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Worker Rights and Jobs

How Black Workers Overcome Historic Obstacles To Labor Organizing

February 13, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , ,
The struggle between Black organized labor and the political establishment has been historically waged with particular fierceness in the US South—a region with the highest proportion of Black workers but with the most hostile laws against workplace organizing. States in the US South have some of the lowest rates of union coverage in the country—meaning that they have a lower share of workers who are organized in a union. The national union coverage rate stood at 11.2% as of 2023, while the rate was as low as 3% in South Carolina, 3.3% in North Carolina, 5.2% in Louisiana, and 5.4% in Georgia.

Garment Workers Are Uniting Like Never Before To Take On Nike

February 12, 2025 Abiramy Sivalogananthan, Inequality.org. , , ,
Absent in the raging debate over trade policy, tariffs, and foreign aid is a truth about the economy that those of us in the Global South know all too well: American corporations and their billionaire owners have built and profit from massive supply chains exploiting low-wage workers in the Global South. For decades these unregulated supply chains have been praised as “development” while in reality, they entrench low pay and disastrous working conditions. Perhaps no company is a more influential innovator or offender in the outsourcing “race to the bottom” than Nike.

Amazon Stokes Racial Divides In Lead-Up To Union Vote

February 12, 2025 Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Four thousand workers at a North Carolina Amazon warehouse are voting February 10-15 on whether to unionize with Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment. RDU1, in the town of Garner, outside Raleigh, would be the second unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States. It’s an ambitious campaign. The workers are organizing across racial and ethnic divides, through constant turnover, in deeply hostile terrain. At 2.4 percent, North Carolina’s union density is the lowest in the country. They’ll also need to overcome widespread fear of something Amazon is notorious for: retaliation.

The Stone Is In Our Hands, Now We Take The Shot

February 11, 2025 Rev. Ryan Brown, Facing South. , , ,
The Philistine warrior Goliath stood over nine feet tall, clad in bronze armor, armed with a spear, sword, and javelin. For forty days, he mocked the Israelites, daring anyone to challenge him. No one would — until a shepherd boy named David stepped forward. He had no armor, no sword, only a sling and five smooth stones. The world saw a young boy facing certain defeat. But David had something Goliath did not: faith, conviction, and the knowledge that justice was on his side. David let his stone fly, and the giant fell. Amazon is our Goliath. It is one of the largest corporations in human history, worth over two trillion dollars.

Unionized Grocery Workers Are A Sleeping Giant

February 10, 2025 Isaac Soto, Caitlyn Clark, and Jacob Eshom, Portside. , , , , ,
In the first six months of 2025, grocery contracts covering over 130,000 union workers are set to expire. The contracts span five states, a dozen local unions, and several employers — namely the grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. Kroger’s last, best, and final offer included abysmal wage increases, with thousands of workers offered $0.25 or less in the first year of the contract. It failed to address worker concerns over understaffing, low wages, two-tier discrimination, shorter wage steps, and protections from automation. Grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons’ $24.6 billion mega-merger was blocked in court after a coalition of UFCW and Teamster locals, including UFCW Locals 7, 324, 770, and 3000, organized a powerful “Stop the Merger” campaign.

Labor Fights Back Against Attacks On Federal Workers

February 9, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
Following a legal response by organized labor, one of Trump’s early attacks against the US federal workforce have been temporarily halted. On Thursday, February 6, Trump’s deadline to furlough millions of federal workers if they did not accept a buyout offer was paused following an injunction by a federal judge in Boston. This pause came less than 11 hours before the deadline for workers to accept the buyout offer, which 65,000 federal workers did—agreeing to leave their jobs in exchange for eight months of pay and benefits through September.

We Are Stronger Than We Think

February 9, 2025 Maria J. Stephan, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
The Trump-Musk administration has moved rapidly, ruthlessly and often illegally to consolidate authoritarian control and empower billionaires at the expense of ordinary people. In an administrative coup guided by Project 2025, the White House has sought to dismantle the separation of powers and deny critical services, punishing working people at home and abroad. Making good on his promises of revenge and retribution, Trump has sicced the Justice Department and IRS on perceived enemies, notably those who believe in a more diverse, equitable and inclusive America.

Texas: Rank And File Advance Anti-Harassment Campaign At UPS

February 9, 2025 Fight Back! News. , , ,
Arlington, TX— Teamsters of the shop floor committee at the UPS hub in Arlington conducted an anti-harassment workshop, February 2, to highlight the protections afforded to workers under article 37 of the UPS national contract with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The workshop was led and primarily attended by rank-and-file members, with participants including stewards and union staff. Article 37 contains the rights won by UPS Teamsters that protect workers from harassment; but workers are often unaware of their rights protecting them from such harassment or often do not realize the mistreatment they are enduring from management constitutes harassment at all.

Federal Workers Are Staying At Their Posts

February 8, 2025 Suzanne Gordon, VA Champion. , , , ,
The Trump administration is trying to push federal workers out of government, which will cripple the government’s ability to serve the public in many ways. But unions have been resisting and federal workers have been saying no thank you. A federal judge has extended the February 6 deadline for accepting these offers till Monday. Two of the largest unions representing this workforce — the American Federation of Government Employees and NFFE — advised members not to take the bait. California Attorney General Rob Bonta urged federal employees to take the unions’ advice and “to be very cautious” of the offer.

Amazon Lays Off 4,500 Workers In Quebec To Bust Their Union

February 8, 2025 François L’Écuyer, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Faced with the prospect of being forced to sign a labor contract as early as this summer, Amazon has gone to extreme lengths to evade its obligations under Quebec’s labor code. On January 22, it announced it is closing all seven of its warehouses in Quebec and outsourcing their operations. Is Amazon closing shop? Not really. It will continue selling its wares online in Quebec; It’s just that warehousing and delivery will now be handled by third-party contractors. But the 4,700 layoffs are very real: 1,900 Amazon employees across the seven warehouses are losing their jobs, including the 230 workers at DXT4, which became the first Amazon facility in Canada to unionize in May 2024.

When Workers Resisted Labor Exploitation At Bronx ‘Slave Markets’

February 7, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , ,
Following the Great Depression, Black working class women flocked to street corners in the Bronx, New York, forced to sell domestic labor for far below its value in order to make ends meet. “They come to the Bronx, not because of what it promises,” reads the renowned exposé by two Black radical activists, investigative journalist Marvel Cooke and civil rights leader Ella Baker. These informal domestic workers flocked to the infamous “Bronx Slave Market,” “largely in desperation,” Cooke and Baker wrote in 1935. Desperation did indeed characterize the circumstances at the so-called slave markets, in which impoverished women braved the elements for hours, waiting to be exploited by wealthy families for a few cents and hour and risking all manner of dangerous working conditions and potential sexual abuse.

From Gripe Sessions To Grievance Tracking

February 7, 2025 Bonny Hulberg, Labor Notes. , , ,
When I joined my local union, I dove in headfirst and became a steward. I was excited to see how things were run and where I might fall in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t quite what I expected; then again, I had never been in a union before. So I sat back and watched our organizer run our steward meetings, listened to the other attendees—and realized our meetings were gripe sessions, lacking structure and focus. Stewards and members alike were expressing frustrations, but there was little tangible action to address these issues, as far as I could tell.

How The Teamsters Tested Amazon

February 7, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, In These Times. , , , , , ,
New York City — At 6 a.m., a few days before Christmas, in the postindustrial neighborhood of Maspeth, 47 workers kick off a nationwide Teamsters strike against Amazon. Maspeth, a corner of Queens that two centuries ago boasted lumberyards, linoleum manufacturers and rope factories, is still a bastion of union pride. ​“The people are working-class and they respect the unions and belong to them, especially the uniform ones, like the firemen, cops and sanitation workers,” said a retired construction worker at a local pub in 2020’s The Queens Nobody Knows. But today, the uniforms increasingly seen around Maspeth sport Amazon’s signature ​“smiley swoosh” icon.

Under Trump’s Orders, Pentagon Plans ‘Permanent Withdrawal’ From Syria

February 5, 2025 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
Washington is drafting plans for a withdrawal of US military forces from Syria, two defense officials told NBC News on 4 February. “The Defense Department is developing plans to withdraw all US troops from Syria,” the officials said. As a result of US President Donald Trump and those close to him expressing an intention to pull out of Syria recently, Pentagon officials are “drawing up plans for a full withdrawal in 30, 60 or 90 days,” the report conveyed. US defense officials told NBC that Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz visited CENTCOM’s headquarters last week, met with senior army officials, and received briefings on the region.

How Philly Whole Foods Workers Beat Bezos

February 4, 2025 Eric Blanc, Labor Politics. , , , , , ,
Can labor sustain its forward momentum under Trump? The first big test came last Monday, when Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia voted on whether to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Many in the labor movement were expecting a loss, since MAGA is now in office and since management — headed by Trump’s new billionaire buddy Jeff Bezos — went scorched earth against the nascent union effort. But a multiracial crew of young, self-organized, left-leaning workers proved the skeptics wrong, as so often has been the case since 2021.
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