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Unions

Hundreds Of Staff At California National Parks To Unionize

Hundreds of staff at two of California’s most popular national parks have voted to unionize, a move that comes during a troubled summer for the National Park Service, which has seen the Trump administration enact unprecedented staff and budget cuts. In an election held between July and August, more than 97% of workers at Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon national parks voted in support of organizing a union, according to a statement from the National Federation of Federal Employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority certified the results last week. “I am honored to welcome the Interpretive Park Rangers, scientists, biologists, photographers, geographers, and so many other federal employees in essential roles at both Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon to our union,” said Randy Erwin, the NFFE national president.

Crackdown On Immigrant Workers At Cheese Factory Triggers Backlash

“This fight is all of labor’s fight,” Kevin Gundlach, president of the South Central Federation of Labor, declared at a “solidarity dinner” for 43 immigrant workers who recently lost their jobs at a Monroe, Wisconsin cheese factory. “Even Wisconsinites who don’t know about the story, should know in a cheesemaking state we should support cheesemakers.” The workers, some of whom labored for more than 20 years at W&W Dairy, were told in August they would have to submit to E-Verify screening and confirm their legal status in order to continue their employment after a new company, Kansas-based Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), bought the cheese plant.

The Labor Movement Today: Building Power Across All Our Issues

For Labor Day, Clearing the FOG speaks with labor organizer Jaz Brisack. Jaz was on the frontlines of organizing the first labor union in a Starbuck's shop and creating the Inside Organizer School in 2018. They are the author of Get on the Job and Organize published by Atria/One Signal Publishers in April of this year. Jaz speaks about their experiences growing up in the South, discovering the history of the labor movement in the United States and getting involved in labor campaigns during college. They also speak about the tactics used and challenges overcome in building Starbucks Workers United, as well as the youth contingent of the labor movement today and the importance of unifying the labor movement across types of work and around broader social demands.

Unions Aren’t Just Good For Workers; They Benefit Communities, Democracy

We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions. But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on people’s lives outside of work. They help foster solidarity, promote civic and political engagement, provide reliable information to working-class communities about how economic policies impact their lives, and serve as a counterweight to corporate power in our democracy. Throughout history, unions have been engines of resistance to entrenched and undemocratic power—mobilizing working people to challenge inequality, defend civil rights, and push back against authoritarianism in all its forms.

Kentucky Battery Plant Joins United Auto Workers In Close Vote

Kentucky battery plant workers at the BlueOval SK Battery Park (BOSK) in Glendale have voted to join the United Auto Workers. The workers make batteries to power Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and E-Transit cargo van. On August 27 at 10 p.m., an unofficial tally showed 526 yes and 515 no votes, with 41 challenged ballots. There were 1,200 eligible voters; turnout was over 90 percent. The UAW called the vote “a major step forward for workers who stood up against intense company opposition and chose to join the UAW.” “We’re feeling pretty confident, I think we’re gonna win,” said battery worker Halee Hadfield via text message on August 23.

The Labor Education That Workers Need Most

What kind of knowledge do you need the most in order to make a decent living and avoid getting injured or beaten up by your job? It’s not those hard skills that take years of costly training, or the work-ethic skills that workforce development planners promote. It’s labor education. Narrowly defined, it means how to organize a union, plus all the ancillary leadership, mobilizing, negotiation, education, and enforcement responsibilities that come with that. Much of this is quite technical. It’s also philosophy. Broadly defined, it’s essentially the arts and sciences from a working-class perspective. The narrow definition of what people learn in labor education classes reflects the reality that our labor relations system is unusually complex.

How NYC Teachers Ran A Slate To Build Member Power

Teachers measure time in school years, not calendar years. As the new school year begins, I’ve been reflecting on my experiences from last year as an unexpected candidate for president of the 200,000-member United Federation of Teachers in New York City. When last school year started, I was focused on teaching my students, supporting colleagues, and coaching middle school soccer. Running for the highest office in the largest local union in the country was not on my radar. I didn’t see myself as a potential presidential candidate, but fellow organizers within the UFT reform movement did. In January 2025, I accepted the nomination to lead the Alliance of Retired and In-Service Educators (ARISE), a coalition slate uniting three major reform caucuses in the UFT: MORE (the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators), New Action, and Retiree Advocate.

War Against Workers In United States Intensifies

It has been a month-long whirlwind of fascistic maneuvers by President Donald Trump’s administration. First came the firing of Erika McEntarfer as director of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Aug. 1. Trump then immediately nominated Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni as her replacement. Next came the staging of hundreds of National Guard troops in the streets of Washington, D.C. All of this intensifies the war against workers and oppressed peoples coast to coast. McEntarger’s firing immediately followed the BLS’s monthly “jobs report,” which claimed that from May through July 2025, only 73,000 jobs had been created in the world’s largest capitalist economy.

Defying Back To Work Order, Flight Attendants Score Tentative Agreement

Flight attendants with Air Canada and subsidiary Air Canada Rouge walked out early August 17. As expected, the Liberal government ordered them back to work 12 hours later, declaring their strike unlawful. In a bold move with wide implications, the 10,000 striking flight attendants defied the order. They’d voted 99.7 percent to strike earlier this month. Their union, an affiliate of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said the back-to-work order violated their right to strike, and CUPE president Mark Hancock ripped it up. “Members are reminded that it is not a criminal offence to remain on the picket line,” the union wrote in a bargaining update. “While union leaders may be subject to arrest, union members are not at risk of arrest for participating in the strike.

Air Canada Flight Attendants To Vote On New Tentative Agreement

Flight attendants with Air Canada are voting on whether to accept a new tentative agreement from their employer. After a high-profile strike, this tentative agreement marks a victory in the face of government intervention in labour negotiations.  Represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, flight attendants began a strike on August 16, the same day the employer initiated a lock-out. Negotiations had been ongoing since December 2024, with the parties being sent to conciliation and still not reaching a deal.  CUPE made headlines when its membership decided to defy a back-to-work order issued by the Canada Industrial Relations Board. The order was delivered after Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hadju invoked section 107 of the Canada Labour code which allows the Minister of Labour to take actions they believe would be likely to “secure industrial peace.” 

Liberatory Unionism In The US Art Museum Labor Movement

Art museum workers in the U.S. are in the midst of the most exciting period of labor organizing in decades. Since the launch of the New Museum Union in January 2019, there has been a 223% increase in new organizing at private, not-for-profit art museums alone. Though precarious working conditions long predate the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a boom in organizing in its wake after institutional responses exposed and exacerbated worker exploitation, unsafe working conditions, and layoffs and furloughs, predominantly affecting front-of-house workers.  Museum workers are also enacting liberatory unionism, a term I borrow from labor journalist Eve Livingston. In liberatory unionism, workers are not simply organizing for higher pay and better working conditions, but are also connecting labor struggles with resistance to racism and gender oppression.

Uncover How Your Employer’s Power Flows

When workers at one company started researching their employer, says a union leader in What the Boss Doesn’t Want Us to Know, “it felt like the curtain was pulled back on Oz. All these things that didn’t make sense to them for so long suddenly made sense.” In their new book, Juravich, Geho, and Gorry share their experience researching private-sector employers and helping unions design strategic campaigns based on what they’ve learned. Then they teach us how to do it. The audience is not just union leaders or staff, but rank and filers who want to build winning workplace campaigns. Most of the information is geared toward the U.S., but there is solid advice for Canadians, too.

Indiana Teamsters Take Fight To UPS CEO Over Contract Violations

Indianapolis, IN – More than 60 members of Teamsters Local 135 rallied outside the UPS facility in Plainfield on Tuesday, August 19, as company UPS CEO Carol Tomé visited the site. The action put the company’s top executive face-to-face with UPS workers’ anger over rampant contract violations, illegal buyout schemes, and building closures that threaten job security and working conditions. “Local 135 has a simple message for Carol Tomé,” said Dustin Roach, president of Teamsters Local 135. “We're done tolerating corporate games and illegal practices.” The rally took place outside the UPS Plainfield hub, the largest in the Indianapolis metro area. Teamsters quickly raised a giant “greedy pig” inflatable, said to represent Tomé’s tenure as CEO, and carried signs reading “No way Tomé” and “UPS lies.”

Member-Organizers Drive A NewsGuild Surge

The news industry has undergone a sea-change in the last two decades. Print readership of newspapers has declined sharply, while their digital readership has edged up slowly. Local newspapers have consolidated into ever larger chains controlled by private equity and vulture funds. Newer digital-only media sites have multiplied. Into this changing news landscape has come an influx of new journalists who bridle at the poor working conditions and low pay inflicted by media moguls building their empires on the cheap. Thousands of these media workers are finding a home in the NewsGuild. The Guild has transformed itself in recent years, thanks to rising rank-and-file militancy and innovative organizing tactics. Since 2020, the Guild has organized 210 workplaces, including some of the largest media organizations in the U.S.

Flight Attendants Defy Back To Work Order

Labour leaders are condemning the federal government’s usage of Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to end a strike by Air Canada flight attendants. The flight attendants, who are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) are seeking higher wages and an end to unpaid labour. Flight attendants are only paid as long as a plane is in the air. They are not paid for as long as a plane is on the ground, but are still expected to help passengers board and deplane, as well as cleaning the aircraft and preparing food and drinks. Both the union and Air Canada had been negotiating for months, but remained far apart in the lead up to the strike, which began on Friday, August 15.
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