Posts tagged labor rights
Commentary: How Federal Workers Can Leverage Civil Disobedience as a Strategy to Win
May 27, 2025 // Strikes, slowdowns, sickouts—workers have many ways to withhold their labor to protest injustice in the workplace. Federal employees have no legal right to strike, which is why they have generally avoided this tactic. The last time there was a major strike by federal workers was in 1981. President Ronald Reagan crushed the strike by firing and replacing air traffic controllers who walked off the job, a moment widely viewed as the beginning of the labor movement’s decline. But there is much that separates the strike under Reagan from what federal workers face today under Trump. Reagan had both public sentiment and the law behind him when he fired over 11,000 federal workers.
Trump Executive Order on Public-Sector Unions Clears Latest Legal Hurdle
May 26, 2025 // These policies have been generated in response to the snowballing effect of public-sector labor unions, whose bosses have swamped government agencies with an inefficient and excess allocation of funds. Because of these union boss abuses, tax dollars have even been paying full-time salaries to union boss lobbyists working to secure themselves higher wages for doing less work. Additionally, the Institute for the American Worker has found that the time and resources spent on collective bargaining has likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars for the taxpayer. As demonstrated, banning collective bargaining with public-sector unions at national security agencies is not only a feasible plan, but one which could return millions to the American taxpayer, increase the efficiency of the government, and allow agencies to reorient themselves toward their actual purpose and mission.
“They Actually Had a List”: ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Case
May 7, 2025 // The raid did not appear to be a broad sweep but rather a targeted enforcement aimed at specific people, according to sources who have been in contact with the families and spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive legal situation. “At first we thought they were enforcing a deportation order, that they had one person that they’re looking for and then everyone else got dragged in — that’s kind of standard,” said one of the people with knowledge of the raid. “But this was strange because they actually had a list of most of the workers on the bus.”
AAFA reacts to cancellation of labor rights contracts
April 1, 2025 // Among the U.S. contracts canceled were the Global Better Work Program and Better Work Global, which were designed to improve working conditions and enforce labor rights in Haiti, Jordan, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, per the AAFA release. ILAB was the sole funder of the Better Work Haiti and Better Work Jordan programs, an AAFA spokesperson said in an email. On Tuesday, the AAFA, which represents more than 1,000 fashion industry members, also signed onto a group letter sent to the U.S. Secretary of Labor urging for the reinstatement of the recently rescinded ILAB contract to improve labor rights in the Uzbekistan cotton industry.
An embattled Adams gathers his union allies at Gracie Mansion
January 31, 2025 // Mayor Eric Adams, who has been laying low with a reported medical condition this week, hosted two union presidents at Gracie Mansion on Monday night as he contemplates his political future. The meetings — confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of them, who were granted anonymity to freely discuss a private event — come as Adams grapples with an upcoming corruption trial, sagging poll numbers and dire financial problems.
States are pushing back with anti-labor laws as union popularity grows, policy experts say
September 18, 2024 // Growing union organizing across the country has triggered an anti-labor legislative response in some states, but cities and counties are increasingly pushing back, a new report found. The report, released this month by the New York University Wagner Labor Initiative and Local Progress Impact Lab, a group for local elected officials focused on economic and racial justice issues, cites examples of localities all over the U.S. using commissions to document working conditions, creating roles for protecting workers in the heat and educating workers on their labor rights.
Billy Bragg releases pro-unionisation response song to viral country hit Rich Men North of Richmond
August 23, 2023 // Billy Bragg has released a response song to US country singer Oliver Anthony’s viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. The Virginian’s song, which purports to be about workers’ rights, has clocked up nearly 30m views in 12 days after supposedly being discovered and promoted by a local radio station. It has found favour amid conservative politicians and commentators, who have wielded it as a cudgel in the culture wars. Critics, meanwhile, have noted its individualist streak: Anthony perpetuates the myth of welfare scroungers, questions why his taxes should pay for healthcare issues related to obesity, amplifies conspiracy theories about paedophiles (“I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere”) and suggests that the US “kickin’” down “young men” is responsible for a suicide epidemic.
Boston, unions discussing hybrid work options
March 17, 2022 // “The City and its labor partners had a discussion about implementing hybrid work models through collective bargaining,” a city spokesman said in a statement to the Herald on Friday evening.