unions 
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/12/2021
America Needs to Empower Workers Again (Opinion)
by Paul Krugman
Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that the decline of labor was a political outcome; reviving unions requires changing the rules governing management during a union drive, but is a key to alleviating inequality.
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SOURCE: WNYC
3/31/2021
What a Unionization Effort in Alabama Could Mean for the Labor Movement
Historian Keri Leigh Merritt discusses the Amazon unionization vote in the context of southern labor history.
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3/30/2021
The Bessemer, Alabama Amazon Union Election Campaign
Historians look at the just-concluded union election campaign at Amazon's Alabama facilty and await the results.
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SOURCE: Financial Times
3/29/2021
The Ultimate David and Goliath Fight in Alabama
The effort to organize Amazon Workers in Bessemer, Alabama may succeed if it connects the cause of labor to broader civil rights issues that resonate with the local Black community and echo the involvement of Martin Luther King in struggles for workers and economic justice, say historians Keri Leigh Merritt and Michael Innis-Jiménez.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/25/2021
Can a Grand Bargain Empower Amazon’s Workers and Limit Corporate Power?
by Nelson Lichtenstein
"Unions are weaker today than they were in the 1930s, but the idea that wages have to rise and democracy has to be revitalized, in the workplace and beyond, is returning in an echo of that era."
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SOURCE: Talking Points Memo
2/1/2021
Why Biden’s Forceful Endorsement Of Labor Is The Strongest From A POTUS In Decades
Labor historians Karen Sawislak and Erik Loomis discuss how Joe Biden's endorsement of freedom of workers to form a union (without mentioning Amazon in particular) goes against decades-long trends in the political power and cultural esteem of labor unions.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
2/23/2021
'We Deserve More': An Amazon Warehouse’s High-Stakes Union Drive
Historians Joseph McCartin, Michael Innis Jiménez, and Kerri Leigh Merritt discuss the historic union drive at Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama center and where it fits in the history of labor and civil rights in the south.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/8/2021
The Alabama Town That Could Defeat Jeff Bezos
The industrial suburb of Bessemer has a long history as a rare center of union activity in the South and now is the focal point of an effort to organize Amazon's warehouse workers. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who has written about interracial labor militancy in Alabama, gives context.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
12/14/2020
Civil Rights Unionism and Democracy for Teachers
by Jesse Chanin
Nat LaCour connected civil rights unionism to teachers’ struggle to build union democracy. A remembrance and evaluation.
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SOURCE: Labor and Employment Law Daily
10/13/2020
Labor Pulse: Is This Election Labor's Last Chance?
by Jim Castagnera
The election presents organized labor with a choice between a death sentence and a reprieve that will prove temporary unless unions can put their needs at the center of a Biden presidency's priorities.
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7/7/2020
Unions Are Essential for Eliminating Racism
A new study finds that unions don't just increase wages and benefits for workers on the job — union membership is also linked to diminished racist attitudes among white workers. If we want to defeat racism, building strong, democratic unions is essential.
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SOURCE: Chicago Teachers Union
5/19/2020
Zoom Webinar: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Discusses "Race for Profit," May 19, 4:30 PM CDT
The award-winning historian and public speaker will discuss the relationship between housing policy and racial inequality in the United States
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SOURCE: St. Paul Union Advocate
5/4/2020
Lessons from Labor History can Inform our Labor Movement During COVID-19 Crisis
by Peter Rachleff
The story of the 1934 Twin Cities' Teamsters strike story shows how the union won better lives for its members by linking workers and their families to the union, other unions, and the community.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/23/2020
Front-Line Workers in the Covid-19 Fight Need Unions
by William P. Jones
Without strengthening labor laws, and extending them to all sectors, we cannot ensure workers have the power to protect their own health and safety on the job and the health and safety of our communities.
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4/19/2020
We Had a Better Social Safety Net. Then We Busted Unions.
by Lane Windham
For a time, union contracts were the closest thing the U.S. had to the kinds of robust social safety nets found in European countries.
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3/6/2020
Jack Welch Was a Bitter Foe of American Workers
by Erik Loomis
Most national obituaries left out or downplayed Jack Welch’s greatest impact in shaping the unequal and unfair America of today: unionbusting.
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12/22/19
Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act
by Martin Halpern
If unions and their allies win passage of this legislation, they may begin to shift the country away from the glaring inequality that is at the core of the country’s discontent.
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12/8/19
A Boss is a Boss: Nurses Battle for Their First Union Contract at Albany Medical Center
by Lawrence Wittner
A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one. That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation.
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SOURCE: NY Times
9/11/19
The Necessary Radicalism of Bernie Sanders
by Jamelle Bouie
Conflict was the engine of labor reform in the 1930s. And mass strikes and picketing, in particular, pushed the federal government to act.
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SOURCE: Time
8/30/19
Beyond Labor Day: 3 Ways Unions Have Helped American Workers
by Peter Cole
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
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