Unions

Why National Education Association Members Voted To Support Palestine

August 18, 2025 Gwen Lee and Samuel Karlin, Left Voice. Strategize! ADL, Education, Israel, National Education Association, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Unions

As an educator, to me, it’s so important that students are part of the struggle. I know when I was in high school during the Vietnam War, anytime I asked about it, I was shot down and told, “What does that have to do with education?” It has everything to do with education. It has everything to do with growing new leadership and teaching students or helping students, assisting students take the leadership in terms of being involved in the movement for justice. In a sense, Trump and the policies of the federal government have done a lot of the organizing for us because there’s lots of young people who just really want to know what’s going on and want to be involved in stopping it, whether it be Palestine, fighting ICE, or actions against the terrorism of the police.

Common Mistakes Union Organizers Make And How To Avoid Them

August 18, 2025 Bill Barry, Work-Bites. Organize! Labor Movement, Organizers, Unions, Worker Rights

To err is human, to be a union organizer is to make mistakes. We all do it, so don’t sweat it. Here are some tips to try to avoid the next one. Don't wait for people to come to you One of the most common mistakes a union organizer makes is hanging around the union office, hoping to get a call from a group—hopefully a large one—of angry workers who want a union. Unfortunately, you may wait a long time. Set up a proactive organizing strategy with targets that will help your members—like competitors or unorganized divisions. Talk with your members about friends and relatives who work non-union, so they can help get the word out. Guess what? That phone might actually ring.

REI Union Members Win A Major Victory

August 16, 2025 Marie Kelly, Workers World. Strategize! Contract Negotiations, REI, Unions, Worker Rights

Union members at REI won a major victory when REI Co-op, the outdoor recreational gear specialty store, agreed to the demand to establish a national bargaining structure for the 11 unionized REI stores. The REI bargaining committee hailed the agreement as “a tremendous step forward in negotiating a first contract.” Workers at the 11 REI stores are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Locals 5, 663, 700, 1208, 1445 and 3000 and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) Locals 379 and 1102. First to unionize was the Soho store in New York City, followed by the store in Berkeley, California, in 2022.

Workers Picket Outside Boeing Facilities Near St. Louis

August 15, 2025 Rebecca Rivas, Portside. Resist! Boeing, Missouri, Strike, Unions, Worker Rights

Berkeley — Christy Williams stood outside the Boeing facility in St. Louis for hours on Tuesday next to her handwritten sign declaring: “We aren’t building toasters!” For the last three years, Williams and her son have helped build F-15 fighter jets at Boeing in the St. Louis area — something she called her life’s dream. “We’re putting our bodies at risk with the physical and strenuous (work), and on top of all the chemicals and other just the dirty air that we’re in there breathing,” said Williams, an assembly mechanic. “We signed on for this because we wanted to build the best fighter jet in the world.” On Monday, Williams walked out from her job alongside 3,200 workers at Boeing’s three facilities in St. Louis, St. Charles and Mascoutah, Ill., after her fellow members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted Sunday to reject a four-year labor agreement.

Columbia Tries To Undermine Its Unions, Hire Scab Instructors

August 15, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. Educate! Columbia University, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Unions, Worker Rights

Imagine you get a letter from your manager a week before you are set to teach classes, removing you from teaching duties but saying you’ll get paid anyway. This odd experience has happened to around 137 graduate students at Columbia University in New York City who teach core curriculum, language, and writing classes. They are members of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), Auto Workers Local 2710. Getting paid to not teach might sound pretty good, but in fact the university is hiring adjuncts with no union contract to do the work of union members. “I spent all summer not knowing if I was going to teach or not, and then they finally were like, ‘No, your class is canceled,’” said a core curriculum teacher who asked not to be named.

Salts And Peppers Build A Union At Starbucks

August 14, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Salting, Starbucks, Unions

Starbucks Workers United recently celebrated the unionization of their 600th store, disproving reams of conventional wisdom: you can’t organize small shops… you can’t organize high-turnover workplaces… you can’t organize young people. For a gripping first-person account of how it happened, read Jaz Brisack’s new book Get on the Job and Organize. Brisack, who uses they/them pronouns, salted at the first Starbucks store to unionize, in Buffalo, New York, but the book starts with their roots in the South and the attempt by the Auto Workers to unionize a big Nissan assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi in 2017.

Atlanta Teamsters Confront Management Over Heat Safety

August 14, 2025 Alex Carson, Fight Back! News. Strategize! Global heating, Unions, UPS, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Atlanta, GA- On Tuesday, August 12, Teamsters out of Local 728 at UPS SMART hub presented a petition to management with the signatures of about 100 rank-and-file workers. The petition demands that UPS identify designated areas in the hub as shade or cool zones and educate all SMART workers of their rights to use such areas for cooldown breaks. Cool zones were won as an addition to Article 18, section 27 of the 2023 Teamsters contract. But the gain has gone unrecognized in many hubs, including SMART, which is the third largest UPS hub. This has prompted rank-and-file Teamsters to take action in enforcing the contract and asserting their power on the shop floor. By not designating cool zones, many workers are unaware of their right to take a cooldown break when they feel overheated. This is in addition to their ten-minute break.

Mauser Teamsters Strike Back

August 13, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, In These Times. Resist! health, Strikes, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights

More than 100 Teamsters are on strike at the multinational Mauser Packaging Solutions plant in Chicago, where workers who recondition steel containers used to transport chemicals are demanding higher pay, safer working conditions, and contract language protecting immigrants. The unfair-labor-practice strike by members of Teamsters Local 705 started June 9 after the union says the company illegally surveilled workers while talking with union representatives. It comes on the heels of Mauser locking out 20 members of Teamsters Local 117 in Seattle in April and eventually closing the plant. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters extended picket lines to Los Angeles and Minnesota in June. Teamsters didn’t report to work, refusing to cross the picket line in support of workers in Chicago.

Union-Busting In The Guise Of ‘National Security’

August 12, 2025 Steve Wishnia, Work Bites. Educate! Collective bargaining, Federal Workers, Legal System, Trump Administration, Unions, Worker Rights

In a ruling the American Federation of Government Employees [AFGE] denounced as “a setback for fundamental rights in America,” a federal appeals court in California on August 1 lifted an injunction preventing the Trump regime from terminating collective-bargaining rights for an estimated two-thirds of the federal workforce. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the argument by six federal workers unions against Trump’s March 27 executive order nullifying their contracts—that it was retaliation for their exercising their right to dispute policies such as massive layoffs—was irrelevant, because “the President would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.”

Rhode Island Becomes First State To Codify Student Unionization Rights

August 12, 2025 Ethan Schenker, Portside. Educate! Graduate Students, Higher Education, Rhode Island, State legislature, Unions, Worker Rights

A new law signed by Gov. Dan McKee has made Rhode Island the first state to explicitly protect graduate student workers’ right to unionize if the National Labor Relations Board declines to do so. McKee signed House Bill 5187 on July 2, capping off a monthslong effort by Brown’s Graduate Labor Organization to codify federal labor organizing protections in state law. GLO leaders had worked with the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and state legislators to advocate for the bill’s passage since its introduction in January. The law, which was sponsored by state Rep. Arthur Corvese (D-North Providence), extends collective bargaining rights and other existing organizing rights for public employees to student workers “when not already protected by the National Labor Relations Board.”

Railroad Worker Group Opposes Further Class One Rail Mergers

August 11, 2025 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. Resist! Corporatism, Mergers, Railroads, Unions

The group Railroad Workers United (RWU) has issued a formal Resolution and statement opposing any and all mega-rail mergers such as the one under question in recent weeks between rail giants Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. Should that merger move forward and be condoned by the U.S. government, RWU notes that the remaining two Class One railroads, BNSF and CSX, would in effect be forced to amalgamate as well, resulting in just four major rail corporations controlling not just the industry, but the infrastructure as well. Upwards of 90% of the rail traffic of North America will be controlled by these four corporations. According to RWU General Secretary Nick Wurst, “In no other counties in the world outside of North America do huge rail corporations not just run the trains, but own the tracks, yards, signals, shops and other infrastructure."

Everyone Hates Airlines, Especially The Workers Set To Strike

August 11, 2025 Adam D. K. King, Portside. Resist! Airlines, Canada, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than ten thousand Air Canada flight attendants could soon be on strike if a deal isn’t reached by August 16. In one of the strongest strike mandate votes in recent Canadian history, 99.7 percent of members in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) airline division opted to authorize a strike, with a turnout of 94.6 percent. With this overwhelming strike authorization in hand, the union is now headed back to the bargaining table to make one last push for a deal before picket lines go up. Flight attendants at Air Canada and its “leisure airline,” Air Canada Rouge, are fighting for an end to unpaid work and poverty wages at the country’s largest airline.

Italian Dockworkers Block Passage Of Saudi Ship Carrying Arms For Israel

August 10, 2025 News Desk, The Cradle. Resist! Dock Workers, Genocide, Israel, Italy, Unions, Weapons Blockade

Workers in the Italian port of Genoa have blocked passage of a Saudi vessel carrying weapons shipments for Israel. The Bahri Yanbu, operated by Saudi shipping firm Bahri, which arrived from Baltimore, Maryland, was slated to take on military hardware made by Italian arms giant Leonardo — including an Oto Melara cannon destined for Abu Dhabi – along with tanks or other heavy weaponry reportedly already positioned in the terminal yard. Routine inspections revealed that the ship was carrying weapons and ammunition for Israel after 40 dock workers boarded the vessel. “We don’t work for war,” said Jose Nivoi from the Autonomous Collective of Port Workers and the Union Sindicale di Base, adding that the Port Authority has promised talks for establishing “permanent observatory on arms trafficking.”

Bringing Labor Stories To Conservative Communities

August 10, 2025 Tim Sheard and Len Shindel, Portside. Educate! Book Review, Conservatives, Labor Movement, Strikes, Unions

We often hear that working class folks in conservative communities are hopelessly drawn to the dominant storylines of the wealthy and powerful. That they don’t want to know about labor or “people’s” history. Well, Len Shindel has proven the naysayers wrong, big time. He has taken his shoe-leather history of a 1970, 8-month-long strike of public sector workers to the people of Western Maryland, and they have embraced him and his book with open arms. Here’s how he did it. Moving to Garrett County, Md. after retiring from his union job, Len decided, upon the advice of a friend, to investigate an 8-month long strike by the county’s road workers that was the longest public worker strike in U.S. history.

A Spark Of Hope From Scrappy Federal Workers

August 8, 2025 Hadas Thier, Hammer and Hope. Organize! Federal Unionists Network, Federal Workers, Trump Administration, Unions

I guess it’s gotten to me after all,” Russ Schafer conceded, gesturing toward his involuntarily shaking hand. Schafer, who requested a pseudonym in order to avoid workplace retaliation, has worked at the Environmental Protection Agency for more than 20 years. He’s trying to hold on to his job and refused “the fork” — the voluntary resignations pushed by the Trump administration in February, so-called because the subject line of the email to federal employees, “Fork in the Road,” was nearly the same as one sent to Twitter employees in 2022 by the company’s then-new owner, Elon Musk. “I’m just unwilling to walk away from my work. It’ll take a much bigger bribe to get me to give up on that,” Schafer told me.

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