Portside

Despite defeat in Alabama, workers are fighting to form and run unions at the tech giant on several fronts.

Who Gets the Bird? is a new weekly newsletter about what is happening in the US labor movement.

Before Covid-19, American women were already in crisis

The Postmaster General’s New Attack on the Mail is a Fig Leaf for Privatization.

From preventing redundancies to getting workers furloughed, unions have often done the government’s job in this crisis.

As workers, we are on our own. We cannot outsource our responsibilities. What is happening to us is blatant provocation. If we do not unite and fight back against the capitalist onslaught, we are doomed as workers and we deserve our misery.

By excluding jobs held by black and brown workers from basic worker protections, the Fair Labor Standards Act, adopted decade ago during the New Deal, injected institutional racism into a federal wage and hour law.

App delivery workers for DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and other tech giants are fighting for a living wage, employment status, and the simple right to pee in privacy.

The decline of unions and the difficulties that unions face in 2021 are not simply a result of some sort of inexorable forces, which is often how globalization and technological change are presented.

Uber’s real trophy lies in blocking their drivers from even trying to form a legally recognized union by redefining them as non-workers.