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unions

  • 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? 

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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? 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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). 

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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."