Unlike many in his party, Eugene V. Debs believed the struggle for black equality was critical to realizing the promise of socialism.
Just as in the 1850s (with the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act), the Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north.
Local 1021’s model Strike School, which In These Times has obtained and posted online (links below) as an open source document, is designed to educate workers about the true nature of class politics and class conflict, the power of the strike, how to organize and win a strike and how to use the strike as part of a larger social movement. It is divided into three modules: “Economic Power,” “Striking for Our Communities,” and “Strategic Planning,” ...
Globalization and technology have gutted the labor movement, and part-time work is sabotaging solidarity. Is there a new way to challenge the politics of inequality? Tackling inequality is clearly going to require more than technocratic fixes from above. It isn’t likely to succeed unless workers themselves can reclaim some bargaining power, and the sense of political and social inclusion that can go with it.
“[Right-to-work] is going to bring everybody down,” said Russ Krings, the directing business representative for the Milwaukee union International Association of Machinists District 10, during a press conference with other labor leaders on Monday. “It’s going to affect not only the union families and nonunion families. It’s going to affect all the businesses that we go and spend our money at. This is going to bring the economy down."
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The death of the labor movement has been repeatedly predicted as an imminent event for more than a century. Yet it lives, and is getting stronger.
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When the Supreme Court ruled that unions could not collect dues from the home-care workers they represent, the justices set workers and their clients on a course that could harm them both.
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