Portside

Worker-led and initiated organizing is certainly positive, as labor writer Eric Blanc points, but this emphasis is one piece of a much larger analytical framework for success in organizing.

Trump and the mainstream media have been playing up his courting of the Teamsters. But will the powerful union really endorse him? Don’t bet on it.

The whole labor movement needs the solidarity and organization of tech workers. Imagine tech workers acting in solidarity with warehouse or production workers dependent on their algorithms! What an awesome transformative power!

Time to follow the containers, march inland and organize! Time to build a multi-union organizing project. Time to strategize and organize!" Read Robert Cherny’s “Harry Bridges Labor Radical, Labor Legend”, University of Illinois Press 2023.

The primary, leading aspect for change in the US labor movement should be recovering lost bargaining power through organizing the unorganized, including through cross-border campaigns.

The strike was mainly motivated to force the company to act to improve the general working conditions of the subcontractors. But the whole workforce’s conditions are at the core of the struggle.

Basketball players (and others) struck for Black Lives. The NBA Players Association won an agreement from owners to use arenas as polling places. Other unions have also signed a statement supporting Work Stoppages for Black Lives: What next?

The million dollars refers to a unionized worker’s cumulative earnings over the long haul and the 365 tips are an amazing assemblage of guidance for organizers.

The election of Donald Trump produced a rash of commentaries heralding the death of organized labor, or at minimum an existential crisis. Although these epitaphs are not new and are very overblown, it is true that organized labor prematurely backed the corporate Democrat, failed to elect the candidate it did back, and is left divided over how to deal with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Amazon has become a symbol of the new economy in Italy and the unions are determined to make these new workplaces, union fortresses. While Italian labor law has many advantages compared to our own, patient worker based organizing remains the fundamental building block of organizing.