In Staten Island, one union local is propelling a growing labor-community alliance deep in New York’s Republican recesses.
The now-rejected proposed contract deal included wage hike totaling 11% over four years and some job security promises, but also increased employees' healthcare contributions to cover insurance premiums to 29% by 2020.
On Tuesday, over 15,000 U.S. bank workers with the Spain-based bank Santander will declare their intent to establish this country's first bank workers' union. They'll deliver petitions, take over corporate lobbies and begin the long struggle to bring collective bargaining to an industry with predatory practices and lots of low-wage workers.
This election proved that you overlook the labor movement at your peril. Democrats took rank-and-file union members for granted. They must make labor central to the conversation again
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Between Trumka’s DAPL endorsement and the Fraternal Order of Police’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president, this week has shown a stark divide between parts of American labor and today’s social movements.
If unions find better strategic partners outside the labor movement on a particular issue, they should proceed on the basis of their analysis of what is needed, not hold back and wait for labor unity. Too often a particular union’s political stance may reflect a private employer’s growth plans, not the general good for working people.
Company agrees to add 1,300 new call center jobs on the East Coast
10.9% raise over four years
First contract for wireless retail workers
Verizon strikers are fighting against the oppression and indignity of the American workplace.
Forty thousand Verizon workers have now been on strike for a month. These days, a strike of the Verizon action’s scale and duration is exceedingly rare. That’s largely because the stakes for workers are so high. Strikers don’t just lose their pay and benefits — they risk losing their job entirely.
The actions by the Verizon workers show that it is possible to fight back against the power of employers to dictate the terms of the employment relationship. They remind us that the supremacy of big corporations, like technological changes and market forces, are not inevitable but reflect political and managerial choices. It appears workers are finally finding a way to counter the corporate strategies that have defined—and held back—the U.S. economy in recent decades.
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