The union’s new leadership used effective messaging and rank-and-file organization to win significant gains.
Teamsters have overwhelmingly voted to strike July 31. The vote doesn’t mean that a walkout is inevitable. The vote is a signal UPS management ignores at its peril. Most important, which side of the scale the Biden administration places its thumb.
On picket lines around the country, from Wyoming, Michigan to Rochester, N.Y. to Langhorne, Pennsylvania ---G.M. workers made the strike their own.
Their fight is one that all of us, regardless of the work we do, should claim as our own.
With top leaders discredited but refusing to step away, GM strikers have just one tool to use between their rock and their hard place: their right to vote no. Chrysler workers did it in 2015.
Roughly 20 to 25 percent of all union contracts have recently contained some kind of two-tier payment. Such arrangements, often made in response to threats of plant closures or job losses, can turn into strategies for long-term suppression of wages. They can also generate conflict and resentment among workers making vastly different amount of money and undermine solidarity.
Spread the word