Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin who covers labor organizing.
This May Day, don’t hang your head for the labor movement’s defeat. US unions are weak, it’s true. But there’s more excitement, more of a spirit of militancy and experimentation, and more hope in today’s labor movement than there has been in a long time.
Did the Teamsters just successfully negotiate the first tentative agreement for Amazon workers anywhere in America? The fact that the workers are subcontracted means the answer to that question isn’t cut and dry.
Earning less than minimum wage, suffering constant harassment and assault, even being ordered to continue delivering food after suffering a concussion on the job: food delivery drivers are toiling under incredibly brutal working conditions.
The luxury Midtown Athletic Club in Chicago told its housekeepers they would be laid off on May 1. The workers saw the move as retaliation for their organizing efforts — and when they went public, the club fired them again, effective immediately.
Members of the Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 television and feature writers, have voted almost unanimously to authorize a strike. The work stoppage could begin as soon as their contract expires on May 1.
Long-haul trucking used to be a stable, high-paying job. But thanks to decades of deregulation and pressure from bosses, truckers now have to work grueling hours for little pay, in conditions that put them and everyone else on the road in serious danger.
German director Uwe Boll was filming an NYPD drama in New York City last month. On the third day of shooting, crew members say that his producer showed up with a gun. Within a week, they were on strike.
Despite the ravages of deindustrialization, the United Auto Workers remain the US’s most important industrial union. Members recently elected a new leadership promising democracy, militancy, and an end to corruption. But change isn’t coming easy to the UAW.
A new documentary revisits Stanford student Brock Turner, who was convicted of sexual assault but served only three months in jail. Feminists led a recall effort against the case’s judge — but actually led judges to favor harsher sentencing across California.
Workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been on strike for nearly half a year. Despite a recent assault on two of the strikers and continued intransigence by the ultrawealthy family who owns the paper, they are digging in for the long haul.
Last week, Duke University’s graduate-student workers filed for a National Labor Relations Board election. The administration isn’t just fighting the union — it plans to challenge the legal status of all grad workers across the country as workers.
A new survey of visual effects workers in the film and television industry paints a picture of rampant labor violations and a demoralized workforce. VFX-IATSE is hoping to change that.
A new report on Amazon’s third-party buyers argues that, rather than merely helping or hurting small businesses, the company has reshaped them in its own image, enlisting them as agents in its global expansion.
New numbers show that the number of strikes and the number of workers on strike both went up last year. Labor is still incredibly weak, but more workers walking off the job is a very good thing.
Rail carriers are operating longer, heavier freight trains, and with fewer workers than ever. The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, is a reminder that the issues railworkers nearly struck over last year are far from resolved.
This summer could see 350,000 UPS workers walk off the job, the United States’ largest strike in the 21st century thus far. The Teamsters are getting ready. Here’s a look at how.
Unionized graduate students at Temple University are on strike. The school’s administration has responded with unabashedly brutal retaliation, cutting off their health care and tuition remission, in an attempt to crush them.
Despite recent breakthroughs in Amazon organizing nationally, it’s still a tough slog for workers to get the company to change. But workers at an Inland Empire, California, Amazon facility recently showed that it’s possible.
Workers say that in retaliation against their unionization, Starbucks is shutting down a heavily trafficked store in Ithaca, New York. It’s part of a scorched-earth strategy that appears to be aimed at wearing workers down and forcing out pro-union employees.
Since the Amazon Labor Union’s victory in New York, interest in organizing has surged nationwide. In North Carolina, worker-organizers are building solidarity by helping coworkers struggling with starvation wages and an increasingly punitive management.