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Jenny Brown is an assistant editor at Labor Notes. She is author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women's Work. Her latest book is Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now.
Starbucks workers at 65 stores in 40 cities across the US walked out Thursday, striking against what they describe as unfair labor practices and the company’s stonewalling at the bargaining table. The strike could spread to as many as 550 stores.
As contract negotiations with the company stall, unionized Starbucks workers at dozens of stores are preparing for a potential strike. Workers are now holding practice pickets and signing customers up to boycott the coffee giant in the event of a walkout.
UAW president Shawn Fain, speaking at a Center for Working-Class Politics and Jacobin event, emphasized the need for a political program that addresses workers’ most basic issues — and how a broad strike in 2028 could put them front and center.
Federal workers say public goods are being used as bargaining chips in a billionaire power grab. With the government shut down, the Federal Unionists Network is telling congresspeople to hold the line.
Defying a government back-to-work order, 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants went on strike last week to demand pay for currently uncompensated pre- and post-flight work. After three days, the workers secured a tentative agreement.
A week before classes were set to begin, Columbia University informed around 140 unionized graduate student workers that they had been removed from their teaching duties. The university is hiring nonunion adjunct instructors to do the work instead.
As capital ratcheted up its assault on labor in the 1990s and Democrats embraced a neoliberal agenda, some labor unions launched their own political party.
Last week, in a particularly flagrant act of union busting, Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security canceled the union contract for the Transportation Security Administration’s 47,000 employees.
On Wednesday, striking Boeing machinists went back to work after approving a new contract. Among other wins, the agreement increases wages by 38% over four years and contains a promise to build the next plane at union plants in the Puget Sound area.
After 40 days on strike, on Wednesday 33,000 Boeing machinists voted to reject an improved contract offer from the company. Workers say they are holding out for the restoration of their pension plans and bans on mandatory overtime, among other demands.
The International Longshoremen’s Association secured a considerable pay raise after a three-day strike that brought port operations to a halt. But the fight against job-killing automation continues.
Flight attendants typically aren’t paid during boarding time. Earlier this month, after a three-year contract campaign and a credible strike threat, flight attendants at American Airlines became the first to win boarding pay.
After overwhelmingly voting down a proposed contract, 32,000 machinists at Boeing in Washington and Oregon went on strike Friday as their contract expired. It’s the biggest strike in the US so far this year.
The Boeing contract for over 32,000 workers in Washington and Oregon expires next month, and workers have voted to sanction a strike. Their complaints include low pay, frozen pensions, and mismanagement that has resulted in deadly disasters for the company.
Much attention has been paid to the antidemocratic aspects of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a radical playbook for the first 180 days of a new Trump term. But few have focused on its plan to kneecap unions and attack workers’ rights.
In 2023, half a million workers, including machinists, teachers, baristas, nurses, hotel housekeepers, actors, screenwriters, and autoworkers, went on strike and won. Their historic gains underscore the momentum of a rising reform movement in US unions.
Union flight attendants at American Airlines recently delivered a strike authorization vote of 99%, with 93% turnout. The staggering total was the result of not only a membership itching to walk out but a campaign that engaged rank-and-file members.
Organizing workplaces like Amazon with enormous turnover is a steep challenge. But workers there and elsewhere are experimenting with different tactics to unionize despite the churn.
A Queens Starbucks worker was one of many across the country fired in retaliation for union organizing. Thanks to NYC laws that require due process for firing fast-food workers, he was reinstated.
The American labor movement remains weak. But from the sweeping Starbucks unionization drive to UAW reformers’ successful bid for union leadership, there were serious glimmers of hope in 2022 for a stronger, more assertive labor movement.