Portside

The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a massive uptick in news media unionization efforts.

Worker centers in general serve as a clearinghouse for workers’ needs when forming a union is all but impossible. Even in anti-union terrains, the centers have found ways to change public and corporate policies.

Worker centers in general serve as a clearinghouse for workers’ needs when forming a union is all but impossible. Even in anti-union terrains, the centers have found ways to change public and corporate policies.

Lots of attention has been on the Amazon unionization campaign in Alabama. But other workers are organizing in the South too: to form unions, win contracts, defend gains and enforce labor laws. Here is a small sample.

Labor Notes writer Luis Feliz Leon spoke on April 13 with Joshua Brewer, the BAmazon campaign’s lead organizer, from RWDSU’s Mid-South Council.

Amazon and the other major employers today will not be organized until the left wing does the hard, thankless, exhausting organizing work of patiently building real union structures and real organizational muscle.

What did the campaign look like from the inside? Labor Notes writer Luis Feliz Leon spoke on April 13 with Joshua Brewer, the campaign’s lead organizer, from RWDSU’s Mid-South Council.

The president pledged to require businesses to make workplaces safe from the coronavirus on the campaign trail. Now he may not.

Organizing is sacred work. We’re dealing with the most difficult material to build with: people. If the first person you’re trying to organize rejects you, that’s okay, go to the next person. Know that there are people who want to hear and join.

As destiny would have it, just days after Amazon used illegal tactics to derail a drive by warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama to unionize, journalists in northern New Jersey who work for Gannett are voting on whether or not to form a union.