Portside

“This is a way to defund Black people as a whole," retired federal worker Janice Lee said, referring to the layoffs of black government workers.

The riskiest course is to stay the course.

The riskiest course is to stay the course.

The “worker-to-worker” organizing model adopted by many of the most dynamic unions and campaigns in the country has enormous promise for revitalizing labor — in large part because it puts workers themselves in the drivers’ seat.

A newly released memo from the banking giant Wells Fargo outlines a predatory scheme to dismantle the USPS: sell off profitable parts, slash union jobs, and raise prices by up to 140 percent.

Labor groups said working conditions had not changed enough to warrant the removal. The company is partly owned by donors to President Trump.

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.

The Trump administration is telling agencies to ignore any provisions in their collective bargaining agreements with federal unions that would impede reductions in force (RIFs), as agencies take steps toward implementing their initial RIF plans.

Even as public employee unions fight the Trump administration’s personnel cuts, a pair of GOP senators want to ban federal employees from belonging to unions.

Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME: "I think it’s up to AFSCME and the labor movement and our allies and friends to continue to talk about what this administration is trying to do to hurt working people."