Worker Rights and Jobs

Grocery Workers Vs Goliath

April 28, 2025 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. Strategize! Albertsons, Grocery Workers, Krogers, Mergers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In early February, when temperatures in Denver plunged to seven degrees below zero and snow dusted the sidewalks, Martin Bonilla, bundled in two jackets and a neck warmer, walked a picket line 1,000 miles from his home of Fillmore, Calif. Bonilla works in the produce department at Vons and had flown to Colorado in the early morning after finishing an 11-and-a-half-hour shift. Over the next eight days, Bonilla picketed five of the 77 striking Kroger-owned King Soopers stores in Colorado, in support of 10,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7, putting in 16-hour shifts each day before going back to his hotel, exhausted.

Liberal Media Blames Trump For Economic Woes That Began Years Ago

April 26, 2025 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Economic Security, Presidents, Racial disparities, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

It is not that Trump’s economic policies improve upon his predecessors in the White House. Indeed there is every reason to believe that his tariffs and deep cuts to the federal workforce will dry up even more the buying power that is the lifeblood of a consumer economy. A second Great Depression is not out of the question. But our economic woes did not begin under Trump; the country was already on the wrong path. Trump merely hit the accelerator. Said Desjon Yisrael, a 35-year-old African American who sells work boots and drives part-time for DoorDash to make ends meet near Greensboro, North Carolina: “It’s the gig economy. It really baffles me that people think that the economy (was) doing really well (under Biden)."

Trump’s Mass Deportation Operation Escalates With Workplace Raids

April 25, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Donald Trump, Farm Workers, ICE, ICE Raids, Immigration, mass deportations, United States, Vermont, Worker Rights and Jobs

On Monday, April 21, US Customs and Border Protection raided Vermont’s largest dairy farm, detaining eight immigrant workers in the largest immigration raid in the state’s recent history. The next day, ten workers at a Home Depot in Pomona, California were arrested by immigration authorities. Workers across the country are bracing for the possibility that many of their coworkers may fall victim to sudden kidnappings by federal agents in the name of carrying out Trump’s agenda of mass deportations. In a country where undocumented workers perform many of the most essential functions in the nation’s economy, escalating immigration raids could have enormous ripple effects.

Three Times Workers Resisted Fascism In Minnesota History

April 25, 2025 Amie Stager, Workday Magazine. Strategize! Anti-fascism, History, Minnesota, Protests, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers and unions across the U.S. are raising the alarm about the Trump administration’s attempts to divide the working class. “They want us to be distracted by attacking the working class on innumerable fronts, but we must stand united,” said University of Minnesota Twin Cities graduate worker Greyson Arnold at a recent rally organized by AFSCME 3800, which represents clerical workers, and GLU-UE Local 1105, which represents graduate workers. The Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1 located in Staten Island, New York, released a statement on immigrant solidarity, saying they refuse to be divided: “By standing together across all lines of difference, we are building a movement stronger than their fear tactics, stronger than their threats.

Working Homeless People: Laboring Without A Roof

April 23, 2025 Jocelyn Figueroa, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Gig Workers, Homeless, Housing, Human Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Poor

While homeless and living in a shelter, one of my neighbors was a woman not much older than my Mom. One day, I learned that she was a certified full-time medical assistant. Her husband, disabled, was not able to work. Due to rising rents in New York City, they couldn’t afford to pay their rent anymore. That’s how they eventually landed a few doors down from me. At the time, it just seemed so unbelievable that a medical professional wasn’t able to afford a place to live. Eventually, I realized that most of us in that shelter, aside from those who were disabled or elderly, were working.

Washington State Workers Take The Fight To The Governor

April 23, 2025 Chris Vasseur-Landriault, Labor Notes. Resist! Public employees, Tax the rich, Unions, Washington State, Worker Rights and Jobs

Hundreds of Washington state workers streamed into the capitol building in Olympia on April 9 demanding, “No cuts! No furloughs! Tax, tax the rich!” Our booming chants echoed through the rotunda, making it difficult for legislators to carry on their work. The governor’s office locked the doors on us, so we staged a sit-in in the hallway and marched throughout the capitol building. When the doors were finally opened, we crowded inside—but the only sign of Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson was a small photograph on the front counter. His chief of staff informed our union president, Mike Yestramski, that he would let Bob know we had stopped by.

Chicago Teachers Approve Contract With Remarkable Gains

April 22, 2025 Jackson Potter, Labor Notes. Organize! Chicago Teachers Union, Education, Illinois, Teachers, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

This month, 85 percent of the Chicago Teachers Union’s 27,000 active members voted on a tentative agreement covering 500 public schools across the city. A record 97 percent voted yes. The contract will run from 2024 to 2028, expiring at the same time as the UAW’s contracts with the Big Three. The negotiation drew the greatest level of member participation and support in the CTU’s history and was achieved without a strike or a strike vote. The new contract addresses both bread and butter concerns and common-good demands. Said CTU president Stacy Davis Gates, a member of the union’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators: “It was the whole buffet.”

Trump Guts Support For Disabled Students; Families Are Fighting Back

April 21, 2025 Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout. Resist! Department of Education, Disability Rights, DOGE, Education, Lawsuits, Trump Administration, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Organize! Democracy, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Strategize! Black Working Class, Labor Movement, The South, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Resist! New York City (NYC), sony, Strikes, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Educate! National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Trump Administration, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Resist! Black Lung, Coal Miners, DOGE, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Trump Administration, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Resist! Argentina, General Strikes, Javier Milei, Labor Movement, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

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. Resist! Austerity, Budget Cuts, Donald Trump, Science, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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.

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