Posts tagged labor movement
Oregon’s largest union rejoins labor federation AFL-CIO after two decades
November 29, 2024 // Nationally, SEIU and the Teamsters union split from AFL-CIO in 2005, citing disagreements over how to stem the decline in union membership and the AFL-CIO’s focus on national politics over labor organizing. The Oregon affiliate, SEIU 503, followed its national organization. SEIU members spent the past year, following 2023′s “summer of strikes,” talking about what they wanted out of the labor movement, which has grown and seen workers emboldened by a tight labor market push for higher wages and better benefits. One key theme was that they wanted to be in solidarity with other workers, SEIU 503 Executive Director Melissa Unger said.
OPINION: For Workers, Strikes Offer High Risk, Low Reward
September 30, 2024 // The only way to avoid union retaliation is cancelling membership entirely. Beyond the rank-and-file, consequences of union strikes impact consumers, too. Last year, the healthcare industry, for example, saw the largest work stoppage in United States history as 75,000 hospital employees across five states plus Washington, D.C. walked off the job
The labor movement could prove pivotal this election year
September 5, 2024 //
‘Betrayed’: Unions, White House irate over Teamsters president’s RNC speech
July 18, 2024 // President Biden secured a pension bailout that restored retirement accounts for about 350,000 Teamsters members, appointed staunchly pro-labor allies to the National Labor Relations Board and instituted labor requirements for federal contracts. The backlash against O’Brien’s speech reflects the high stakes of the 2024 presidential election for the nation’s labor movement, which fears Trump will undo these policies.
Baltimore Museum of Industry’s new exhibit looks at modern labor movement
June 7, 2024 // A new exhibit examines calls for changes in the workforce that drove workers in non-trade jobs to create collective bargaining agreements across the country. The "Collective Action: Labor Activism in 20th Century Baltimore" exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, is about workers rallying for unions, and it dives into who wants change and why. Advertisement Workers in several industries are banding together and calling for better pay and conditions. The exhibit reveals professions some may be surprised to learn were involved in the efforts.
Labor unions are making unprecedented calls for a ceasefire in Gaza
January 24, 2024 // However, leadership of some large unions like the AFL-CIO and SAG-AFTRA have remained silent, seeing the issue as beyond their purview, risky to support, or too split among their members. Others have released statements in support of Israel, such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten. But a number of AFT locals and other teachers’ unions have supported ceasefire resolutions themselves, revealing a schism between leadership and rank-and-file members. While there has been considerable support for the ceasefire resolutions, union members involved in organizing for Palestine say that they must go further to support efforts like Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and not be complicit in the abuses against Palestinians by Israel, supported by U.S. tax dollars. “Just the ceasefire declaration, if there’s nothing more, if it doesn’t have any teeth, is not enough,” Saba said. Unions have a long history of standing for progressive causes internationally, from “opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the CONTRA war,” cited UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla in a UAW press release. Over the decades, labor has stood up against World War I, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War.
COMMENTARY: Good news: 2023 won’t mark a union revival
January 3, 2024 // The decline of union membership has been remarkably steady over the last four decades. Since 2000, the year-to-year change in the unionization rate has been positive only six times, and those small gains have quickly been reversed. Moreover, the latest data show that unionization is increasingly concentrated in the government sector, especially local services such as K-12 education and public safety. Only 6% of private sector workers are union members.
Labor organizers hope to maintain support after summer of strikes
December 13, 2023 // Labor organizers have since been trying to appeal to workers by tapping into frustrations about those inequities and taking action. Here in Ohio, Former State Sen. Nina Turner has established a nonprofit called We Are Somebody just to help those efforts nationwide. “We Are Somebody is a capacity building organization for the working class,” Turner said. “Our goal is to organize, amplify and fund workers on the front line, and that could be workers that are officially in a labor union, but also workers that are not in labor unions.”
Commentary: Unions are coming not just for the few, but for everyone
December 6, 2023 // This week brought wonderful news on that front. The United Auto Workers (UAW), fresh off a historic, victorious strike against the Big Three automakers, announced plans to unionize not just one, not two, but more than a dozen of the remaining non-union auto companies in the US. Tesla, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen – essentially all of them. After the attractive contracts won in the strikes brought a flood of interest from workers across the country, the union has decided to seize the moment. The UAW is aiming to be exactly where a strong union needs to be: everywhere. Is this plan bold? Yes. Will it be difficult? Yes. Are they in for years-long fights against enormous multinational corporations backed by hostile state governments? Yes. But the great insight that the UAW is showing here is this: the fact that facing down an existential threat will be hard doesn’t matter. If the auto workers’ union is not capable of organizing foreign companies’ auto plants in hostile southern states, its power will die; and if it is not capable of organizing workers at rich and growing and staunchly anti-union companies like Tesla, its power will die. So the choices are to do those things, or die. Despite the difficulty of the task, the choice, when presented like that, is very easy.
The UAW is already looking ahead to its next auto strike
November 8, 2023 // Fain has not shied away from rhetoric that critics accuse of being “radical” or “class warfare.” In one of the videos he recorded during the auto strike, the UAW president wore a t-shirt that read “Eat the Rich.” And he’s not shy about complaining about the “billionaire class” when making a call to action for members. Any criticism of May Day is not likely to scare him away from embracing it.