Working Class

Let’s Restore The Legal Right To Strike

October 21, 2021 Shaun Richman, In These Times. Create! #Striketober, Labor Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

Unions have the winds at their back because of the unique circumstances of the pandemic making so many workers less willing to work unpleasant jobs for lousy pay, but labor markets have a way of tightening that make striking a riskier proposition for workers. We must take this opportunity to win back our rights for when we’ll really need them again. In any workplace where workers are on strike — or just talking about it — if the boss starts to promise scabs permanent replacement jobs at the end of the labor dispute please file a damn Unfair Labor Practice charge! Where does Jennifer Abruzzo’s NLRB have the discretion to punish an employer for hiring permanent scabs? Prompted by a union-filed Unfair Labor Practice charge, it can investigate an employer’s economic needs “to protect and continue his business” by hiring permanent replacements.

Millions Of Workers Want A Union

August 31, 2021 Eric Dirnbach, EWOC. Strategize! Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

We know the U.S. labor movement is too small. Our current union density, or membership rate, is very low, about 11% of the workforce, with only around 6% in the private sector, and it’s been falling nearly every year for decades. To put this crisis in perspective, the union membership rate hasn’t been this low in more than a century. Wages, benefits and working conditions for many workers are not improving, and in some ways have gotten worse in recent decades. Furthermore, union membership is concentrated in too few states. Over half of the 14.3 million union members live in just seven states. And in many southern states, the union membership rate is less than 5%. That means there are too many elected officials that have no fear of voting against union and workers’ interests.

Working Too Long Is Killing You

May 26, 2021 Emily Scurrah, Tribune Magazine. Educate! health, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

Long working hours led to 745,000 deaths worldwide in 2016. As we emerge from the pandemic, we urgently need to reclaim our free time – but the only way to do it is through worker organising.

Manifesto: Draft Proposal For The Founding Of The International Working Peoples Association, 1979

March 28, 2021 Editors, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Anarchism, Capitalism, Women, Working Class

Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is probably best known for Anarchism and the Black Revolution, a fifty-six page manifesto that was arguably the first work to systematically apply the principles and theories of anarchism to the history of Black struggle and the question of Black liberation. First published in 1979, Anarchism and the Black Revolution was written while the Chattanooga-born Irvin was incarcerated in the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois serving a life sentence for hijacking . Ervin was first introduced to anarchism during an interim stint in the Federal Detention Center in...

Lee Camp: It’s Time For Major Wealth Redistribution

February 25, 2021 Lee Camp, ScheerPost.com. Create! Capitalism, wealth inequality, Wealth redistribution, Working Class

It’s time for wealth redistribution. There, I said it. I know it’s the third rail of politics, but I’m not running for a damn thing, which makes me free to speak the truth. (Well, I am running for president of my neighborhood elementary school’s PTA, but I’m pretty sure I’ll win easily since my campaign slogan is “Extend the school day to 20 hours because we don’t want to deal with those little monsters. You take ‘em!” . . . Well, I’ll win as long as they don’t find out I don’t have a child.) Anyway, we desperately need wealth redistribution. And before anyone starts yelling something about Joseph Stalin, here’s the part that’s going to blow your mind — in the United States we’ve already had wealth redistribution for decades.

How To Keep On Keeping On

January 11, 2021 Ellen David Friedman, Labor Notes. Organize! COVID-19, PPE, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

Even asking the questions is exhausting. Who’s making the Covid decisions, and why do they change every day? How has the workload doubled? What about the new extremes of micro-management? Which of my co-workers, or their families, or my customers or patients or students are going to get sick? And why can’t we seem to do anything to stop all this suffering? The pull to give up, to withdraw, to hunker down and “just survive” is almost irresistible—even for a committed activist like you. But here we are. We are connecting to one another at work, even if just through images on a screen.

A Critique Of The Rank-And-File Strategy

January 5, 2021 Jason Koslowski, Left Voice. Strategize! Electoral Politics, Labor Unions, Socialism, Working Class

Kim Moody first gave a systematic statement of the “rank-file strategy” in a working paper for the socialist organization Solidarity in 2000. Since then he has kept on refining it, such as in 2017’s On New Terrain and in more recent essays. The DSA adopted a version of it as its official position on labor organizing, and Jacobin constantly discusses it. Labor Notes, influential among union militants, is built around some of its basic ideas. And it has been a regular point of debate for leftists. Most recently, Kate Doyle Griffiths wrote an important set of articles in Spectre about its strengths and limitations. Moody formulated the strategy during a time of defeat and decline for the struggles of the working class and the oppressed.

The Year That Labor Hung On By Its Fingertips

December 29, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Strategize! AFL-CIO, Essential workers, Labor, Working Class

Broadly speaking, there have been two very large labor stories this year. The first is, “I have been forced into unemployment due to the pandemic, and I am scared.” And the second is, “I have been forced to continue working during the pandemic, and I am scared.” America’s labor reporters spent most of our year writing variations of these stories, in each company and in each industry and in each city. Those stories continue to this day. The federal government left working people utterly forsaken. They did not create a national wage replacement system to pay people to stay home, as many European nations did. OSHA was asleep on the job, uninterested in workplace safety related to coronavirus.

New Organizing Model Helps Build Worker Power

December 28, 2020 Erin Dirnbach, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! COVID-19, Essential workers, Worker Rights, Working Class

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns started in March, a new class of “essential workers” continued to go to work across the United States under new dangerous conditions. As stories came out about workers lacking personal protective equipment, or PPE, and working in crowded workplaces, union workers began to take action. They stopped work, organized sick-outs, won hazard pay, protested employer COVID-19 policies that left them unsafe and negotiated for improvements. Unions have made workplaces safer, as research has shown that unionized essential workers have had better COVID-19 workplace practices during the pandemic.

1,158 Strikes Since March First

December 25, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

Back in 2019, Payday was one of the few national outlets in the country to cover the first-ever statewide teachers strike in South Carolina. Now, teachers in school districts throughout South Carolina are increasingly calling “sickout” strikes to protest unsafe COVID conditions. A growing sickout strike in the suburbs of the state capitol Columbia is now entering its second week. Our friends at The State have the story: “Our main thing is to go back to the hybrid model,” said an Airport High School teacher, who asked to remain anonymous. Schools in the district previously operated on a rotating two-day in-person schedule, with students spending part of the week on campus and the other three days learning remotely.

Workers Suffer As US Pandemic Relief Bill Goes Nowhere In Congress

December 18, 2020 Walter Smolarek, Peoples Dispatch. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Recession, Working Class

Not only has the coronavirus pandemic taken a staggering toll in terms of loss of life in the United States but has also caused social and economic dislocation for the working class on a massive scale. The impact of this crisis is likely to last far beyond the distribution of a vaccine. When the pandemic began to spiral out of control in March, Will Harris was one of the millions of retail workers who lost their income. Harris, who worked two part-time jobs, said that as the months of unemployment dragged on, “I couldn’t afford all my groceries when I needed them… I felt bad for spending on anything even if it was absolutely essential,” and he had to start rationing medical treatments like testosterone.

Workers Should Run The World

December 16, 2020 Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times. Create! Labor Unions, Worker Rights, Working Class

We chat with Erek Slater, a bus operator for the Chicago Transit Authority, where he’s been working for the past 15 years. Erek is a family man, a father, and a three-term elected shop steward and executive board member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 241. We talk about his working life and all that goes into being a bus operator, all the things that passengers never see — even though we depend on workers like Erek every day to live our lives. We also talk about Erek’s experience as a shop steward and about his unshakeable commitment to honor, justice, and empowering the working class. In fact, it was because he stood up for these things that he was unjustly dismissed from his job in May.

Austerity Is Still A Political Choice

November 30, 2020 Grace Blakely, Tribune Magazine. Strategize! Austerity, COVID-19, United Kingdom (UK), Working Class

When Rishi Sunak delivered the spending review earlier this week, the coverage focused predictably on levels of government borrowing. With GDP set to contract by more than 11% in 2020 – the largest fall in three centuries – and unemployment expected to reach 7.5%, government spending is the only thing standing between the UK economy and complete economic meltdown. As a result, we’re forecast to see the highest levels of public borrowing since the Second World War. In this context, Sunak felt the need to balance some new spending pledges...

COVID-19 Economy: A Deliberate Disaster

November 26, 2020 Bruce Lesnick, Counterpunch. Strategize! COVID-19, Joe Biden, Recession, Working Class

With nearly 12 million cases and a quarter million deaths in the US so far (over 55 million cases and 1.3 million deaths world-wide), the COVID 19 pandemic is ravaging civilization. The disease is on track to be the deadliest epidemic since 1918. The economic fallout for the working class has been severe. In the US, unemployment has skyrocketed, with 45.4 million new unemployment claims since March 14. At least 1/6 of those with jobs before the pandemic are now out of work. According to The New York Times, “The economic downturn is shaping up to be particularly devastating for renters, who are more likely to be lower-income and work hourly jobs cut during the pandemic.”

Left-Democrats Abandon Struggle For The Working Class To The Right

October 29, 2020 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. Educate! 2020 Elections, Democrats, Joe Biden, Working Class

All indications are that Joe Biden is heading for a landslide win. Losers will be Trump and those Republicans who have not already defected to the Democrat’s big tent. Collateral damage, however, may be the progressive cause. Some leftists have advocated temporarily subordinating an independent working-class alternative to campaign for the leading neoliberal candidate. For example, the Open Letter: Dump Trump, Then Battle Biden argues for “the most urgent task — defeating Trump in the election with as big an Electoral College margin as possible, to undermine his predictable efforts to steal the election.”

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