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Worker Rights and Jobs

Answers To Trump’s Anti-Worker Shutdown: Solidarity, Labor Militancy

October 11, 2025 Conor Lynch, In These Times. , , , ,
A palpable sense of dread gripped many federal employees last week as the government inched closer to a shutdown and the Trump administration explicitly threatened to carry out another round of mass layoffs, effectively turning civil servants into bargaining chips. After eight months of periodic purges that began with Elon Musk​’s Department of Government Efficiency, the ​“never-ending nightmare” that federal workers have been through this year shows no signs of waning, with Russell Vought, President Donald Trump​’s budget director, apparently seeing the shutdown as a perfect opportunity to inflict more trauma on ​“deep state” employees. With the shutdown now in full swing, Vought has promised that the White House will begin firing federal employees within ​“a day or two.”

Starbucks Workers Hold ‘Practice Picket’ After Store Closures

October 8, 2025 Bradley Hohulin, The Indianapolis Star. , , ,
Six days after two Indiana Starbucks locations closed as part of the multinational coffee chain's Back to Starbucks restructuring plan, unionized employees of the Starbucks on Mass Ave briefly walked off the job in a "practice picket" Oct. 2. Roughly 20 Starbucks employees and supporters chanted and marched with signs that read "No contract, no coffee" and "Just practicing for a fair contract" in the shade of the café at 430 Massachusetts Ave. The hour-long demonstration was part of a recent national picketing effort by Starbucks Workers United across 35 U.S. cities, according to a news release from the union. Workers United members have staged rallies over the last week calling for improved staffing in stores and higher take-home pay as negotiations for a new contract with Starbucks have stalled.

The Biggest Bargaining Mistake Unions Are Making In 2025

October 7, 2025 Richard De Vries, Labor Notes. , , , ,
When unions get ready for bargaining, we tend to look at the wage scale in our existing contract and think something like, “Let’s open with a proposal for a 5 percent raise every year, and maybe eventually we’ll settle at 3.75 percent.” This type of proposal was made out of habit when inflation was around 2 percent. While that may seem like a logical way to approach negotiations, you’re making a big mistake if you don’t take a closer look at the numbers. The error that many bargaining teams make is not reviewing the cost of living each of the previous five years. Because of extreme inflation during the last five years, minimum increases of as much as 10 percent may be needed to restore purchasing power.

EU Farm Subsidy ‘Bankrolls’ Widespread Labour Abuse

October 4, 2025 Eoghan Gilmartin, Simon Guichard, Silvia Lazzaris, Meriem Mahdhi, Franziska Schwarz, Hélène Servel and Jonas Seufert, DeSmog. , , , , ,
Farm owners convicted of exploiting migrant workers continue to claim millions in taxpayer-funded subsidies, DeSmog can reveal. A major new investigation traced dozens of EU payments to farms that have breached, are under investigation for, or have already been convicted of labour-related offences.

River Valley Co-Op Workers Opened Up Bargaining And Won Big

October 3, 2025 Katrina Jagelski, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
River Valley Co-op is a consumer-owned cooperative grocery store with two locations in Western Massachusetts. We have been unionized with Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1459 for the last decade with 175 workers in our bargaining unit. This year, beginning in January and ending in June, we held thirteen bargaining sessions with RVC management and their attorneys in a process that was transformative for our union. Negotiations were tense and at times, adversarial. Workers took a stand in ways they never had before, strengthening our relationships and faith in our ability to fight and win. We made significant strides in the contract, including $2 an hour raises across the board, union orientation for new hires, and protections for our immigrant co-workers. Our contract was ratified with 77 percent of workers turning out for a nearly unanimous ‘yes’ vote.

What’s At Stake: USC And LMU Push Back Against Untenured Faculty Unions

October 1, 2025 Julia Barajas, Portside. , , , ,
Last summer, after nearly two years of organizing, hundreds of untenured faculty at Loyola Marymount University celebrated the certification of their newly formed union. In a message to the campus community, Thomas Poon, who served as LMU’s executive vice president and provost, wrote: “We honor the will of our [non-tenure track] faculty and the perspectives they expressed throughout the election campaign.” The university, he added, “will continue to engage the union in good faith and with transparency.” Poon is now president of LMU and, earlier this month, he changed his tune. Poon announced Sept. 12 that the university’s board of directors decided to invoke a religious exemption to the National Labor Relations Act.

Labor Signs On To Save Medicare

September 30, 2025 Rose Roach, Labor Notes. , , ,
In 1965, President Johnson signed Medicare into law, establishing the right to quality healthcare for millions of retired Americans. The labor movement was essential in passing this landmark legislation. It took decades of organizing—with labor working side by side with the Civil Rights and other social movements—to win one of the most robust public health programs in U.S. history. Now, Medicare is under attack: Profiteering corporations are promoting Medicare Advantage plans as an alternative to Medicare. But Medicare Advantage is not Medicare, it is a privatization scheme that funnels tax dollars through insurance companies to move enrollees into private insurance plans, undermining Medicare.

Financing Our Own Destruction

September 30, 2025 Rebecca Burns, In These Times. , , ,
Billionaire private equity executive Antonio Gracias has had a busy year. In March, as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Gracias was sent in search of supposed fraud at the Social Security Administration. A few weeks later — at a rally with his longtime friend and then-head of DOGE, Elon Musk — Gracias claimed to have found it. Echoing a right-wing conspiracy theory, Gracias said an increase in Social Security numbers assigned to noncitizens looked like a move to ​“import voters.” In fact, eligible non-citizens are routinely assigned Social Security numbers as part of the federal work authorization process, but they cannot vote. Undocumented immigrants pay billions into Social Security each year but cannot receive benefits.

Wells Fargo Workers Push To Bring A Union To The Banking Industry

September 24, 2025 Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. , , ,
Workers at Wells Fargo are organizing the first union at a major U.S. bank—in one of the least-organized industries in the country. The first branch where workers won a union vote, in 2023, was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since then, workers have have voted to join the Communications Workers (CWA) at 29 more branches from Apopka, Florida, to Casper, Wyoming. So have 35 workers who review customer and employee complaints at the bank. These workers, a total of 200, are a small fraction of Wells Fargo’s 217,000 employees. But their organizing represents the first formal union effort since the company’s founding in 1852. And their success is even more notable in an almost entirely non-union industry.

Trump’s War On Wind: Tens Of Thousands Of Jobs Destroyed

September 23, 2025 Kari Thompson, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Environmental groups and unions representing construction workers found common ground this summer over President Trump’s blocking of offshore wind projects. The Revolution Wind offshore turbine farm off the coast of Rhode Island is 80 percent complete, but its fate remains uncertain after the Department of Interior issued a stop-work order on August 22. “The full thing was finally getting put together, and having it stopped like that was out of nowhere,” said Antonio Gianfrancesco, a Laborer from Local 271 who has been working the project for more than two years. The project’s halt resulted in a fiery statement from Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), an alliance of 14 construction unions: “Trump just fired 1,000 of our members who had already labored to complete 80 percent of this major energy project.

These Non-Profit Workers Are Fighting Trump’s Attacks On Immigrants

September 23, 2025 Samuel Karlin, Left Voice. , , ,
The International Rescue Committee is the largest non-profit organization providing services for refugee communities around the world. It is also the site of a growing union campaign. Two years ago, workers at the organization’s office in Dallas, TX won an NLRB election, becoming the first office to unionize. Since then, over one dozen more offices throughout the United States joined the union. For the past year the union, IRC Workers Unite — affiliated with OPEIU: Office and Professional Employees International Union — have been bargaining for a contract. The campaign for better pay and workplace protections has become all the more acute since Donald Trump returned to the presidency. His administration has threatened funding for progressive non-profits, and immigrant communities and their allies have been some of the most targeted by the administration.

Teamsters Win University Of Minnesota Strike, With Help From Farm Aid

September 18, 2025 Randy Furst, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
Some 1,400 Teamster service workers at the University of Minnesota won a resounding victory in a five-day walkout that showcased their militancy and underscored the power of solidarity. “This is what happens when people stick together,” said Steve Tesfagiorgis, a shop steward and strike captain for Teamsters Local 320 and a senior custodian on the Minneapolis campus. “Our members are from different places and speak many different languages, and we all worked together and won.” The union includes more than 400 East African workers. At rallies, on flyers, and during Zoom meetings, members communicated in five languages.

‘Starbucks Is On The Ropes,’ Says SBWU President Lynne Fox

September 16, 2025 Lynne Fox, In These Times. , , , ,
Starbucks’ logo, the green siren, is ubiquitous, and its 40,000 stores occupy an estimated 80 million square feet of real estate globally. But that doesn’t make the company too big to fail. The next three months will determine the future of this iconic U.S. company. Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol crossed his first anniversary in the position this week, on September 9. He was chosen to replace the previous CEO based on his reputation as a fixer amid declining sales and brand damage. At the time, he wrote this about union baristas: ​“If our partners choose to be represented, I am committed to making sure we engage constructively and in good faith with the union and the partners it represents.”

Why Railroad Workers Are Fighting The Proposed UP-NS Merger

September 16, 2025 Bill Moyer, Solutionary Rail. , , , ,
In the coming year or so, the Surface Transportation Board will determine whether to approve or block Union Pacific’s $85-billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern. This signals an attempt by Wall Street to squeeze yet more from this critical infrastructure in order to maximize returns for shareholders. In 2023, Surface Transportation Board (STB) member Robert Primus was the sole board member to vote against the merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern to form Canadian Pacific Kansas City. President Trump’s recent illegal firing of board member Primus further weakens the STB and corrupts its adjudicatory mandate. The absence of a key critical voice from the Board raises the pressure on concerned workers, shippers, competing railroads, and the public to make their voices heard. Unless Primus is reinstated, the approval of this Wall Street railroad merger is a near done deal.

The Women Are Rising

September 15, 2025 Judy Rebick, Rabble. , , ,
On August 16 Air Canada flight attendants stood up against an employer that is hanging onto unpaid labour. On August 17, they defied back to work legislation from a government that didn’t even give them one day to stand up for their rights. And on September 6 in an unprecedented move, they rejected their union leadership’s compromises. And all these actions were almost unanimous among the workers. It’s been a long time since we have had such labour militancy and yet public opinion was massively on their side. What’s going on? For me it brought to mind another experience I had this summer, speaking to a conference of the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA). I’ve been active in the labour movement for decades and the nurses were never very present.
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