. , , ,
On March 28, President Trump issued an executive order purporting to bar federal workers at dozens of federal agencies and subdivisions from joining labor unions or entering into collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with the federal government. Initial reporting suggests that the order could strip two-thirds of unionized federal workforce, or nearly 700,000 civil servants, of their collective bargaining rights. Following the issuance of the order, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memorandum directing the named agencies to implement the president’s directive, which presumably will include the termination of any collective bargaining agreements and a refusal to recognize existing unions.

UAW Reformers Close Caucus, Launch New Organization

April 30, 2025 Jane Slaughter and Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus in the Auto Workers, voted to dissolve at its quarterly online membership meeting April 27. “It was a heartbreaking decision to come to,” said UAWD founder and chair Scott Houldieson, a 36-year electrician at Ford. “UAWD had become a caucus that is ‘resolutionary,’ and focused more on caucus discipline than on actually organizing workers. Meetings had become dreadful. We can have differences as long as we make a decision and move on.” A majority of the group’s steering committee had brought a resolution calling for the dissolution. It was hotly debated. About half of the caucus membership attended the meeting.

The SEIU Strike Is An Opportunity To Build Collective Struggle

April 30, 2025 Julia Wallace, Left Voice. , , , ,
On Monday, April 28, more than 55,000 Los Angeles County workers, members of my union, Service Employees International (SEIU-721), began what is planned to be a two-day strike in response to unfair labor practices by the county. The SEIU represents workers who provide a huge range of vital services to the county, from sanitation and parks and recreation workers, to mental, public health, and homeless outreach workers. The union membership authorized the strike by 99%. The union leadership called the unfair labor practices (ULP) strike because the county has failed to fairly negotiate a new contract for months now

Grocery Workers Vs Goliath

April 28, 2025 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. , , , , ,
In early February, when temperatures in Denver plunged to seven degrees below zero and snow dusted the sidewalks, Martin Bonilla, bundled in two jackets and a neck warmer, walked a picket line 1,000 miles from his home of Fillmore, Calif. Bonilla works in the produce department at Vons and had flown to Colorado in the early morning after finishing an 11-and-a-half-hour shift. Over the next eight days, Bonilla picketed five of the 77 striking Kroger-owned King Soopers stores in Colorado, in support of 10,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7, putting in 16-hour shifts each day before going back to his hotel, exhausted.

Buffalo Is A Union Town; For Hotel Workers Union-Busting Runs Rampant

April 28, 2025 Derek Seidman, Truthout. , , , ,
“They just look at you like you’re nothing,” said a housekeeper from the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Buffalo, New York. Sitting with me for a conversation in her East Side apartment, the housekeeper, who requested not to be named due to fear of retaliation, spoke of slashed hours and stagnant pay, arduous and unfair workloads, and racist treatment and verbal abuse from managers so severe that it has sent her running to the bathroom in tears. But when she spoke about the belittling gaze of her employers — the feeling that immigrant workers like herself are seen as “nothing” by the hotel’s management – her words seemed to capture the deep nature of her grievances.

I Was Banned From Nashville Airport For Protesting Uber

April 26, 2025 Monique Mcclain, Labor Notes. , , , ,
On February 14, I joined 50 other Uber and Lyft drivers, all of us members of the Tennessee Drivers Union, in a peaceful caravan at the Nashville airport to protest our low pay and dismal working conditions. Our action, which took place on public property and when our rideshare apps were turned off, coincided with Valentines Day protests by rideshare unions across the country. A few days later, 34 of us received emails and text messages from Uber and Lyft informing us that we were permanently banned from pick-ups at the Nashville airport. The rideshare companies falsely accused us of unlawfully picking up passengers at the arrivals level of the airport.

Washington State Workers Take The Fight To The Governor

April 23, 2025 Chris Vasseur-Landriault, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Hundreds of Washington state workers streamed into the capitol building in Olympia on April 9 demanding, “No cuts! No furloughs! Tax, tax the rich!” Our booming chants echoed through the rotunda, making it difficult for legislators to carry on their work. The governor’s office locked the doors on us, so we staged a sit-in in the hallway and marched throughout the capitol building. When the doors were finally opened, we crowded inside—but the only sign of Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson was a small photograph on the front counter. His chief of staff informed our union president, Mike Yestramski, that he would let Bob know we had stopped by.

Chicago Teachers Approve Contract With Remarkable Gains

April 22, 2025 Jackson Potter, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
This month, 85 percent of the Chicago Teachers Union’s 27,000 active members voted on a tentative agreement covering 500 public schools across the city. A record 97 percent voted yes. The contract will run from 2024 to 2028, expiring at the same time as the UAW’s contracts with the Big Three. The negotiation drew the greatest level of member participation and support in the CTU’s history and was achieved without a strike or a strike vote. The new contract addresses both bread and butter concerns and common-good demands. Said CTU president Stacy Davis Gates, a member of the union’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators: “It was the whole buffet.”

Member-Run Unions

April 20, 2025 United Electrical Radio And Machine Workers Of America (UE), Portside. , , ,
Hundreds of workers are crowded into a high-school gymnasium. Their union leaders carefully go through each article of their employer’s last, best and final offer. Hands are raised, questions are asked and answered, and members share their thoughts with their officers and with each other. In the previous two months of negotiations, the union negotiating committee has been seeking language to help curb the company abuses that have become rampant in the plant. The company has not agreed. Each union member weighs whether they will take the company’s offer, and accept ongoing problems in the workplace in exchange for modest economic improvements, or reject the offer and strike for a better deal.

Labor Union Lessons In Solidarity Are Fueling Tenant Organizing

April 20, 2025 Fran Quigley, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
When Christina Jackson first started talking with her neighbors living in a Denver apartment building about their shared concerns about elevators not working, water being shut off, and roaches in their apartments, the response was guarded. “A lot of the tenants were scared to complain because they worried they would get evicted if they spoke up,” Jackson said. The worry is not an unreasonable one. My students and I represent low-income tenants facing eviction, and most of our clients have little protection from landlord retaliation. Even if a state’s laws block the landlord from openly citing a tenant’s complaints as the grounds for eviction, landlords can and do find other pretenses for forcing tenants out before their lease expires.

Moroccan Dockworkers Call Boycott Of Maersk’s Arms Shipment To Israel

April 18, 2025 Aseel Saleh, People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
Morocco’s Port Workers’ Union, affiliated with the Moroccan Labor Union, has called on workers, users, and operative companies at the port of Casablanca to boycott the Nexoe Maersk ship, which will arrive to the port on Friday, April 18, due to its planned shipment of military equipment to Israel between April 20 and 22. The union made the call in order to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The union urged dockworkers to abstain from unloading or servicing operations for the ship, warning that facilitating its passage would make all involved “direct accomplices in the genocidal war against the Palestinian people.”

Unmoved By Tariff Threats, Mexican GM Workers Win Wage Hike

April 18, 2025 Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Mexican General Motors workers in the Silao, Guanajuato, factory complex clinched record raises after staring down company scaremongering about tariff threats. “They said, well, we’re offering 6 percent,” said Norma Leticia Cabrera Vasquez about management’s offer at bargaining. “We knew they were going to show up with that, but we said, ‘We still have weeks to negotiate, so we won’t let that intimidate us,’” said Cabrera Vasquez, who worked at the plant for 15 years, and now serves as a leader of the union’s Women’s Department. In spite of the company's efforts to stoke uncertainty, auto workers stood their ground, garnering wage increases of 10 percent on average.

Jobs Back: Alamo Drafthouse Workers Force Sony To Reverse Layoffs

April 17, 2025 Emma Lee, Left Voice. , , , , ,
After nearly two months on strike, workers at Alamo Drafthouse, a dine-in cinema chain, have forced Sony to reverse course on its mass firings. Last Sunday, Alamo United members overwhelmingly ratified a tentative agreement that restores every illegally laid off worker to their job, reinstates stolen paid time off and sick leave, and honors each worker’s original hire date and seniority. The strike officially ends this Friday. Alamo Drafthouse, which was acquired by Sony in June 2024, started the year by trying to push through mass layoffs at multiple locations. At its non-unionized locations like its Slaughter Lane venue in Austin, the company laid off 25 percent of its hourly staff in January.

Call From Gaza Unions To US Workers: Put Your Solidarity Into Action

April 16, 2025 General Federation Of Trade Unions - Gaza, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
This war would not have been possible without the unlimited U.S. support for the occupation, whether through military funding, political and diplomatic backing, or arms deals that kill our children, women, and elderly every day. The U.S. administration under Trump has continued what the previous administration started, becoming a direct accomplice in genocide, ignoring the voices of millions inside and outside OF the United States, and an overwhelming majority of the nation, who reject this brutal aggression. Therefore, we call on you, the American labor unions, to translate your solidarity into effective actions that go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure to stop this dirty war.
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