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Worker Rights and Jobs

Union Power Can Change Campus Protests Forever

Strikes are different from protests. Though protesters frequently say that they are making ​“demands,” it is more accurate to say they are making requests. Protests rely on persuasion. Their persuasion may be gentle, or it may be aggressive. It may rely on moral shaming to get its point across, or it may rely on the elevation of awareness, or it may rely on the pure intimidation of numbers. But protests, for all of their righteous fury and necessity, lack the legal ability to shut things down until change is achieved. Strikers, on the other hand, can truly make demands. Their proposition is simple: No work will get done until a change is made.

Over 400 Physicians From Delaware’s Christiana Care Move To Unionize

More than 400 physicians from Delaware's Christiana Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and Middletown Free-standing Emergency Department -- all part of the ChristianaCare health system -- filed to unionize with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD. "If successful, this will be the first physician union in Delaware and the first union of any kind at ChristianaCare," Doctors Council SEIU said in an announcement of the filing, which pointed to the ongoing corporatization of medicine as driving the physicians' efforts. Some of the specific concerns that physicians detailed in regard to their filing included understaffing and inadequate resources, corporate influence on medical decision making, limited input in matters affecting patient care and physician safety and autonomy, and moral injury caused by pressure to place profit over patients.

Awful Conditions In New Postal Hubs Create Opening For Resistance

For three years, rank-and-file postal workers and community allies have been fighting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Ten-Year Plan to Amazonify the postal service. DeJoy’s overall goal is eliminating jobs by installing huge new automated parcel sorting machines. For letter carriers, the biggest immediate impact of his multi-pronged plan is relocating many from neighborhood post offices to massive new Sorting and Delivery Centers. Over the next few years 600 of these hubs would be set up, impacting 6,000 post offices and 100,000 routes. Under pressure from Senators, DeJoy announced May 13 that he will pause another part of the plan, the consolidation of mail processing plants, at least until next January—a big win for our side.

Organizing One Of The Largest Black Led Unions In The United States

McMaid workers, led by Irma Sherman, Doris Gould, Juanita Hill, and Mary Williamson, transformed labor organizing by successfully unionizing homecare workers in Chicago in 1984, setting the groundwork for the largest union in the Midwest, and catalyzing the organizing of a field predominately staffed by working-class Black and brown women. In Part One, the McMaid homecare workers, with their union, United Labor Unions Local 880, a small, independent union founded by ACORN, the national community organization, overcame an intense anti-union campaign by management to win a solid union election victory in January, 1984. But even more obstacles lay ahead in their fight for Justice.

Revealed: Far-Right Links Of Polish Farmer Hunger Strikers

An obscure far-right linked farmers group has risen to prominence in Poland after it was championed by populist politicians ahead of the EU elections, DeSmog can reveal. Orka, a new farmers’ movement that materialised earlier this month, entered Warsaw’s parliament building on May 9 to protest against EU climate plans and Ukrainian food imports. Protesters suspended a 10-day hunger strike last week after winning the attention of Polish President Andrzej Duda, who invited them to talks, and reportedly offered one member a role on his council for agriculture. The protest group was accompanied by the far-right Confederation Party’s Marta Chech, who is running as a candidate in the June 6-9 EU ballot.

Argentina: Escalating Demonstrations Of Workers And Unemployed

Just 3 days after the national series of Milei is Hunger meetings across Argentina even larger demonstrations took place again today. The sizes, collaboration and militancy of these actions are indicating a new stage in the struggle against the anti poor super neo liberal agenda of the narcissistic president. In Buenos Aires, entitled the National Workers’ Meeting  was held in the Plaza del Congreso  with thousands of fighters, called by dozens of recovered unions and sections, delegates and internal commissions, social and picketers’ organizations, student centers and popular assemblies, with the intention to set a common course to confront the offensive of the Milei government.

UAW Admits Digital Heavy, Organizing Committee Light Approach Failed Them

Rather than using traditional organizing committee structures, the UAW relied heavily on digital meetings, a light staff approach from the international union, and getting workers to sign union cards via QR codes. Given the positive media coverage of the UAW in the “Stand Up Strike,” many UAW leaders were confident they could win using this approach. After filing with 70%, the UAW believed they would maintain their margin and win at similar margins to the 73% victory of UAW workers in Chattanooga. However, the UAW lost 44%-56% in Alabama amid charges that the company used backroom manipulation tactics against workers.

Operation Dixie Failed 78 Years Ago

Volkswagen workers’ decisive recent union election victory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, makes them the first Southern U.S. auto workers to unionize a foreign-owned auto factory. Their success could also mark a historic turning point for generations of Southern workers seeking to improve their jobs and transform their states’ economies. There are also signs that vigorous enforcement of federal labor law and other pro-worker federal policies, bolstered by the Biden administration, are contributing to a more level playing field for workers attempting to organize in the South. But a long history of exploitation will take a strong, national labor movement to overcome.

How Workers Are Revolutionizing The South

Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes. So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing. Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice, and kept them safe on the job. And in May 2024, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.

The US Worker Cooperative Movement Turns 20

These are examples of worker co-ops in the United States in the late 20th century. While doing great work, and with a wealth of cooperative experience between them, before 2000 these somewhat isolated islands of democratic work and community care stood alone on the U.S. economic landscape, operating separately, and independent of each other. Maybe they didn’t even know that each other existed, or what they were doing to solve similar problems – especially those on opposite coasts. And most people in the U.S. knew little to nothing about worker co-ops. Regional worker co-op conferences started to help bring co-ops like these together, not just locally but regionally - with the goal to form a national network.

When Stellantis Fired Temps At Toledo Jeep, We Marched On Management

After we struck for six weeks last fall and won a contract that promised a path to seniority, auto workers are being screwed over again by Stellantis. The firings were a one-two punch. First, in January, Stellantis terminated 500 temp workers—“supplementals” in the company’s jargon—in Kokomo, Indiana, and at a parts sequencing facility near its Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. Then in March, the mass firings expanded to 341 temp workers at the Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, where I work making Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators, one of the plants that launched the Stand-Up Strike. Workers got the news that they were terminated via text message.

How Reformers Doubled Vermont AFL-CIO Membership

Transforming an existing union into a more democratic and member-run organization has often proven to be a daunting—though possible—task. The pressing need to revitalize organized labor in the U.S., however, depends on such movements. Beginning in 2017, a slate of reform-minded union activists won leadership offices in the Vermont state federation of labor, reinvigorating that organization. Within just a few years, the federation’s membership doubled. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO, 2017-2023 is two-term president David Van Deusen’s participant-retelling of the emergence of the UNITED reform group.

Retired New York City Teachers Rise And Run

They’ve really stepped in it. The incumbent Unity Caucus that runs the huge teachers union in New York City is facing a challenge from the Retiree Advocate slate who hope to take leadership of the powerful 70,000-person retiree chapter within the union. Ballots were mailed May 10 and will be counted June 14. The rallying issue has been the United Federation of Teachers’ collusion with the city to put municipal retirees, including retired teachers, into a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna. The plan would replace their traditional Medicare, which is provided premium-free along with a cost-free wraparound.

The Role Of The Labor Movement In Solidarity Economy

Enjoy this panel discussion on the role of the labor movement in solidarity economy hosted by the Solidarity Economy Club at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies from Friday, May 10 , 2024. Solidarity Economy is an internationalist framework that seeks to unify diverse community-based initiatives toward a values-centered alternative to capitalism. Some of these initiatives include cooperatives, community gardens, land trusts, tenant’s unions, care networks & more. There has been increasing attention on the role of the labor movement in solidarity economy as union leaders seek new ways to fight back against the increasing precarity caused by neoliberalism, automation and AI.

How UC Researchers Began Saying No To Military Work

Our union of 48,000 academic workers has just authorized a strike over the University of California’s unfair labor practices in repressing peaceful protest, retaliating against members for protesting, and prohibiting pro-Palestine speech at the worksite. United Auto Workers Local 4811 announced the results yesterday: with nearly 20,000 members voting, 79 percent voted yes. Part of the groundwork behind this vote and informing the potential strike is the organizing we have done over the past several months in our science departments—as researchers who are no longer willing to support genocide with our labor.
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