Last week, IAM District 15 announced the formation of the Independent Drivers Guild [IDG], a new association created to represent New York City’s 35,000 Uber drivers. The IDG will strive to secure job protections and benefits for Uber drivers without actually engaging in collective bargaining...
The split amid an unexpectedly contentious Democratic primary season has exposed contrasting agendas in organized labor. Trade unionists are exercised by international deals, which they blame for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Service workers less affected by globalization advocate collective-bargaining rights and wage protection.
Some cast the labor movement as dying or even dead, but even amid attacks on collective bargaining workers are finding innovative ways to organize.
If Nicky Morgan won’t listen to teachers, parents need to take action to prevent our schools turning into joyless exam factories, starting with Tuesday’s boycott. By coincidence, at the end of last week, Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, was in London to hand in a petition to Pearson, the education company and provider of curriculums and test delivery.
Concerned labor group leaders are organizing ad campaigns and phone banks as Trump’s populist message on trade and jobs draws in union voters. In the coming months, the AFL-CIO, which has not endorsed a candidate in the primary but has encouraged members to support the Democratic nominee, will launch digital attack ads against Trump and will ramp up its door-knocking campaign.
If you say you’re on the freedom side, then that means you will join us in asking the rich to pay their fair share; calling on the city and state to stop the attacks on public and higher education; in asking the banks to end their predatory deals that strip vital dollars from our schools; in fighting for stronger neighborhoods and job creation, and access to health care and not just health insurance.
More than a dozen local labor organizations have endorsed the Vermont senator, even though their national leaders have picked Hillary Clinton.
From April 11 to 18, I’ll be joining thousands of people from all walks of life – from workers to environmentalists to the just plain angry – who will descend on Capitol Hill in waves to risk arrest and offer a primal scream for democracy.
This is the first time in decades that a national movement of this scale has come together around a candidate with an unapologetic allegiance to working class concerns and aspirations. It’s evident that there’s broad support in unions for Bernie’s platform—and that many members, fed up with their unions’ legacy of “blank check” support for corporate Democrats, want a more inclusive, democratic process for deciding endorsements.
What’s unspoken is that the best proof that the unions didn’t have much of a role in the protest is that historically they’ve shown little ability to mobilize significant numbers of students in the Bay State. Typically, union-backed coalitions like BEJA will pull a few dozen to a few hundred people to such protests. Students or non-students, the story is always the same. The people who turn out will be a mix of union and nonprofit staffers.
Spread the word