Portside

A Teamster organizer reflects on 2023, a year of labor upsurge: “Corporate America, you’re on notice — we’re not fucking around.”

In his new special taking on Amazon, prankster Oobah Butler gets a job at a fulfillment center, films the brutal working conditions, and sells a drink made of Amazon drivers’ pee on the company’s platform. Amazon isn’t happy with his work.

UAW president Shawn Fain has called for a 32-hour workweek. It’s the revival of an old vision in the US labor movement — and the sort of ambition overworked and underpaid employees need.

This week, the UAW presented proposals to automakers in contract negotiations covering some 150,000 workers. Autoworkers want big raises, an end to tiers, and the right to strike over plant closures — and conditions appear favorable for them to win.

More than a year after the Amazon Labor Union’s landmark victory at a Staten Island warehouse, Amazon still refuses to bargain with the union. Meanwhile, a reform caucus is pushing for the ALU to hold leadership elections.

Workers at the Wabtec locomotive manufacturing plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, have walked off the job. Their demands get to the heart of bigger questions about the nature of work and the role workers can play in fights like climate change.

Workers at the Crown Heights pizzeria Barboncino are organizing a union with Workers United. It would be the first pizzeria of its kind to go union in New York — and perhaps not the last.

Despite the ravages of deindustrialization, the United Auto Workers remain the US’s most important industrial union. Members recently elected a new leadership promising democracy, militancy, and an end to corruption. But change isn’t coming easy to the UAW.

The Supreme Court’s attack on abortion rights will strengthen employers seeking to maintain their unilateral power over workers within and outside the workplace. Luckily, the labor movement knows that abortion rights are workers’ rights.

This past weekend, 4,000 labor militants gathered near Chicago for the Labor Notes conference. Amazon and Starbucks workers, teachers, Teamsters, Bernie Sanders — Labor Notes is a mosaic that brought the labor and leftist upsurge under one roof.