Workers Rights and Jobs

2019 Year in Review: Workers Strike Back

December 24, 2019 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes Resist! Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

2018 could have been a tough act to follow. It’s not every year that a grassroots movement of teachers captures the nation’s attention. But workers across the country rose to the occasion, making 2019 one of the most exciting years for the labor movement in recent memory. Across the labor movement, there are members organizing to make their unions stronger and more democratic. In both the public and private sector, reformers are recognizing that unions need to be strengthened from the bottom up.

Debunking the Myth of Santa Claus

December 23, 2019 K.J. Noh, Popular Resistance Educate! Christmas, Workers Rights and Jobs

Santa wasn’t always so. St. Nicholas of Myra, was originally known for rescuing women from prostitution. Legend says he dropped gold into the stockings of three women who, having no dowries, were about to be sold into prostitution. It’s also said that he brought back to life men butchered, or kidnapped. From this, he became a Patron saint of women, children, prostitutes, protector of the oppressed and in extremis. Later, he became the patron saint of the poor, and St. Nicholas’ feast became a day for alms and redistribution. Over the years, however, Santa acquired other significant functions. During the Dutch slave trade, he became Sinterklaas, taking on the trappings of a slave trader, kidnapping young children with a black henchman (Zwarte Piet) and sleigh drawn by eight black slaves.

Yes, The U.S. Unemployment Rate Is Low, But So Is The Job Quality Index

December 21, 2019 Matt Higgins, Occupy.com Educate! Labor, New Economy, Workers Rights and Jobs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November jobs report released on Dec. 6 showed a 50-year low unemployment rate of 3.5 percent, with 266,000 jobs added. This signals a strong economy. But another recent report, from the Coalition for a Prosperous America, shows that while the quantity of jobs has increased since the Great Recession, the quality of jobs has decreased. The November federal jobs report shows the health care sector leading the way with the number of jobs added, followed by manufacturing and hospitality. Nevertheless, wage growth actually dipped by a tenth of a percent, and wage growth has slowed this year compared to last year.

France Records 391-Mile Traffic Jam As Public Transport Brought To Halt By Third Week Of Strikes Over Pension Changes

December 19, 2019 Staff, Itv.com Resist! Class Struggle, France, Pensions, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

A traffic jam of 391 miles was recorded on the outskirts of Paris on Monday morning as fresh strikes over pension changes brought public transport to a standstill in France for a third week. President Emmanuel Macron’s government appeared determined to push ahead with its plans despite the French transport strikes causing widespread disruption as they enter their twelfth day. In the Paris region only two Metro automated trains with no drivers were fully running as the other 14 metro lines remained closed or only very partially running.

Rising Health Care Costs In California: A Worker Issue

December 18, 2019 Staff, Laborcenter.berkeley.edu Educate! California, Health Care, Reform, Workers Rights and Jobs

The Labor Center is publishing a series of blog posts detailing current problems and concerns of Californians with job-based coverage, including the inequities faced by low-income workers, immigrant workers, and workers of color. We will also highlight that much of the burden of health care costs falls on the shoulders of working families, making health care cost growth a workers’ issue. Key points we will make in this blog post series include: Most mid- and high-wage California workers have job-based coverage.

General Strike In Finland Saves Their Postal Service

December 17, 2019 By Brian Wakamo, Inequality.org Resist! Class Struggle, Finland, General Strike, Workers Rights and Jobs

Finland now has the youngest prime minister in the world, 34-year-old Sanna Marin. The Social Democrat was catapulted into power when her predecessor, Antti Rinne, was forced to resign after a postal worker dispute escalated into a nationwide general strike. Rinne’s downfall was shockingly rapid. At the end of August, the government proposed changes to the classification of around 700 workers in the postal service, known as Posti. The proposal was to shift 700 Posti employees working in packaging and e-commerce shipping into a separate collective bargaining unit.

A Holiday Comeback For Toys ‘R’ Us?

December 10, 2019 By Sarah Anderson, Otherwords.org Resist! Retail, Workers Rights and Jobs

For many years, Giovanna De La Rosa enjoyed working at Toys ‘R’ Us — especially during the holiday shopping season. “I loved bringing joy to families and to children,” she shared at a recent congressional hearing. “I watched so many of the local kids grow up over the years while shopping in our store.” De La Rosa’s 20-year career with Toys ‘R’ Us came to an abrupt end in 2018 when the bankrupt company shuttered all of its 700 U.S. outlets, leaving more than 30,000 employees jobless. Now Toys ‘R’ Us is trying to make a comeback.

Workers Protest Their Union From Below

December 9, 2019 Alice Herman, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Class Struggle, Corruption, Labor Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

Every day, Nikki Sampson drives from her home in Portage to Madison, where she works as a dispatcher for the city’s bus service. To get there, she drives along a 40-mile stretch of highway, which crosses the Wisconsin River twice and then slices south through farms and municipalities. That road lies at the heart of the region represented by Sampson’s 4,256-strong union—Teamsters Local 695. Sampson has worked for Metro transit for over 20 years, and says that as a younger employee there...

This Holiday Season, American Workers Have Little To Celebrate

December 7, 2019 By Danny Haiphong, Ahtribune.com Educate! Class Struggle, Inequality, New Economy, Workers Rights and Jobs

Every year, much of the U.S. population celebrates Thanksgiving and Christmas to show appreciation for their families and friends. Thanksgiving normalizes the colonial origins of the United States and erases the brutality of the English settlers who massacred indigenous people to prepare the land for capitalist accumulation. Christmas is the annual holiday of big business. On no other day are workers more encouraged to spend their wages on the latest consumer product to gift to their loved ones.

Labor Took On “Bad Bosses” Long Before #MeToo

December 6, 2019 Kim Kelly, Newrepublic.com Resist! Class Struggle, Service Industry, Sexual Harassment, Workers Rights and Jobs

“Will There Ever Be a #MeToo-Style Movement for Bad Bosses?” New York magazine asked readers in a tone-deaf fog of obliviousness last month. The piece itself was fairly benign, addressing the long-standing and profoundly dubious cult of the genius boss. The trouble was with the headline—which, it must be noted, was almost certainly chosen by a New York editor, not the writer, feminist author Rebecca Traister. Just moments after the piece was blasted out on Twitter, Labor Twitter blasted right back. As veteran labor journalist Sarah Jaffe replied in an apt tone of disbelief, “It’s called the labor movement?”

Teachers And Public Workers In Argentina: Four Months Of Strikes And Pickets

December 4, 2019 Julia Soul and Leandro Rodríguez, Labornotes.org Resist! Argentina, Class Struggle, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

Teachers and public workers in an Argentinian province have been striking, blockading roads, marching by the thousands, occupying buildings, and even attacking and burning the provincial parliament building, in a fight to defend their contracts and their bargained wage increase. For the last four months, these workers in Chubut province battled their provincial government, which is supported by transnational corporations and by the national leadership of the oil workers union—a key political player in the country’s main oil region.

60 Arrested As Airline Food Workers Protest At JFK

December 2, 2019 Steve Wishnia, Laborpress.org Resist! Airports, Class Struggle, Protestors Arrested, Protests, Workers Rights and Jobs

NEW YORK, N.Y.—More than 1,000 UNITE HERE members and supporters jammed a traffic island at John F. Kennedy International Airport Nov. 26, loudly chanting that American Airlines’ food contractors should give their workers a raise and decent health care. The protest was one of 16 at major national airports on behalf of 20,000 airline-catering workers, both those at subcontractors LSG Sky Chefs and Gate Gourmet and those directly employed by United Airlines.

Learning From The Historic Gains We Won In The Chicago Teachers Strike

December 1, 2019 By Jackson Potter, In These Times Strategize! Chicago Teachers Union, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

Throughout history, social movement struggles have always been protracted. It’s taken three contract cycles for the Chicago Teachers Union to turn back nearly 40 years of attacks on our public schools. It’s a shift made possible through strike action coupled with a burgeoning national teachers movement—and taking risks to lift up working-class demands that go far beyond traditional collective bargaining.

Museum Workers Across The Country Are Unionizing. Here’s What’s Driving A Movement That’s Been Years In The Making

November 30, 2019 Catherine Wagley, News.artnet.com Organize! Class Struggle, Museums, Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

“Let us in! Let us in!” chanted a small crowd of visitor services associates dressed in black. They stood at the locked gate of the Marciano Art Foundation (MAF) on Friday, November 8, at 11 a.m., the time the museum normally would have opened to the public. Three days earlier, the austere contemporary art foundation had closed abruptly—less than a week after the visitor services associates announced their plan to unionize. The foundation, a private nonprofit opened in early 2017 by the two art-collecting brothers behind the denim brand Guess...

Why Striking Teachers Across America Are Fighting for Much More Than Their Paychecks

November 19, 2019 By Jeff Bryant, Inequality.org Resist! Class Struggle, Strikes, Teachers, Workers Rights and Jobs

While national news outlets hail the conclusion of a historic teacher strike in Chicago, another important story often overlooked by national reporters is the ongoing struggle to defend public education in the months that follow successful strikes. In Oakland, California, where teachers won important concessions from the district as a result of their strike earlier this year, the community is nevertheless still seeing their students’ education undermined by lack of resources and disrupted by school closures and further privatization from charter schools.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources