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Wages

Unite Escalates Strike Action Against Below-Inflation Pay For Workers

On 20 April, Unite the Union announced that more than 1,100 workers at five Scottish universities will stage a 24-hour strike. The industrial action is scheduled for 24 April to dispute an imposed real-terms pay cut. Unite members at Glasgow, Strathclyde, Glasgow School of Art, Edinburgh Napier and Heriot Watt universities will take part. At 12:30pm on the same day, 24 April, Unite will also hold a Pay and Fair Funding Rally. The assembly will take place at the top of Buchanan Street, next to the Concert Hall and Donald Dewar statue.

India: Workers Defy State Repression To Demand Rightful Wages

Large-scale protests and strikes have rocked the industrial center of Noida, in India’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh. Protesting workers have now rejected an announced wage increase on Tuesday, April 14, that falls far below their demands. The state government announced an increase in the minimum wage for unskilled workers in two of its districts, Ghaziabad and Noida, by 21%, while unskilled workers in other urban areas of the state will get an increase of 15%. The remaining areas will see a mere 9% increase.  The agitating workers and all major trade unions have termed the so-called increase “insufficient” and vowed to continue their movement until wages are revised satisfactorily.

Farm Workers To March On Federal Courthouse

Fresno, California—The United Farm Workers and their allies will march on the federal courthouse in Fresno, California, on March 18 to protest new Trump administration rules they say will cut their already low pay. The rules governing how many workers can be admitted under H2-A visas, and how much to cut their minimum pay, will be the subject of a challenge in federal court that day. The Farm Workers argue, reasonably, that owners, especially agribusinesses, will use the pay cut and the visa expansion to cut every farmworker’s minimum pay, regardless of whether the worker is documented or undocumented, holds an H-2A visa or not, or is a citizen or not.

Why Canada Needs A Universal Parental Income Support Plan

Finally, a major economic actor in Canada has recognized the important contributions of self-employed Canadians. The Business Development Bank (BDC)’s report, The Entrepreneurial Spark of Canada’s Self-Employed, confirmed what many advocates have long argued: self-employed Canadians have distinct needs and make significant contributions to our economy. But the report also revealed something else — a narrow and troubling definition of economic value. BDC places particular emphasis on what it calls “agile and ambitious self-employed” individuals, those who plan to hire employees and transition into employer firms.

Four Union Strategies To Fight Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
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