Posts tagged France
Is America Headed for a French-Style General Strike?
November 4, 2026 // For several years, Fain and the UAW have been promoting a coordinated strike on May Day 2028, with ambitions extending well beyond the auto industry. A general strike involves workers across multiple economic sectors walking off their jobs, potentially causing widespread disruption. In the UAW’s case, a coordinated strike could involve far more than workers in automobile factories. It could include graduate teaching assistants, office staff, lawyers, and aerospace engineers. In fact, NPR reports that nearly 100,000 of UAW’s nearly 400,000 members work in higher education—serving as research assistants, clerical and technical workers, adjunct professors, and postdocs.
France learns (again) what sectoral bargaining means
October 9, 2025 // The public thought Truman hadn’t gone far enough. In 1946 it elected a Republican-majority Congress (the first since the Great Depression) and enough union-skeptical Democratic allies to pass the Taft-Hartley Act, with its limits on strikes for reasons other than immediate labor disputes, over President Truman’s (possibly entirely cynical) veto. The French political shutdown tactics would not be imported with the Burgundian wine and Normandy cheese.
May Day demonstrations in US and around the globe protest Trump agenda
May 4, 2025 // Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world rallied Thursday in May Day protests that united many in anger over President Donald Trump’s agenda from aggressive tariffs that are stoking fears of global economic turmoil to his administration’s immigration crackdowns. In the United States, organizers framed this year’s International Workers’ Day protests as a pushback against what they see as the administration’s sweeping assault on labor protections, diversity initiatives and federal employees.
Streetcar Workers Unionize
February 11, 2025 // The City of Milwaukee’s street car system, called The Hop, is operated by TransDev, a French multinational transportation company. In November, a majority of 26 TransDev employees working out of the city’s streetcar facility at 450 N. 5th St. voted in favor of representation by ATU Local 998, according to National Labor Relations Board records. The union includes operators, maintenance workers, road supervisors, operator supervisors and dispatchers.
Waymo workers form union in the latest push to organize Silicon Valley
October 12, 2022 // The cafeteria workers at the Mountain View-based company cite the high cost of living in the Bay Area and the lack of strong benefits while working for one of the world's most valuable companies. Waymo is owned by Google parent company, Alphabet. The workers are employed by Sodexo, which contracts service work for Google and other companies. Organizers say they have a majority of union cards signed from the roughly two dozen-person bargaining unit.