Last week’s actions by professional athletes in the NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLB, and professional tennis are a call to action for all of the labor movement.
Imagine NBA Stars -- outside giant sports arenas used as public polling and voting locations -- acting as poll watchers insuring that urban voters, Black and brown folks, file in unsuppressed by armed Para fascists.
New research finds that strong unions are pretty effective at making politicians pay attention to the interests of ordinary people. In order to pursue a real pro-worker agenda in government, we need an emboldened labor movement.
Changes to the guild’s cash-strapped health plan could force thousands of seniors off their coverage in the middle of a pandemic.
Sanders supporters couldn't win without the unions. To get a stronger left candidate in the future, or build a real mass base if Biden (or Trump) wins, we need the unions. But they are stuck in their old ways. We need a new strategy.
As schools prepare to open, in addition to safety measures, some unions are pressing for police-free schools, canceling rents and mortgages, and bans on new charter programs and standardized testing.
Aleksandr Lukashenko built his dictatorship by destroying trade unions but workers are fighting back, striking and protesting along with the growing democracy movement. The new Belarus is resisting, and is asking for international support.
Some labor historians say this new militancy resembles the 1930s, when a huge strike wave helped lead to landmark pro-labor legislation and one of the biggest bursts of unionization in American history.
Despite the outpouring of praise for essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, their own interests continue to come second to the broader public’s need for cheap and reliable labor.
Organized labor must adopt a different framework that starts with the difficult discussion about U.S. history . . . to lay the foundation for a different domestic and international strategy for workers’ rights and justice.
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