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Worker Rights

Workers Picket Outside Boeing Facilities Near St. Louis

August 15, 2025 Rebecca Rivas, Portside. , , , ,
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. , , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , , ,
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. , , , ,
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. , , , , ,
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. , , , , ,
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. , , , ,
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. , , , ,
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.

The Growing Fight For Green Economic Populism

August 7, 2025 Ruth Gourevitch and Batil Hassan, In These Times. , , ,
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

August 6, 2025 John Green, Labor Notes. , , ,
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.

Deporting Immigrants Kills Native Jobs Too

August 5, 2025 Doug Henwood, LBO News. , , ,
As Trump and his ICE Sturmabteilung troop stormingly about the country deporting people, there’s an important fact that’s being overlooked: deporting undocumented workers destroys domestic jobs as well. Of course, their nativist campaign is grotesque and revolting in itself, and would be were no native-born bystanders injured by the expulsions. But we should be clear on what damage we’re doing to ourselves as well. As Ben Zipperer shows in work for the Economic Policy Institute, almost as many native-born workers could lose their jobs as deported immigrants.

PEN America Claims To Support Free Speech

August 4, 2025 Kori Davis, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
On March 25, PEN America fired me for living up to their mission. This termination came only three days after I published an article in Mondoweiss titled “Why was I investigated for sharing an article critical of Zionism by the ‘free speech’ organization PEN America?,” three years into my tenure on the membership and National Engagement team. Nine months earlier, after I shared an article on unlearning Zionism to our internal listserv, PEN leadership sent my colleagues and me an email stating that workers could be terminated for discriminatory action.
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