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The stories in Standing Up are linked thematically and appear in chronological order, beginning with 1970. For those of us who have similarly spent time as organizers, the book feels like an anthropological field trip into the past.
Agricultural workers in New York just formed the state’s first farmworker union, but a new law guaranteeing overtime protections and organizing rights for the first time has been delayed.
Rank-and-file unionism, nationally, is taking center stage in many strikes and union actions across the country. “The labor movement was becoming hot, members were really getting activated and needed a way to organize and funnel that energy.”
Asha Banerjee, Margaret Poydock, Celine McNicholas, Ihna Mangundayao, and Ali Sait
Economic Policy Institute
High unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic well-being. Unions give workers a voice at work, and also give workers a voice in shaping their communities
For a vast majority of Americans democracy ends when work hours begin. Most people in this country are subject, as workers, to the nearly unmediated authority of their employers, which can discipline, sanction or fire them for nearly any reason
“This is the single biggest new union filing in any industry, definitely this year if not this decade,” said UC Berkeley student researcher Tanzil Chowdhury. “Seventeen thousand new workers just joined the labor movement, which is historic.”
Now’s the perfect time to fight for the right to return to a job once a strike is over. The United States is experiencing a wave of worker militancy and a White House that actually wants to take concrete actions to defend and grow labor unions.
If you watch television, or films, you should think about who is making them and under what conditions. Eighteen-hour workdays, no lunch breaks. Car accidents caused by sleep deprivation. A crew member who returned to set the day after a miscarriage.
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