Worker Rights

Member-Organizers Drive A NewsGuild Surge

August 19, 2025 Randy Furst, Labor Notes. Strategize! CWA, Media, Unions, Washington Post, Worker Rights

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

August 19, 2025 Nick Seebruck, Rabble.ca. Resist! Airlines, Canada, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights

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.

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.

US-Based Companies Announce Record Number Of Impending Layoffs

August 15, 2025 Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Truthout. Educate! DOGE, Jobs, Mass Layoffs, Worker Rights

Companies based in the U.S. announced in July that they plan to eliminate a record number of jobs, more than double the amount announced in the same month last year, according to a new report. The report, from recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tracks U.S.-based employers’ announcements about layoffs, which do not indicate the number of job losses that have occurred or when the positions will be eliminated. The estimates can change based on a variety of factors, including, in the case of government layoffs, litigation, explained Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “These are job cut announcements versus actual people losing a job,” Ajilore told Truthout.

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.

Corporations Want To Prevent Workers From Leaving Their Jobs

August 13, 2025 Luke Goldstein, Portside. Educate! Contracts, Jobs, TRAPS, Worker Rights

A Texas nurse switched to a better-paying job at a nearby hospital only to wind up with debt collectors at her door demanding she pay her former employer back for a loan she didn’t know she owed. A cargo pilot faced a $20,000 lawsuit over job-training expenses at a commercial airline that had just fired him for refusing to fly a plane under unsafe conditions. After being promised college tuition relief paid for by Chipotle, fast-food workers can get stuck with the tuition bill. These are all examples of how millions of workers across the country are increasingly finding themselves bound by Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAPs), a new form of “stay-or-pay” contract that indebts employees to their bosses.

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.

Argentine Public Universities Stage Nationwide Protest Over Funding Cuts

August 13, 2025 TeleSur. Resist! Argentina, Austerity, Higher Education, Strikes, Worker Rights

More than 50 public universities in Argentina held a 24-hour strike on Monday, combining walkouts with open classes and public forums to demand increased state funding and wage adjustments. The mobilization will continue Tuesday with activities across faculties, institutes, and university hospitals. Organized under the slogan “No more wages below the poverty line,” the action brought together faculty, non-teaching staff, and students. The University of Buenos Aires Teachers’ Association (Aduba), the University of Buenos Aires Staff Association (Apuba), the Federation of University of Buenos Aires Teachers (Feduba), and the University Education Workers’ Union–CTERA coordinated the protest, pressing for salary increases, expanded budget allocations, and the approval of the University Financing Law.

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.”

‘Toxic’ Laundry, Melting Aprons: Mauser Strike Hits Two Months

August 9, 2025 Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Labor Notes. Resist! Chicago, Mauser, Strikes, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Many employees at Chicago’s Mauser Packaging Solutions dread laundry day, and not for the usual reasons. The workers, who recondition steel drums used in the transport of materials like acetone, ammonia, and paint, say they have inconsistent access to uniforms and protective equipment. “The fear of a lot of the workers is that they don’t have a uniform and have to wash their clothes, and that they have to mix it with their children’s or wife’s clothes, and they don’t know what the impact will be,” said Arturo Landa, a shop steward at Mauser and member of the bargaining committee. Their contract expired April 30. Since June 9, 160 Mauser employees, members of Teamsters Local 705, have been on an unfair labor practice strike after Mauser illegally surveilled union members who were speaking with their business agent during a break, the union said.

Fast Food Nation Revisited

August 8, 2025 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. Educate! Book Review, Deindustrialization, Low wages, Worker Rights, Working Class

De-industrialization in the northeast spawned a service sector that didn’t quite match the employment opportunities of the old, manufacturing-based economy. The resulting lower wages, limited job benefits, and reduced job security propelled many workers, their families, and communities into a downward spiral. Two great regional story tellers—Russell Banks and Richard Russo—ploughed this field, with great personal insight. Both endured difficult childhoods, marked by absent or unreliable blue-collar fathers who left single moms in charge. In their short fiction and novels, both Banks and Russo chronicled the tragedies and tribulations of white-working class people living in hometowns like their own.

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