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Worker Rights and Jobs

Trump Guts Support For Disabled Students; Families Are Fighting Back

April 21, 2025 Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout. , , , , , ,
If the Trump administration and the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have their way, the basic educational and human rights of students with disabilities will soon be eviscerated. Due to the planned demolition of the Department of Education, the rights of students with disabilities to “a free, appropriate public education” — guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — are under fire. For nearly 50 years, the Department of Education (DOE) has been responsible for distributing funds — $14.2 billion in fiscal year 2025 — to state and local school districts to enable them to educate students with a range of disabilities.

Member-Run Unions

April 20, 2025 United Electrical Radio And Machine Workers Of America (UE), Portside. , , ,
Hundreds of workers are crowded into a high-school gymnasium. Their union leaders carefully go through each article of their employer’s last, best and final offer. Hands are raised, questions are asked and answered, and members share their thoughts with their officers and with each other. In the previous two months of negotiations, the union negotiating committee has been seeking language to help curb the company abuses that have become rampant in the plant. The company has not agreed. Each union member weighs whether they will take the company’s offer, and accept ongoing problems in the workplace in exchange for modest economic improvements, or reject the offer and strike for a better deal.

How The Black South And Labor Can Unite To Create Good Jobs

April 17, 2025 Deborah Scott, Portside. , , ,
In far too many places, the struggles for racial and economic justice have become disconnected. Back in 2020, David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote that the Black-White wage gap nationwide was roughly the same as it was back in 1950. One reason for this outcome is the decline of unions. In other words, just as Black workers got stable union jobs, those stable union jobs started to disappear. The need to integrate racial and economic justice and pursue both objectives together is not a new idea. Speaking at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention in 1961, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”

Jobs Back: Alamo Drafthouse Workers Force Sony To Reverse Layoffs

April 17, 2025 Emma Lee, Left Voice. , , , , ,
After nearly two months on strike, workers at Alamo Drafthouse, a dine-in cinema chain, have forced Sony to reverse course on its mass firings. Last Sunday, Alamo United members overwhelmingly ratified a tentative agreement that restores every illegally laid off worker to their job, reinstates stolen paid time off and sick leave, and honors each worker’s original hire date and seniority. The strike officially ends this Friday. Alamo Drafthouse, which was acquired by Sony in June 2024, started the year by trying to push through mass layoffs at multiple locations. At its non-unionized locations like its Slaughter Lane venue in Austin, the company laid off 25 percent of its hourly staff in January.

A Coalition Of Employers Is Asking The Trump Administration To Override The NLRB

April 16, 2025 Lauren Mcferran and Lynn Rhinehart, Portside. , , ,
With the Trump administration implementing a blizzard of anti-worker initiatives on a near-daily basis, it’s difficult to imagine that these early assaults could be only the tip of the iceberg. But President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk may well have far worse plans to attack U.S. workers and labor relations. One little-seen proposal from outside the White House has the potential to upend our entire system of labor relations. It comes from the “Coalition for a Democratic Workplace” (CDW)—an anti-union trade association of several hundred employers and employer associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers.

Trump Just Escalated His War On Coal Miners

April 15, 2025 Kim Kelly, In These Times. , , , , , , ,
President Donald Trump unveiled a new barrage of executive orders last week aimed at revitalizing the nation’s ​“beautiful clean coal” industry. But in reality, it’s already clear that his empty words will do no such thing. Flanked by burly white men outfitted in coal miners’ garb, the former reality TV star and failed real estate tycoon rhapsodized about his muddled plans to supercharge coal’s use and production, including scrapping environmental regulations that ​“undermine” its production and ensuring federal policy doesn’t ​“discriminate” against the fossil fuel industry. The astonishing impracticality of this plan did not appear in any way to be a factor in Trump’s decision, which was still applauded by people who should know better

Argentinian Unions Hold General Strike After Retirees Protest

April 12, 2025 Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
On Thursday, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Argentina’s largest labor union federation, called for a 24-hour general strike to protest President Javier Milei’s austerity policies. The strike, supported by the Argentinian Workers’ Central Union (CTA) and 50 nationally significant unions, demands better wage conditions in response to the ongoing economic crisis. The wave of protests began on Wednesday, with several unions joining a demonstration led by retirees who have been protesting weekly for years in front of Congress, demanding improved conditions.

Labor Fights Back Against Trump’s Medical Care And Research Cuts

April 12, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Hundreds of organized workers, representing a variety of unions including the United Auto Workers (UAW), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the National Educational Association (NEA), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Communication Workers of America (CWA), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE), among other groups, took to the streets in demonstrations across the country opposing planning Trump administration cuts to the National Institutes of Health.

Labour Victories, Failures And Lessons In History And Solidarity

April 12, 2025 Tom Sandborn, Rabble. , , ,
They say that if we fail to learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat it. Recent events in my hometown of Vancouver and across North America call this warning to mind today. On April 5 in Vancouver, a municipal special election saw two candidates from the more or less left end of the political spectrum, Sean Orr of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) and Lucy Maloney of the NDP-adjacent One City party, elected to city council, a result that represents a stern voters’ rebuke to the developer-friendly regime of Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party.

Unions Stand Up To Halt Deportation Of Two Hundred Workers

April 11, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations. The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.

What Would A General Strike In The US Actually Look Like?

April 11, 2025 Jeremy Brecher, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Something is in the air: A perception that American democracy and livable conditions for working people may only be saved by the kind of large-scale nonviolent direct action variously called “general strikes,” “political strikes,” or, as I will refer to all of them, “social strikes.” Calls for mass disruptive action are coming from unlikely places, like Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, an organization normally associated with legal action through the courts. When Romero was asked in a recent interview what would happen if the Trump administration systematically defied court orders, he replied, “Then we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.”

PATCO’s Lessons For This Crisis

April 10, 2025 Joseph A. McCartin, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Donald Trump’s March 27 executive order revoking the collective bargaining rights of more than 700,000 federal workers is the largest act of union-busting in U.S. history. The closest historical parallel is Ronald Reagan’s busting and decertification of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. When 12,000 air traffic controllers initiated an illegal strike on August 3, 1981, and stayed out in defiance of Reagan’s ultimatum, the federal government came down on them with all its might. Many PATCO leaders were arrested, the union was bankrupted and decertified, and the strikers were permanently replaced and banned for life from returning to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Over 4,000 Factory Workers Laid Off As Tariffs Spark Economic Chaos

April 9, 2025 Alexis Sterling, NationofChange. , , , , ,
More than 4,000 American manufacturing workers lost their jobs this week, the latest evidence of mounting economic instability tied to former President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Congressman Ro Khanna and labor leaders are raising urgent concerns as layoffs sweep across the industrial sector, hitting plants in more than a dozen states and leaving thousands of union workers without employment or clear prospects. Automaker Stellantis announced Thursday that it would temporarily lay off 900 workers in the United States due to production disruptions at its Canadian and Mexican facilities—disruptions directly linked to recently announced tariffs.

Federal Unionists Say It’s Not Game Over, It’s Game On

April 5, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
A scrappy network of federal unionists is leading the response to the Trump administration’s attacks on their workplaces, including Trump’s March 27 order purporting to end union contracts covering most federal workers. Where the Federal Unionists Network has led, union leaders have followed. In a Zoom event that drew 65,000 viewers, FUN got official support from all the significant federal unions for their bottom-up organizing approach to the Trump onslaught. Federal worker unions are in the crosshairs because they are defending the jobs and agencies that Trump and Elon Musk have been trying to eliminate by illegally bypassing Congress and violating laws governing federal employment.

AFGE Rallies In Defense Of Collective Bargaining At The CDC

April 4, 2025 Alex Carson, Fight Back! News. , , , , , ,
Atlanta, GA – Members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) hit the streets on April 1 to defend their jobs, collective bargaining agreements and union’s very existence. Over 70 community members joined the rally, showing their strong support for AFGE members who work at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta. Attendees held signs with slogans such as “CDC saves lives!” and “Fire DOGE, not CDC heroes!” The rally comes in the wake of Trump’s March 27 executive order that seeks to strip over a million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, immediately terminating their contracts and grievance procedures.
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