Millions of Americans are starting to grasp that we can't politely stand by watching lives and liberties get slashed beyond repair. What are you going to do?
Lipton brings tea from around the world through the Port of Virginia. At its single 20-acre plant in nearby Suffolk, 200 workers roast, blend, package, and warehouse it, producing over 6 billion bags a year. For years on end, these workers have been “drafted”—the company’s term for forced overtime—into working 13 straight days out of every 14.
The prison strike didn’t merit a single mention in NYT, Washington Post, NPR, CNN or MSNBC.
On September 16, 2004, Mt. Olive Pickles finally came to an agreement with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, ending a lengthy boycott of the company. This groundbreaking farm workers union launched one of the most successful organizing campaigns of the last 25 years in the South and demonstrate the continued vitality of farmworker unions in the present. FLOC was successful with these workers because they became a way for workers to express their own power.
There’s been so much written about worker centers and “alt labor” that it’s beginning to skew the market for labor writing. Yes, there’s a lot of action in alternative models of worker organizing, but old (not so) Big Labor is also showing encouraging signs of renewed militancy.
Thanks to a National Labor Relations Board decision, workers employed by temporary staffing agencies may find it easier to organize and bargain.
The new joint-employer standard provides a much more favorable legal framework for workers to form unions at temped-out warehouses, manufacturing and food processing plants, recycling facilities, hotels, and franchised janitorial services and fast food outlets.
The Southern Workers Assembly has been building the Southern Workers School as an important institution to train and develop rank-and-file workers to organize the South. The school has held eight sessions since March tackling issues and basic organizing skills such as learning how to map your workplace and tips for one-on-one discussions with co-workers.
By defining students as intellectual workers and transforming student unions into vehicles for social, economic, and racial justice, a new generation of young workers will transform the union movement and challenge the conventional wisdom of neoliberalism.
Some cast the labor movement as dying or even dead, but even amid attacks on collective bargaining workers are finding innovative ways to organize.
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