Posts tagged labor movement
The year of the strike: what’s causing this labor movement and the potential impact
October 16, 2023 // Data from the Economic Policy Institute shows the number of workers striking fell sharply in 2020 and 2021 but then jumped 50 percent last year alone. Labor historians said another factor is the victory after some of these strikes. “As workers do engage in these actions, they encourage each other, to emulate the demands and to emulate the tactics in some ways,” said Joseph McCartin, labor historian at Georgetown University.
Abortion workers, crushed by restrictions and buoyed by labor movement, are unionizing
October 16, 2023 // It’s hard to know exactly how many reproductive healthcare workers are affected, but there are indicators that organizing is picking up steam as restrictions proliferate. Of the dozen Planned Parenthood affiliates that have unionized in total, a third voted to do so since Roe fell. These serve patients in Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and California, all of which have seen an influx of patients traveling from states with restrictions.
UAW president stoking members’ anger against auto executives
October 12, 2023 //
NEW YORK: Workers at Sage and Coombe Architects Unionize
September 19, 2023 //
Portland strippers vote to unionize, could get official recognition later this week
September 15, 2023 // Across the country, there’s been a wave in recent years of workers in industries like food service and manufacturing demanding better pay and benefits, voting to unionize or going on strike to compel management to address their concerns. But last week when Creature and 15 other Magic Tavern dancers unanimously voted to unionize, they became just the second active group of strippers in the country — and the only one in Oregon — to do so. The Actors’ Equity Association, which represents the strippers, expects the National Labor Relations Board to certify the vote by the end of the week. A spokesperson for the NLRB said in an email that if the results are certified, Magic Tavern must bargain in good faith with the union.
From Strikes to New Union Contracts, Labor Day’s Organizing Roots Are Especially Strong Across the Country This Year
September 5, 2023 // The first U.S. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. Some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor. A handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day in the years that followed, yet it took more than a decade before President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday.
‘It feels like it’s strike summer’: US unions flex muscles across industries
July 31, 2023 // “In the wake of the Patco strike, companies saw strikes as opportunities to weaken unions or even break them. That’s not the case today. Today there’s no fear that calling a strike will result in disaster,” said Lichtenstein. “Today there’s a sense that unions are on the offensive,” Lichtenstein continued. “Take the actors. They say they don’t want just a good contract. They want a transformative contract.”
Michigan businesses urged to prepare for UPS strike by Teamsters
July 21, 2023 // So just how big is UPS to cause such concerns? It transports about 6 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. When it comes to total revenue from the nation’s domestic shipping, the U.S. Postal Service had the largest share at 32 percent in 2022 followed by UPS at 24 percent, Amazon Logistics at 23 percent, and FedEx with 19 percent, per the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. UPS averaged 24.3 million parcels a day last year and 6.2 billion for 2022, which generated a company record $100.3 billion in revenue,
San Fran socialists killed historic Anchor Brewing, critics say
July 19, 2023 // But locals such as Greenberg told The Post that a cadre of Democratic Socialists of America drove the push to unionize Anchor’s modest 61-member workforce — in hopes of inspiring the masses to “take on the power of capital.” In 2020, the Anchor Union’s first contract kicked hourly pay up by as much as 28% — a substantial bump that exacerbated the company’s pandemic slump. “I’m very sympathetic to the workers, but there also has to be some reality,” Roth said. “And that’s the problem with socialism: in the real world, the economic and math tenets quite literally do not add up.”
As Boston’s own Sean O’Brien matches UPS at the bargaining table, Amazon could be next
June 26, 2023 // But O’Brien said he’d support pulling the trigger — putting the International’s $300 million-plus “strike defense fund” to use — if he doesn’t see adequate financial gains for his membership. For him, this battle over the largest private-sector union contract in the United States isn’t only about righting the wrongs baked into the union’s current agreement with UPS. It’s meant to show how organized labor can flex its muscle against giant companies. And it’s a prelude for a long-awaited showdown with decidedly anti-union Amazon, where the Teamsters hope to organize the online retail giant’s massive logistics workforce. “All eyes are upon what the Teamsters do in these negotiations,” O’Brien said in an interview. “It’s going to be the defining moment in the labor movement. It’s going to be a template on how we take on Corporate America, how we take on big business.” Dissatisfaction with the current UPS contract, signed in 2018, helped O’Brien win his race to lead the Teamsters two years ago. Then the head of the Teamsters Local 25 in Charlestown, O’Brien broke away from the previous International leadership, led by James Hoffa, because of disagreements over the last round of UPS negotiations.