Wages

Four Union Strategies To Fight Artificial Intelligence

March 6, 2026 Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. Strategize! Artificial Intelligence (AI), Unions, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

A corporate artificial intelligence frenzy is sowing fear for workers on a massive scale. Seventy-one percent of people in the U.S., according to a Reuters poll on A.I., are concerned “too many people will lose jobs.” Wall Street and Big Tech are running a huge hype machine to back up their massive, risky investment in A.I., pledging it will drive a “productivity surge,” meaning fewer workers and more profits. But workers can take heart that, so far, it’s mostly hot air. To date, A.I. is making few profits. It can be helpful at a few tasks—rough drafts of computer code, summaries of reams of data—but is rarely the equal of human talent otherwise.

These 20 Corporations Are Major Culprits In The Affordability Crisis

March 4, 2026 Sarah Anderson and Reyanna James, Inequality.org. Educate! Corporations, Purchasing Power, Wages, wealth inequality

A recent poll found that nearly half of people in the world’s richest country are having difficulty affording basic necessities like groceries, utility bills, health care, housing, and transportation. A new Institute for Policy Studies report shines a spotlight on the role leading corporations are playing in this affordability crisis. The report analyzes the 20 largest employers of low-wage U.S. workers, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 20.” Our analysis finds that at half of these firms, median worker pay actually declined in real terms between 2019 and 2024. For the group as a whole, average median pay dropped 4.6 percent to just $29,087.

How To Challenge Wage Garnishment For Defaulted Student Loans

January 11, 2026 Braxton Brewington, Truthout. Resist! Debt, Student Debt, Trump Administration, Wages

For the first time since the onset of COVID-19, the Trump administration is set to garnish U.S. workers’ wages for defaulted student loans. The Department of Education has announced that beginning this week it will send at least 1,000 borrowers a notice of intent to garnish wages, sending additional notices every month as it expands its efforts to forcibly collect money from millions of borrowers in default. This is a cruel, harsh policy that the Trump administration does not have to implement — and it shouldn’t.

The American Dream, We Hardly Knew You

December 9, 2025 John Miller, Dollars and Sense. Educate! American Dream, Capitalism, Social Mobility, Wages, wealth inequality

If Americans’ hopes of getting ahead have dimmed, as the Wall Street Journal reports yet again, it could only be because the lid of the coffin in which the “American Dream” was long ago laid to rest has finally been sealed shut. The promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will get ahead, or if you don’t, surely your children will, was broken long ago. And today’s economic hardships have left young adults distinctly worse off than their parents, and especially their grandparents. This long decline has stripped away much of what there was of U.S. social mobility, which never did measure up to its mythic renderings.

The Unraveling Of Workplace Protections For Delivery Drivers

November 8, 2025 Daniel Schneider, Portside. Educate! Amazon, Unions, UPS, Wages, Worker Rights

American households have become dependent on Amazon. The numbers say it all: In 2024, 83% of U.S. households received deliveries from Amazon, representing over 1 million packages delivered each day and 9 billion individual items delivered same-day or next-day every year. In remarkably short order, the company has transformed from an online bookseller into a juggernaut that has reshaped retailing. But its impact isn’t limited to how we shop. Behind that endless stream of packages are more than a million people working in Amazon fulfillment centers and delivery vehicles.

Wage Stagnation Vs. Living Wages For US Workers Today

November 4, 2025 Robert Pollin, Dollars and Sense. Educate! Inflation, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Wages, Worker Rights

At the end of last August, President Donald Trump asserted that average wages for U.S. workers had risen by $546 during the first six months since he returned to office in January 2025. As with virtually all of Trump’s pronouncements, this one bears little relationship to the truth. In fact, when using the most reliable government data on wages and then controlling for inflation, workers’ wages did still rise under Trump, but by $26—that’s 95% less than the $546 average pay raise proclaimed by Trump. The reality of wage stagnation under Trump is fully consistent with his broader attack on working people.

The Biggest Bargaining Mistake Unions Are Making In 2025

October 7, 2025 Richard De Vries, Labor Notes. Strategize! Collective bargaining, Inflation, Unions, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

When unions get ready for bargaining, we tend to look at the wage scale in our existing contract and think something like, “Let’s open with a proposal for a 5 percent raise every year, and maybe eventually we’ll settle at 3.75 percent.” This type of proposal was made out of habit when inflation was around 2 percent. While that may seem like a logical way to approach negotiations, you’re making a big mistake if you don’t take a closer look at the numbers. The error that many bargaining teams make is not reviewing the cost of living each of the previous five years. Because of extreme inflation during the last five years, minimum increases of as much as 10 percent may be needed to restore purchasing power.

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

September 1, 2025 Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Heidi Shierholz and Hilary Wething, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Education, Paid Sick Leave, Report, Unions, Voting, Wages

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.

How Mexico’s Welfare Policies Helped 13.4 Million People Out Of Poverty

August 21, 2025 Oscar Lopez, Portside. Create! AMLO, Mexico, Poverty, Wages

Toothless and frail, Gloria Palacios, 84, stooped as she set up her rickety sidewalk shop in Mexico City’s roughshod Doctores neighborhood. On sale: peanuts, cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolates and chips. When asked how much she made in a day, Palacios’s disabled son Gustavo, who helps run the tiny store, simply laughed. “If we make 100 pesos ($5) it’s a lot,” he said. Happily, said Palacios, the family has a different lifeline. With their house crumbling and bills piling up, the only thing keeping them afloat is a bimonthly transfer of 6,200 pesos ($330) implemented by the government of previous president Andrés Manuel López Obrador for adults over 65.

Air Canada And The Erosion Of Collective Bargaining

August 17, 2025 Eric Wilkinson, Canadian Dimension. Resist! Canada, Flight Attendants, Strikes, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

On August 16, 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants walked off the job. Three days earlier, their union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), had issued a 72-hour strike notice. In response, the airline served its own lockout notice, warning that it would cancel flights worldwide. The showdown came after months of stalled negotiations following the expiry of the attendants’ decade-old collective agreement in March. The strike did not last even a single day before the Carney government referred the parties to binding arbitration. A central issue in the negotiations is the flight attendants’ “ground pay.” Under the current system, they are only paid for time in the air, leaving the hours spent working before and after takeoff uncompensated.

Food Prices And Stagnating Wages Weigh On US Residents

August 5, 2025 TeleSur, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Food, Inflation, Poverty, Wages

New economic data and surveys reveal growing financial anxiety among US nationals, who are grappling with rising food prices and slowing wage growth. Nearly seven months after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the promised “golden age” has not materialized for most, according to polls. According to a recent Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, the vast majority of US adults feel stressed about food costs. This concern is particularly acute for low-income US residents, among whom 64% say grocery prices are one of their top sources of stress.

What It Will Take To Get US Citizens To Work The Farm?

August 4, 2025 Samuel Benson, Portside. Strategize! California, Farmworkers, ICE, Immigrant Rights, Wages, Worker Rights

The agriculture sector is on edge like never before. With ICE officers chasing undocumented immigrants through fields and barging into meatpacking plants, workers are spooked. Even before the farm raids, workforce shortages and economic uncertainty rankled the industry. Now, as harvest season arrives for many crops, concerns are growing that there may not be enough workers out there to feed the country. To Dolores Huerta, it’s an unprecedented problem caused squarely by the Trump administration. “It’s an atrocity, what they’ve been doing to the immigrant community,” Huerta said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine.

Trash Pickup Strikes Spread Nationwide

July 12, 2025 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. Resist! Sanitation Workers, Solidarity, Strikes, Unions, Wages, Worker Rights

A local sanitation workers strike that began on July 1 in Boston, Massachusetts, and left trash unpicked across the city is now spreading nationwide in a series of labor actions coordinated by the Teamsters union as frustrated workers demand better pay and benefits from Republic Services, a major waste disposal company. The Teamsters said in an email on Friday that about 550 sanitation workers were on strike in multiple cities while 1,600 others refused to cross picket line extensions in solidarity with the strikers at local Republic Services sites in Massachusetts, Georgia, Illinois, Washington State, and California.

Anti-Worker Policies, Capitalism, And Privatization Keep South Poor

June 23, 2025 Nina Mast, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Privatization, Social safety net, The South, Wages, Worker Rights

The central function of government should be to protect people from harm, exploitation, and abuse. Yet on this core task, many Southern state governments have performed abhorrently—largely by design. EPI’s Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation series1 has shown how for most of the past two centuries, Southern state governments have embraced an economic development strategy—the Southern economic development model—designed to undermine job quality and suppress worker power, particularly for Black and brown workers. The model aims to maintain a pool of exploitable, available labor, and preserve the racial and economic hierarchies established during slavery.

Wage Stagnation Has Made ‘Minimal Quality Of Life’ Out Of Reach For Most

May 20, 2025 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Low wages, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

The ability to afford basic needs and wants in line with living a “dignified life” in the U.S. is increasingly out of reach, new research finds, naming wage stagnation and soaring prices as factors driving unaffordability. According to an analysis released by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) last week, a “minimal quality of life” is out of reach for the bottom 60 percent of American households, or those with incomes of about $100,000 a year or less. Researchers pinpoint stagnating wages and decreases in workers’ spending power as well as increases in costs as reasons for growing unaffordability. According to the researchers, the minimal quality of life has doubled since 2001, with 2023 seeing the largest single-year increase.

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