Pullman porters formed the first black-led union to be recognized by the American Federation of Labor— and Rosina Tucker became one of the most influential female labor and civil rights organizers in American history.
In 1940s North Carolina, a Communist-led union of tobacco workers fought to bring democracy to the Jim Crow South.
Individual labor unions sometimes have interests that conflict with the greater public’s. While certain unions may be an obstacle to the greater good, unions are collectively a uniquely effective vehicle--not a "special interest group"--for realizing what matters most to working people.
While the term divides us now, its history dates back to a time when mineworkers battled big coal – similar to teachers standing up for funding.
The Trump era has sparked some of the most creative thinking in labor in years.
The white-collar rising of 2018 reflects millennial militancy, the death of the Norquist pledge, and one more issue on which Democrats need to move left.
Jacobin’s Loren Balhorn sat down with German labor sociologist Klaus Dörre to find out more about the strike, what the workers really gained, and what it might say about the German labor movement’s future.
Unions give workers the power to improve their workplaces, and have a long history of creating lasting, progressive changes, from the institution of the eight-hour workday to health and safety regulations. Maybe someone in your family — a parent, an aunt or uncle, a grandparent — is in a union.
In the tumultuous 1970s, women and people of color streamed into unions, strikes swept the country — and employers launched a fierce counter-attack.
In the tumultuous 1970s, women and people of color streamed into unions, strikes swept the country — and employers launched a fierce counter-attack.
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