unions 
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SOURCE: The Nation
1/10/2023
Want to Reverse Polarization and Democratic Decline? Support Unionization
by Jacob M. Grumbach
The need for a renewed labor movement is a key component of democratic renewal that is too often ignored by Democratic strategists, says a political scientist who studies antidemocratic politics.
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SOURCE: KCRW
12/13/2022
What's Pushing White-Collar Workers Toward Unions?
Labor historian Lane Windham discusses the surge in pro-union activism among academics, journalists and other knowledge workers.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
12/8/2022
"Amtrak Joe" Leaves Rail Workers in the Dust
by Kim Kelly
Why did the "most pro-union president" in modern times push through a negotiated settlement rejected by the majority of railroad union members, and what would Eugene Debs think?
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SOURCE: The Progressive
10/10/2022
Is this Labor Surge a New CIO Moment?
Do militant worker actions signal a wave of mass organizing like occurred in the 1930s, when workers established unions regarded as unorganizable took matters into their own hands? Labor historian Erik Loomis and scholar Marilyn Sneiderman discuss how to turn anger into strategy and strategy into organization.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
9/15/2022
Is Biden Really the Most Pro-Union President?
Labor historian Erik Loomis says Biden is spending limited political capital to support workers and strikers, and that the bar for pro-labor presidencies is set extremely low.
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9/18/2022
What Casey Jones Tells Us about the Past and Present of America's Railroad Workers
by Scott Huffard
Although it's difficult to separate fact from fiction around his life, the famed railroad engineer had something in common with today's rail workers: being stretched to the limits of health and safety by companies' pursuit of profit.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
9/14/2022
Centuries-Old Union Busting Playbook is Alive and Well
by Henry Snow
Since the days of labor agitation in the Royal Dockyards in the 18th century, employers have fought collective action by workers by keeping them separate and isolated. Modern unionization drives need to recognize and overcome this tactic.
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SOURCE: The Nation
9/15/2022
Minor League Baseball Union Part of a Long History of Organizing
Along with baristas and warehouse workers, minor leaguers are organizing to fight back against poor pay and a lack of respect on the job, says labor historian Peter Rachleff.
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9/4/2022
"Pour Myself a Cup of Ambition": The 1970s Echo in Today's Union Revival
by Ellen Cassedy and Lane Windham
This Labor Day, we’re hopeful about the renewed energy and excitement for workplace organizing—especially by women workers—and cautiously optimistic that today’s workers may overcome the sorts of corporate tactics that blocked organizing in the 1970s.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
8/24/2022
Women Have Always Been at the Center of the Labor Movement
by Amy Mackin
The 1860 strike of male shoe workers in Lynn, Massachusetts floundered until the strikers allied with their female compatriots, but the movement largely failed to maintain gender unity. This lesson is critical for the service industry unions organizing today.
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SOURCE: In These Times
7/14/2022
America is Violating its Bargain for Labor Peace
By starving the NLRB and other agencies that enforce the terms of union contracts and labor laws, the right wing is daring workers to take more militant action outside the system, says labor writer Hamilton Nolan.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
6/27/2022
The Labor Upsurge Calls Us to Rethink Organizing Rules
by Chris Brooks
Do the successes of organizers at Amazon and Starbucks mean the age of slow, methodical and gradual organizing is over? Can workers use a union vote itself as an organizing tool to move quickly and defeat union-busting?
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SOURCE: Boston Review
6/6/2022
Three Paths for Labor after Amazon
by Harmony Goldberg and Erica Smiley
The organizers of the Staten Island Amazon union mobilized a broad sense of justice politics not limited to the workplace. It remains to be seen how they can win allies in labor and the government to continue to organize against a wealthy and hostile company.
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SOURCE: Business Insider
5/22/2022
Labor Historian: Amazon's Warehouse Victory is a Big Step, But Just a Step
Cornell's Ilene DeVault says the organization of Amazon's Staten Island warehouse is more important that unionization at Starbucks for the reversal of the decades-long attack on organized labor in the US.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
5/4/2022
The Laundry Workers' Uprising and the Fight for Democratic Unionism
by Jenny Carson
African American and Black Caribbean immigrant women were key organizers of New York laundry workers who pushed for a union movement that rejected divisions of occupation, race and nationality in favor of workplace democracy.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/21/2022
Union Organizing in the Long Shadow of the Gilded Age
by Daisy Pitkin
On listening to Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library as librarians perform the kind of social services Carnegie deplored (and try to organize a union, which he deplored more).
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SOURCE: The American Prospect
4/14/2022
New NLRB Cases Seek to Overturn Anti-Worker Precedents
The new cases would address the ability of employers to force employees to attend anti-union meetings, prevent employers who committed unfair labor practices to use delay tactics to avoid recognizing a union, and close a loophole that would allow employers to refuse to recognize unions.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/14/2022
Amazon Labor's Union Shows "Woke Capital" Still Uses Racism to Divide Workers for Profit
by Adam Serwer
"Amazon’s defeat is also notable for another reason: the victory of a diverse group of workers against a mighty corporation that has presented itself as racially egalitarian."
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
4/4/2022
With Amazon Union, What's Old is New Again
by Rosemary Feurer
The victory of the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island doesn't represent a revival of "the 1930s insurgency," but a new generation finding guidance from some of the bottom-up solidarity building strategies from that decade. Today's unionism will have to avoid some mistakes of the CIO to endure.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
4/4/2022
The Amazon Union Vote is a Win for Hope
by Ian Rocksborough-Smith
"Despite historically low unionization rates, recent polls suggest at least 2/3 of Americans approve of labor unions – the highest approval rating since 1965. The ALU seems to have come along at exactly the right moment."
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