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Worker Rights and Jobs

Make Sure Union Meetings Don’t Resemble The Work Meetings You Hate

Too often at school, we educators feel unappreciated and disrespected. In committee and faculty meetings, we share our knowledge and insights only to be ignored. If we don’t stop to reflect and think critically about these experiences, we may end up adopting the same hierarchical and oppressive practices as the administration, and our union meetings start to resemble the work meetings that we hate. But your union is yours to shape. You can make your local union meetings a space where members are heard and can make a difference.

Striking Workers At Virgin Hotels Las Vegas Ratify Contract

The longest strike in decades by Culinary Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 is coming to an end after 69 days. A vote today among workers to ratify a five-year contract with Virgin Hotels Las Vegas was unanimous, according to a social media post from the Culinary Union. The post did not provide details about the new contract. Union officials had repeatedly said they were seeking a contract similar to recent multi-year extensions agreed to with Strip resorts. Those deals called for wage and benefit increases, enhanced safety protection for workers, and workload reduction.

Trump Administration Sued Over Order For Firing Federal Workers

One day after Donald Trump returned to office, a leading government labor union filed a lawsuit against his administration’s reclassification of thousands of federal workers as political hires. An executive order signed by the president – making public sector workers easier to fire – amounts to a “dangerous step backward”, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents federal government employees across 37 agencies and departments. The move, one of several actions announced by Trump in the hours after his inauguration on Monday, was swiftly criticized as an attack on workers.

President Trump’s First 24 Hours

On Monday, January 20, as thousands were taking to the streets to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration, Trump himself signed a barrage of executive orders with broad implications. These orders were largely an attempt to reverse many of the moves of the Biden administration, in particular Biden’s most progressive policies on immigration, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and efforts to combat climate change. The US government is the largest employer in the country. Some of Trump’s executive orders followed through on the right-wing promise to attack the federal work force, as mentioned in both the 2024 Republican Party platform, which pledges to “fire corrupt employees” and the infamous Project 2025.

Thousands Of Resident Physicians In Philadelphia Voted To Unionize

Eight in 10 doctors-in-training in Philadelphia are now represented by unions, following a wave of labor organizing across major health systems in the region. Doctors at three Philadelphia health systems and Delaware's largest health provider voted to join the Committee of Interns and Residents, a division of the Service Employees International Union. The move follows a national trend of physicians unionizing around the country, as doctors increasingly look for solutions to burnout in a field now dominated by large health system employers.

How Labor Can Fight Against Trump’s Mass Deportation Agenda

This is a frightening time for immigrant workers. President-elect Donald Trump ran on the slogan “mass deportations now,” and has appointed a team of anti-immigrant hardliners. The leadership of the Democratic Party has lurched to the right on this issue, adopting Trump’s rhetoric about “securing the border,” and embracing core Republican policies. A bill that would target undocumented people for deportations if they are merely accused—not convicted—of nonviolent crimes like shoplifting passed in the House with bipartisan support. It’s moving forward in the Senate where only eight Democrats opposed its advance.

Amid Layoffs, Cargill’s Owners Given $2B In Stock Buybacks/Dividends

As Cargill started laying off thousands of employees last month, the company’s owners made $2 billion from stock buybacks and one-time dividends, according to Fitch Ratings. The Minnetonka-based agribusiness announced in December it would lay off 5% of its global workforce, or about 8,000 people, as part of a broader restructuring to counter declining profits. About 475 headquarters jobs were eliminated in Minnesota. At the same time, the private company’s owners — almost entirely members of the billionaire Cargill-MacMillan family — received $500 million from a “special” dividend and a rare $1.5 billion share repurchase completed in December, according to a Fitch Ratings report issued this week.

Essential Health Workers Hold Solidarity Picket On Day 38 Of Strike

Duluth, MN – At 4 p.m. on a blustery January 15 in Duluth, workers from Essentia Health-Deer River pulled up in a bus in front of the Essentia Health-Duluth hospital and began a solidarity picket in front of the main entrance to the hospital. The Deer River Essentia workers are represented by the Service Employees International Union, Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa (SEIU HCMNIA). January 15 marked their 38th day of an open-ended strike at their hospital and nursing home. The healthcare workers are striking over pay, saying that cost of living has gone up and they need real raises to keep paying the bills.

Swedish Dockworkers Vote To Block Military Shipments For Israel

In a resounding display of international solidarity, members of the Swedish Dockworkers Union (SDU) voted by 68 percent in December to block the handling of military shipments to and from Israel. The Swedish government continues to trade arms with Israel. Exports are relatively small, totaling $4.5 million in 2023, but imports are much more significant: the Swedish defence forces have signed contracts to import more than $200 million in arms from Israel, including from two of Israel’s largest arms companies, Elbit and Rafael—both implicated in supplying weaponry used in Gaza.

The ‘Uber Model’ Comes For Nursing

The “gig” model of labor popularized by Uber has found a new sector to upend: health care. On-demand nursing companies likeCareRev, Clipboard Health, ShiftKey, and ShiftMed promise understaffed hospitals more control and overworked nurses more flexibility. But this labor model and the companies that push it endanger workers and patients alike. In a recently published brief for the Roosevelt Institute, Groundwork Collaborative Fellow Katie J. Wells and Funda Ustek Spilda, senior lecturer at King’s College London, dig into the harms and pitfalls of what is being called “Uber for nursing.”

Nurses And Doctors Are On Strike At Eight Oregon Hospitals

Declaring that understaffing had them “running on empty,” 5,000 nurses, doctors, midwives, and nurse practitioners walked off the job January 10 in an open-ended strike at Providence Health and Services, the dominant hospital chain in the Pacific Northwest. The strikers work at eight hospitals plus women’s health clinics across Oregon. They’re demanding proper staffing, affordable health insurance, and competitive pay that can attract and retain seasoned workers. “I’ve been with Providence for over 30 years, and I have seen what’s changed,” said medical-surgical nurse Kim Martin at Providence Portland Medical Center.

New York City Doctors Are Ready To Strike

Nearly 1000 doctors in NYC Health and Hospitals (H+H) are ready to go on strike. They may work at public (H+H) hospitals, but their employers are corporate health systems, such as Mount Sinai, NYU, and PAGNY. The doctors — who are organized with the Doctors Council, an SEIU affiliate (DC-SEIU) — are denouncing chronic understaffing. They understand this problem to be the result of uncompetitive contracts, both in terms of salary and benefits. Since the announcement on January 2, Mayor Eric Adams interceded to ask for a 60-day “cooling-off” period, trying to avert the work stoppage, and negotiations are still underway.

Atlantic Theater Company Workers Go On Strike

On Sunday, January 12, Atlantic Theater Company (ATC) workers in New York City announced they are going on strike after long and arduous negotiations have not produced a collective bargaining agreement worth signing. This bargaining unit consists of carpenters, electricians, painters, audio and video technicians, hairdressers, makeup artists, wardrobe workers, and others. The show quite literally cannot go on without them. ATC workers voted 129-1 in favor of unionizing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) in February 2024, becoming the first major off-broadway theater to do so.

Arab Street Corner Bakery Challenges Inequality with Cooperation

Reem’s California is an Arab bakery shop in San Francisco. Proudly embracing the slogan “Arab Street Food made with California Love,” this restaurant serves traditional Arab bread infused with fresh, locally sourced ingredients from California. As soon as you step in, you will be welcomed by a vibrant mural titled “Seeds of Love” which includes a quote by Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan: “If it were in my hands, if I were able to flip this world, if I possessed the ability to fill this world with seeds of love.” This space is filled with the inviting aroma of freshly baked bread, a scent infused with the love, care, and mutual support of Palestinian Americans and local community organizers.

Amazon Extracts Profit From The Suffering Of Its Workers

The week before Christmas, Amazon workers at facilities across the US, organized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, took on the world’s most profitable third party logistics corporation by walking off the job by the hundreds. Although this pre-holiday strike represented a minority of the Amazon workforce, it represented the largest strike against Amazon in US history. Amazon’s profits keep breaking records, even within the context of a logistics industry that as a whole is experiencing a difficult freight market due to an oversupply of truck capacity.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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