The slow, decades-long destruction of the US unemployment insurance system has resulted in more than just personal hardship for millions of workers — it has further weakened the fighting strength of the whole working class.
The labor movement will not survive at all, let alone build power, without a serious racial analysis and making racial justice key to their core mission.
There is very little evidence that enhanced unemployment insurance benefits created sectoral labor shortages.
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The Amazon organizing drive has drawn attention to just how much the deck is stacked against workers and unions. The Pro Act would provide a much-needed update to labor law after decades of rising inequality and an erosion of collective bargaining.
The PayUp campaign has clawed back $22 billion from apparel companies owed to factories and workers, and they’re just getting started.
In the 1920s and ’30s, a summer school for industrial working women built an economics curriculum around the perspective of labor rather than capital. It offers a visionary example of worker ed that emphasizes class struggle and worker empowerment.
Generations of steel and chemical manufacturing in the region have contaminated vacant industrial land that has sat dormant since the businesses shuttered. Residents are tired of being the city’s dumping ground, so they are fighting back.
The PRO Act will not pass unless we end the filibuster. Those two things are a package deal.
The late AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney was an admirable figure who had a vision for reinvigorated US labor unions. But he only tried to reform a union movement that needed a more fundamental refoundation.
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