Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He blogs at the Substack Labor Politics and is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.
The late labor strategist Jane McAlevey’s horizons were never limited to winning particular campaigns or even to revitalizing unions. What she wanted above all, and what she believed was possible if our side got “serious,” was for workers to take power.
The UAW’s defeat at a Mercedes plant in Alabama was crushing. It’s also the cost of waging risky, potentially transformative fights. If labor wants to win big, it can’t be afraid to lose big.
Can the new models of union organizing coming out of recent high-profile campaigns like Starbucks be a potential way to capture the current upsurge of support for and interest in unions? Labor scholar Eric Blanc thinks they can.
At the heart of the current uptick in union organizing at companies like Starbucks has been “worker-to-worker unionism.” That model could be key to scaling up organizing and revitalizing the labor movement.
In recent decades, structural changes in the US economy have dispersed workers across workplaces and geographic areas. Labor’s decline can’t be reversed without addressing this new reality.
The entire labor movement should wake up and pay attention to the lessons from Starbucks workers’ victory this week.
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.
Gen Z and Millennial workers overwhelmingly support unions, and they’re at the forefront of the current organizing upsurge. Labor can take advantage of this opening — if union leaders get off the sidelines and devote massive resources to new organizing.
Consumer boycotts have a storied history in labor struggles like the United Farm Workers’ organizing campaigns in the 1970s. But they’re difficult to pull off. Veteran union organizer Stephen Lerner explains when a boycott can work for workers.
The US labor movement has a long way to go to reverse its decades of stagnation and decline. But it’s undeniable that things are currently looking up for unions — particularly in rank-and-file workers’ interest in organizing.
Conditions are ripe for labor’s revitalization. So why aren’t unions stepping up with massive financial and organizational support for workers’ organizing efforts?
The latest union hot spot is a Trader Joe’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As at union drives at companies like Starbucks and Amazon, workers say Trader Joe’s has fired a key organizer for union activism. We talked to the fired worker about the campaign.
When the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike against Mayor Rahm Emanuel ten years ago, corporate education reform was on the march. The CTU won that strike, beat back the neoliberal Democrats, and turned the tide in favor of public education.
Last month, Chipotle workers in Lansing, Michigan, became the first workers at the corporation to unionize. We spoke to three of the Chipotle workers and union activists about how they did it.
For years, Thomas Piketty has articulated a cogent critique of 21st-century capitalism. He now appears to be moving beyond just critique to call for a 21st-century socialism.
A reborn workers’ movement needs both organized workplace militancy and left-wing politicians that back them. Sunday’s Staten Island Amazon rallies — attended by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other elected officials — featured both.
Staten Island Amazon workers endured thunderstorms, racism, and arrests to organize in break rooms, bus stops, and grocery aisles to win their union — and one of the world’s most powerful companies couldn’t stop them. Here’s how they did it.
Amazon Labor Union’s spectacular victory in Staten Island has rightly captured headlines across the country. A key part of this win, however, has not yet been explored: how immigrant workers organized each other to support the union.
Amazon workers in Staten Island have achieved the most important labor victory in the United States since the 1930s. Here’s an inside account of how they did it.
The Minneapolis teachers’ union just won a nearly three-week-long strike. We talked to two strike leaders about what they saw on the picket line and how militant unionism that fights for the whole working class can spread across the country.