With 1.3 million U.S. employees—more than the population of Vermont and Wyoming combined—Walmart is by far the nation’s largest private-sector employer. It’s also one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-union companies, with a long history of trying to squelch unionization efforts. “People are scared to vote for a union because they’re scared their store will be closed,” said Barbara Gertz, an overnight Walmart stocker in Denver.
If the unionization effort succeeds, it will be a big PR boost for the ailing labor movement. It will show that unions, which have focused in recent years on organizing low-wage workers, can also attract hip, highly educated workers, many of them Ivy League graduates. But if Gawker staffers reject the union, it will be an embarrassing blow to labor, especially because so much of the Gawker debate has been out in the open.
Many of the janitors and leaders who fought in Century City were the Central American immigrants coming into LA from the wars. Their experience in their home countries was very important in their willingness to fight, and the use of the tactics of mass demonstrations and even CD in the street. They're one of the best examples of the way migration, for all the pain it causes migrants, has benefited our labor movement enormously.
"Right to Work" laws are all about removing unions as a political check on the power of corporations. But that will have real costs for working families in Illinois. And the costs will be highest for blacks and Latinos.
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Although right-to-work laws are proffered as part of a state’s economic development strategy, their real goal is to undermine workers’ collective voice and power.
Local 1021’s model Strike School, which In These Times has obtained and posted online (links below) as an open source document, is designed to educate workers about the true nature of class politics and class conflict, the power of the strike, how to organize and win a strike and how to use the strike as part of a larger social movement. It is divided into three modules: “Economic Power,” “Striking for Our Communities,” and “Strategic Planning,” ...
The report, “And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise”—named for a poem of resilience by the late Maya Angelou, could not be more timely, since events in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray after being in police custody have shed light on the hopelessness that can result in cities when jobs disappear and communities such as West Baltimore are left behind.
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