Could the union victory at an electric bus manufacturing plant in Alabama turn the South into a hub for quality jobs in the green economy?
Major unions should follow the lead of the UAW and invest serious resources to organize in EV and other growing sectors across the South.
Taken together, the history, economy & ruling ideology of the US South make it difficult to build workers’ power. But armed with the lessons from the CIO’s Operation Dixie, & fueled by the momentum of recent victories, organizers see a way forward.
The next chapter in worker power in the South: 7,300 workers are ready to walk out and shut down seven plants at midnight.
We still have two labor systems, and need mass unionization to end our immense inequality, which has its roots in the South.
The South has long remained a nearly impenetrable citadel for labor. Fresh off of the success of its Big Three strike last year and looking to organize an Alabama Mercedes plant, the United Auto Workers wants to storm the castle.
In America’s Other Automakers: A History of the Foreign-owned Automotive Sector in the United States, Timothy J. Minchin investigates why the companies located where they did and what the decisions meant for workers and their communities.
Catholic radical Louis J. Twomey’s labor institute at Loyola University New Orleans trained a generation of workers for class struggle. A new union drive among the university’s food service workers draws on that legacy of the best of Catholic trade unionism.
Doctors’ unions are rare in the US, and unions comprised of both physicians and other medical providers are even rarer. But in North Carolina, a group of medical providers has successfully organized an interprofessional union.
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