Posts tagged Jobs with Justice
Clark Atlanta launches labor institute to develop Black strategists for a renewed union movement
April 29, 2025 // Clark Atlanta University has partnered with national labor rights group Jobs With Justice to launch a first-of-its-kind academic center for training young Black and Brown labor movement leaders, on the belief that the South is the front line for revitalizing the US labor movement as a force in political democracy. The Labor Institute for the Advancement of Black Strategists is housed within the historically Black university’s W.E.B. Du Bois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy.
A Doc On How Amazon Workers Unionized Drew Critics’ Praise, But No Major Takers to Distribute
October 23, 2024 // The plan the group has put in place is unabashedly pro-union; it’s unclear if it ever would have been greenlit by a major entertainment company. The film will screen once or a few times in cities chosen because of partners on the ground (in Detroit, for instance, the screening is sponsored the Metro-Detroit Coalition of Labor Union Women and several University of Michigan programs) and/or because these cities are in proximity to Amazon warehouses. Several of these screenings include post-film Q&As, such as in Columbia, Missouri, where the discussion will focus on local cannabis workers’ push to unionize. The filmmakers are offering reduced ticket prices to labor partners and union members in most markets. The strategy is “tied to where the impact was strongest,” says Tuckman.
PDX maintenance workers “Sit Down! Fight Back!”
July 3, 2023 // Portland Airport (PDX) wheelchair attendants, baggage and service workers, cabin cleaners and janitors held a militant picket and sit-down protest June 28 on the United Airlines departures roadway. PDX maintenance workers are fighting for the right to sit down between tasks on the job. They are demanding respect, the right to a union at United, health insurance and more.
Focus organizing drives on workers without college degrees, US unions told
May 8, 2023 // n contrast, unionization hasn’t taken off nearly as rapidly at many blue-collar, lower-paid workplaces. No other Chipotle restaurant has unionized since workers in Lansing, Michigan, voted last August to make theirs the nation’s first unionized Chipotle. Only one Amazon warehouse is unionized in the US, just two Apple stores and four Trader Joe’s. Those companies have mounted fierce anti-union counterattacks to slow and they hope stop the spread. Chris Rosell, the Teamsters’ organizing director, says one reason unionization of blue-collar workers often doesn’t catch fire is that it’s frequently easier for anti-union consultants to scare and deter those workers. “Blue-collar workers often aren’t as educated about this union-busting stuff,” he said. “They could be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics.” Rosell said the Teamsters often run elaborate campaigns that seek to inoculate workers from the pressures and propaganda from anti-union consultants. He said the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien, hopes to double the union’s membership and focus organizing on such area trucking, warehouses and sanitation work. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights group, says it’s often harder to unionize blue-collar workers because they tend to have less economic security than educated workers and have greater fear of what will happen to them if they’re retaliated against, perhaps getting fired, for seeking to unionize.
US unions see unusually promising moment amid wave of victories
March 16, 2022 // Gebre said the nation’s unions should send far more organizers and money to back the union drives at Starbucks and Amazon. “The rest of the labor movement should be willing to lend a hand,” even if they don’t get any of the members, said Gebre, who was recently named Greenpeace’s chief program officer. “That’s what solidarity means.”