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Unions

Everyone Hates Airlines, Especially The Workers Set To Strike

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

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

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

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.

The Growing Fight For Green Economic Populism

From battling extreme heat on the job to flooding at home, the working class is on the frontlines of extreme weather this summer, fueled by an escalating climate crisis. This crisis is also making life more expensive, from higher utility bills in poorly insulated rental units to medical bills resulting from treatment after days spent in the dangerous heat.  But at a time when the federal government is dismantling the social safety net and climate investments, working class movements are not sitting back and waiting for their bosses, landlords or politicians to act. Instead, labor and tenant unions are taking matters into their own hands, creating a blueprint for how to organize around both the climate and cost of living crises at the same time. 

Help Union Members Know Their Contract

Union contracts can be dense, legalistic, and shaped by unwritten past practices. Sometimes they’re not even in the first language of most employees. Yet if union members don’t know what their contract says, employers can rob workers of rights that the union won at the bargaining table. Here’s one way to ensure that workers really know what’s in their contract: Write a short, clear summary of the contract’s highlights—call it “Know Your Contract”—and use it to engage your co-workers. To generate a list of topics for your “Know Your Contract” quick reference guide, you might hold a short discussion at your next executive board or steward’s meeting. Ask participants: “What grievances keep popping up? What do we wish every member knew?” You’ll quickly generate a list of the issues most affecting people on the job right now.

Independent Union Loses Bid To Represent Second Mexico GM Plant

The independent National Auto Workers Union (SINTTIA) lost its bid to represent General Motors workers at the company’s San Luis Potosí SUV plant. Workers there voted to join another union, Carlos Leone, with ties to the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), which is notorious for its employer-friendly contracts. SINTTIA, which has represented workers at another Mexican GM pickup truck plant since 2022, received 1,115 votes, while the Carlos Leone union pulled in 1,888. Only half of the plant’s 6,500 workers voted. SINTTIA alleges that the Carlos Leone union received support from GM management.

CTU Hosts ‘Billionaire Bake Sale’ At School Board Meeting

Chicago, IL – A crowd of Chicago Teachers Union members attended the school board meeting, July 24, carrying giant cardboard cupcakes with price tags representing the net worth of Illinois billionaires. Their demands are for Governor JB Pritzker to call a special legislative session and secure more funding for public education and other services, and for higher taxes on the rich to counteract the effects of Trump's “Big, Beautiful Bill.” “The top 5% of top earners in Illinois got $7.7 billion in tax cuts from the Big Horrible Bill,” Jackson Potter, the CTU vice president, explaining that these tax cuts are happening while public education, healthcare and transportation each face hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts.

‘The Pitt’ Production Assistants Launch Landmark Unionization Drive

The hit, Emmy-nominated show The Pitt is notching another distinction: In a rare move, its production assistants are announcing an attempt to unionize. Support staffers on the second season of the show requested voluntary recognition for a union and filed a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board on Friday, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Their effort is the first backed by Production Assistants United — a movement that aims to unionize this class of workers nationwide — to go public. “This is the first time ever that we can say PAs and assistants are unionizing on a show like this in film and TV,” says Production Assistants United organizer Ethan Ravens, who like other leaders in the movement is a production assistant himself. “It’s huge.”

Fenway Park Concessions Workers On Strike

For the first time in Fenway Park's 113-year history, concession and restaurant workers went on strike Friday as the Boston Red Sox begin a three-game series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Members of UNITE HERE Local 26, who work for Aramark, providing food services in the historic ballpark and the neighboring MGM Music Hall, had set a strike deadline of noon on Friday to reach an agreement. As negotiations continue for a new collective bargaining agreement, the union said its key demands are: citywide-standard wages; guardrails on automation; increased gratuity for premium workers who serve season ticket holders and special guests; and fair scheduling that respects workers' seniority.

Confront Or Cave? Federal Pressure Splits Building Trades

One of the last nationwide bastions of union jobs is getting jackhammered by the Trump administration. Members are languishing in ICE prisons without trial. Programs that protect members from racism and sexism are getting the axe. In response, building trades officers are split: some are pleading, some are protesting, and others are surrendering without a fight. Out of nine million construction workers in the U.S., one million had a union last year. Since the 1970s, when about forty percent of U.S. hardhats wore union stickers, anti-union developers have kicked unions out from most residential and private building sites.

Underpaid, Overworked Medical Residents Want A Union

Amid rising labor militancy over the past few years, one group of workers has gone under the radar: medical residents. Also known as resident physicians or housestaff, medical residents are doctors who have finished medical school and are working in hospitals as apprentices on the path to getting independently licensed. They are the patient-facing backbone of hospital operations, working extremely long hours under stressful conditions for mediocre pay. Over the past few years, from California to New England, medical residents have been unionizing and striking by the thousands.

In Uncertain Times For Entertainment, IATSE Reformers See A Way Forward

The International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) will hold its Quadrennial Convention in Hawaii starting July 28. The 2025 “Quad” convention would be business as usual, if not for an upstart group of IATSE members in a reform caucus called CREW that believes they can fix some of their union’s worst flaws. The union covers 170,000 entertainment workers in the U.S. and Canada. “When I first started working in the film industry in the summer of 2021, I began to notice that many IATSE members had little faith that our union leadership could change anything in regards to bettering work conditions like eliminating ‘fraturdays” [work days that start Friday night and end Saturday morning],” said Juniper Jensen, a Local 700 Assistant Editor.

NEA Leadership Rejects Member Vote To Sever Ties With ADL

In one of the biggest displays of labor organizing against anti-Palestinian racism, the National Education Association’s (NEA) policymaking body voted on July 5 to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The vote was a product of years of grassroots organizing within the NEA. This activity within the union was bolstered by the growth of the Drop The ADL campaign, an initiative by a wide range of progressive organizations to educate communities about the ADL’s anti-Palestinian bias and opposition to free speech in schools.

8,000 Indiana Kroger Workers Vote Down Contract A Second Time

Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 700 members across Indiana voted on July 10 and 11 to reject a tentative agreement covering 8,000 Kroger retail workers. This is the second contract Kroger workers have rejected, after 74 percent voted down the first offer in May. Local 700 has not announced the vote percentage on the second tentative agreement. Kroger’s offer included a wage increase of just $0.90 over 3 years for starting pay, along with a $200 Kroger gift card that members called “insulting.” “That $200 gift card felt like a huge joke,” said Andrea Reynolds, a 27-year Kroger worker in Kokomo. “I couldn’t tell you how many contracts I’ve been through, and that is the lowest ratification ‘bonus’ we’ve ever had.”
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