Within the labor movement, all of the bright ideas and strategic insights in the world won’t amount to much if the democratic rights of union members themselves aren’t respected, restored, and expanded.
Hospitals portray unions as opposed to the interests of patients. The opposite is true: health care unions have been the strongest advocates for safer conditions and patients who can’t pay debts.
If we are to save our democracy, we must increase the influence of everyday people, of the workers who make corporations run. Worker power is the only counterbalance to corporate power.
The case for strict staffing ratios in American hospitals and skilled nursing facilities is remarkably straightforward: They save lives and reduce nurse turnover.
Noncompete clauses in workers’ contracts, which prevent them from accepting employment with a competitor, have drawn public scrutiny and the FTC is proposing to ban them. But worker advocates say restrictive covenants that constrain the mobility of workers are noncompetes by another name.
Management’s four-day workweek proposal delivers a two-fold blow to workers: It allows them to manipulate our contract without negotiating with us, and it distracts from the question of higher wages.
Two long-time organizers for economic, racial, and gender justice reflect on the lessons of the past half-century and assess the strategic challenges and opportunity confronting a new generation of workers, activists, and organizers.
Home care workers are negotiating their contract in hopes the state will allocate some of the $17.6 billion surplus to improve pay and benefits—a test of the state’s Democratic trifecta’s will to solve a crisis for disabled people and their caregivers.
Federal lawmakers failed to increase the minimum wage, but US workers made other gains, and they are setting their sights on new goals. But across the country, states and companies have raised wages in the wake of Fight for $15’s efforts.
Of all the employers that have seen union drives over the past year, Chipotle—with 100,000 employees across 3,000 stores, and long-term plans to double its footprint in North America—is the most similar to Starbucks.
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