Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin who covers labor organizing.
Are champagne bottles popping in Walmart’s public relations office? They should be, after the New York Times published a piece that so nakedly trumpets the company’s line on its “compassionate” managers that it reads like a Walmart press release.
At REI’s flagship Manhattan store, management has fought workers’ attempts to win a first union contract. In the meantime, workers have channeled their anger into working-class art: a play about work and organizing based on their experiences at the company.
The South has long remained a nearly impenetrable citadel for labor. Fresh off of the success of its Big Three strike last year and looking to organize an Alabama Mercedes plant, the United Auto Workers wants to storm the castle.
After years of relentless union busting — costing the company nearly a quarter-billion dollars, in one estimate — Starbucks Workers United has now forced the corporation to negotiate. It may prove the most important organizing breakthrough in decades.
A lawsuit filed by New York growers challenges the right of farmworkers on H-2A visas to unionize. Win or lose, the lawsuit is posing an obstacle to the state’s farmworkers, who only won the right to collectively bargain in 2019.
Unpredictable schedules, hazardous working conditions, and the crushing workload of Barbenheimer combined to lead workers at the Prospect Park location of independent Brooklyn theater Nitehawk Cinema to organize a union.
Trader Joe’s, the supposedly progressive grocery chain, has joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX in attacking the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. The employer class can’t stomach any obstacles to its union busting.
The UAW announced yesterday that 10,000 autoworkers have signed union cards since it launched its drive to organize the nonunion auto workforce two months ago. It’s a high-risk campaign — and precisely the type of gambit the working class needs right now.
New figures show that US union density dropped again last year, despite high-profile strikes. We should admit that we don’t know exactly what will turn things around for labor, other than bold experimentation.
The old labor slogan “An injury to one is an injury to all” isn’t just a moral imperative. It’s the practical foundation of a strong labor movement.
After securing historic deals with the Big Three automakers, the UAW is continuing to go on the offensive.
From logistics to Hollywood to higher ed to auto, 2023 saw a promising upsurge in US labor militancy. Unions must seize this historic opening to reverse decades of decline.
More than half a million workers in the US went on strike this year, winning gains not only for themselves but for nonunion workers too. While there’s much more work to be done, 2023 was a year when the working class punched back at the capitalist class.
As I covered the Hollywood strike this year, perhaps the best guide was a 1941 novel by a former Communist Party member about the dog-eat-dog scumbaggery of movie executives and the lying and artless bragging that Hollywood runs on.
From launching a historic strike at the Big Three automakers to calling for a cease-fire in the war on Gaza, the UAW has had a big year. And 2024 might be even bigger: the union is pushing to organize 150,000 workers at nonunion automakers across the US.
After a 118-day strike, 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members are voting on whether to ratify a new agreement. AI has emerged as the key source of division, with some members unsatisfied that a ban wasn’t on the table.
Unions in the US have a long history of supporting Israel and suppressing rank-and-file solidarity with Palestine. Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and the targeting of US workers who oppose it, is starting to change that.
After securing historic deals with the Big Three automakers, the UAW is continuing to go on the offensive. It has set its sights on nonunion automakers, from Toyota and Hyundai in the South to Tesla in California.
After six weeks on strike, the UAW has secured tentative agreements with all of the Big Three automakers, including apparent wins on everything from pay and tiers to reopening an idled plant. The deals will soon go to the membership for a ratification vote.
Last night Artforum fired its editor after he published a letter from artists calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. It’s just the latest instance of the magazine’s corporate owner, Penske Media, quashing editorial independence and siding with the rich.