Category: Workers Struggles

Teamsters Mount Picket Lines at Amazon Facilities to Demand Big Changes

Conditions at Amazon are so bad that in some years, 75% of the approximately 900,000 Amazon “logistics” workers (delivery drivers and warehouse workers) leave the company. Starting pay can be as little as $18.50 an hour. These logistics workers face unpredictable schedules such as short work weeks followed by weeks with compulsory overtime. The unpredictable […]

BART in the News

The following is reprinted from Speak Out Now’s workplace newsletter at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). BART is in the news and as usual it’s the question of funding – or no funding. There are projections of a bare-bones system running trains every hour. Who will ride that, other than the regulars looking for a […]

Underground Resistance: The Struggle of South Africa’s Artisanal Miners

Recent events in South Africa highlight the deadly conditions faced by artisanal miners, caught between corporate greed and state violence. Artisanal mining generally involves miners who are not officially employed by a mining company and use their own tools to mine. Often trapped underground after a police standoff, these miners risk their lives in abandoned mines due to […]

The 1945 U.A.W. Strike and the Victorious Post War Strike Wave

In recent years workers activity has bubbled nationwide. In the service and retail sectors, in nursing and health care, in transport and distribution, in entertainment, and of course in heavy industry like auto and airplane production, workers have organized and moved towards forming unions and in some cases struck to win back past concessions. Worker […]

Boeing Workers Win Substantial Wage Increases, But Big Challenges Lie Ahead

After seven weeks on strike, the thirty-three thousand Boeing machinists, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) voted to accept a new 4-year contract on November 3rd by a margin of 59% to 41%. The new contract raises wages by 38% by 2028, a 50% increase over what the company offered at the beginning […]

The Dockworkers’ Fight: Who Does Automation Serve?

In early October, one of the main demands of the striking dockworkers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was to protect workers’ jobs from being replaced by automation. Industrial decision-makers, both businesspeople and government officials, have long been using technological developments to try to make the production of goods as efficient as possible, thereby […]

Health Care in the U.S. — A Nurse’s View

I’m a nurse, I work in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve been a nurse for about 15 years now and when I first got into the medical field, I thought I’d be taking care of people maybe at the end of a long natural life span when they’re very old, or maybe some very […]

Update: Kaiser Mental Health Workers Strike

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. As the second week of the strike unfolds, over 2,400 Kaiser mental health workers in Southern California continue their fight for better wages and working conditions. The strike, led by the National Union of Healthcare Workers […]

Boeing Strikers Again Reject New Offer – Workers Say, “No pensions; No Planes.”

Thirty-three thousand Boeing machinists, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), on Wednesday, October 25, voted down the company’s proposed contract offer by nearly a two-thirds margin. The company’s offer included a 35% increase over 4 years. Previously 96% of the membership rejected an offer, recommended by the union leaders, of a 25% wage […]

AC Transit Board Meeting Turns into a Protest!

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now AC Transit newsletter. AC Transit is a public bus company in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit workers showed up in force to the board meeting to protest the realignment plan. There was standing room only, with workers lined up into […]

The Strike at Boeing Continues

Boeing workers in Seattle continue to strike, while negotiations have stalled after Boeing tried to bypass the bargaining team.

Stand With The Workers Party In Argentina!

Argentinian President Milei has been attacking the working class, including by criminally charging members of the Partido Obrero and the piquetero movement. Join us for a rally on September 23!

The issues in CWA’s strike against AT&T in 9 Southeastern States

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) contract with AT&T expired on August 3, but bargaining began months earlier. Dozens of meetings between CWA and AT&T failed to bring agreement on CWA’s main demands, which include the elimination of a two-tier pay scale, strong language prohibiting contracting out bargaining unit work, blocking efforts by AT&T to raise health care charges, and a […]

The East Coast and Gulf Ports Longshore Contract Expires September 30: Will the Union Settle or Strike? 

Negotiations for new contracts covering 45,000 longshoremen, working at 11 ports on the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf Coast, are at a standstill. On June 10th, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) broke them off, saying that longshore employers were continuing to violate the existing contract. The ILA has scheduled a meeting of local union officers for September 4th and […]

Solidarity with the Revolt in Bangladesh!

August 12, 2024 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French Monday the 5th of August, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rose up and the Palace of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, who had been in power for 15 years, was stormed. Faced with this spectacular success of popular mobilization, […]

Heat Death in Baltimore: The Fatal Cost of Ignoring Worker Safety

The tragic death of Baltimore Department of Public Works (DPW) sanitation worker Ronald Silver II exposes a devastating truth about the conditions of our working class. On August 2, Silver died of heat stroke while working, a totally preventable tragedy if proper safety measures had been in place. On that day, temperatures reached 99 degrees, […]

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now workplace newsletter at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the San Francisco Bay area. The way this contract has been presented, some workers feel like there are no good choices. They are caught between a rock and a hard place. A 2% increase every six months […]

Boeing Machinists Authorize Strike

Boeing’s unionized machinists held strike authorization votes on July 17th. As many as 30,000 of the company’s 33,000 unionized employees voted by 99.9% to authorize a strike. Bargaining started in the spring, but union officials say there has been little movement by the company. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) called a […]

San Francisco’s General Strike, 90 years later

This week, we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the 1934 general strike in San Francisco, when 150,000 workers across the Bay Area shut down the city for four days in a tremendous display of worker power. The strike had begun on May 9 as a West Coast-wide walkout of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). Within […]

Labor Peace or Class War?

(reprinted from the BART newsletter) Earlier this year during the negotiations with the Big 3 auto companies, UAW president, Shawn Fain said the working class in this country is facing a war – “a class war”. That is unusual coming from a president of a union in this country, where the focus is usually on […]

Why did the United Autoworkers (UAW) fail in Alabama?

Non-union auto plants now employ about 50% of the workers building cars and trucks in the United States. Most of these plants are in the South. Organizing the non-union auto plants in the South is a challenge the United Auto Workers has faced for 40 years without success. So when workers employed at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga […]

Six Immigrant Bridge Workers – All Members of the Working Class

And as the deaths of these six immigrants remind us, the working class is international. We exist in every nation on earth, and because we don’t own profit producing property, we are forced to work for those who exploit our labor for profit. Despite all our differences, we have far more in common with working people born in other countries than we do with a boss who might have been born in the country we happen to live in. And once we realize that and begin to act on that fundamental fact, then we can begin to use our collective power.

Volkswagen Workers in Tennessee Vote to Join UAW – Big Challenges Ahead!

About 150,000 U.S. workers in the multinational auto industry don’t have a union. That’s about equal to the number of autoworkers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW), although the number of non-union autoworkers is higher if those working at parts plants are included.  Most of the non-union plants owned by overseas-based companies like Volkswagen […]

Remembering Rana Plaza

Greedy cost-cutting led to the Rana Plaza building collapse on April 24, 2013, killing 1,127 workers and injuring 2,500.

1934: Unity Between Strikers and the Unemployed Wins a Union

In 1934, the auto parts manufacturing center of Toledo, Ohio was in the grip of the Great Depression, which began with the 1929 stock market crash. One in three workers in this city of 275,000 were unemployed and on relief. The rest of the Toledo working class experienced short work weeks and wage cuts imposed […]

Nothing Sweet About Working in the Sugar Industry

For centuries, the sugar industry and the slave labor system that produced the world’s sugar, shaped the global economy and condemned millions – from Brazil, the Caribbean islands, Louisiana and more – to short, brutal lives of labor. Now, a recent New York Times and Fuller Project investigation entitled “The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child […]

Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Petition for Union Election

A “supermajority,” well over one half, of the 4,300 production and maintenance workers at the Volkswagen plant near Chattanooga, TN, submitted a petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Monday, March 18. The workers want the NLRB to schedule a secret ballot vote on April 17, 18, and 19 to determine if the […]

A 32 Hour Work Week?

Bernie Sanders proposed a 32-hour work week, though we don’t expect anything to come of it. Instead of waiting for reforms from the top, we can collectively accomplish much more by using our power.