By recruiting young radicals to the labor movement, the Rank & File Project hopes to build the base for a politics that can unify the working class around shared interests, & prioritize solidarity & workers’ rights within the workplace & outside it.
An essential thread uniting recent winning campaigns is that the top union officers were all directly elected by the members, a basic democratic right denied to many union members in the United States.
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.
Officers—recently elected on promises of greater transparency and militancy, in the union’s first-ever direct election for top posts—established what could become a new tradition.
More than a year after the Amazon Labor Union’s landmark victory at a Staten Island warehouse, Amazon still refuses to bargain with the union. Meanwhile, a reform caucus is pushing for the ALU to hold leadership elections.
A split over the stewardship of the union’s high-profile president, Christian Smalls, has led a rival faction to file a lawsuit seeking an election.
Unite All Workers for Democracy, the reform caucus in the United Auto Workers, just won sweeping victories in leadership elections. Now they’re looking to transform the UAW, one of the largest unions in the country, into a democratic fighting machine.
As worker organizing deepens the crisis of the corporatist regime, opportunities open to build a democratic labor regime. The question is whether the resources will be available to support a massive organizing campaign by independent Mexican labor.
There are Contrasting Visions of Unionism Up for Leadership.
About 4000 people will be attending this years Labor Notes conference.
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