Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
The U.S. labor movement is struggling with the controversial question of how to deal with the Israel-Gaza War. While the leadership of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, has lined up with President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, which has supported Israel and calls only (...)
Actors reach a tentative contract accord on November 8. The Union negotiators agreed unanimously to a three-year agreement with major studios, ending a 118-day strike, its longest yet.
The tentative pact still must be ratified, some 60,000 striking members. SAG-AFSTRA (Screen Actors (...)
The United Auto Workers carried out a 45-day strike against the Big Three U.S. auto companies—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors—that in the contract negotiated in October won not only large wage increases and the elimination of tiers but also encroached on the corporations’ control over (...)
While many union members and other workers are worried and horrified at the mounting war in Israel and occupied Palestine, U.S. unions so far have mostly remained silent.
But workers are speaking up and organizing with their co-workers to push their unions on the side of peace and justice. (...)
The last year has seen a remarkable number of strike threats, strikes, and strike settlements in diverse industries from coffee shops to railroads, from writers and actors to truck drivers and auto workers. At the moment, 25,000 auto workers and 150,000 actors are on strike.
We look here at (...)
SEPTEMBER 29 — AT his Friday morning UAW negotiations update, president Shawn Fain surprisingly announced that at the last minute Stellantis had submitted a proposal to restore a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), impose a moratorium on outsourcing, and recognize the right to strike over (...)
The United Auto Workers (UAW), whose 450,000 members work principally in manufacturing and parts plants, has for the first time in its history struck all three of the largest U.S. companies, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (Chrysler and Jeep). The union is striking for a 40% wage increase (...)
In the year since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, its incentives and tax credits for electric vehicles (EV) have accelerated the United States’ burgeoning swath of battery plants. The EV industry will receive an estimated $220 billion by 2031, and (...)
As UAW contracts with the Detroit Three expire at midnight September 14, it looks like the companies are far from settling. Having raked in over a quarter of a trillion dollars in the last decade, they are balking at newly elected UAW President Shawn Fain’s demand that “Record profits deserve (...)
There is a debilitating tendency on the Left to instantly judge bargaining settlements as either sellouts or breakthroughs. But neither the cynicism nor the cheerleading gets us very far in grasping the actual significance of these agreements.
Sober assessments pivot on the relative weights (...)
We appear to be in strike season, with hundreds of thousands of workers either on strike or threatening to strike to protect their jobs and for higher pay.
Hollywood was hit first when 11,500 writers walked out on May 2. Some 60,000 actors followed on July 4. UPS workers, 340,000 of them, (...)
THE ACTORS UNION, 160,000 members strong, went on strike July 14. SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation) picketed outside major Hollywood studios in eight locations, including Los Angeles and New York City. Prominent actors, including Susan Sarandon, were on the line.
After (...)
The former president of the Writers Guild of America West, Howard A. Rodman, joined Alan Minsky on Jacobin Radio to discuss the Writers Guild strike, begun a minute after midnight on May 2, after a near unanimous strike vote the day before. This strike action, the first in 15 years, is (...)
Some 11,500 writers for the entertainment industry—TV broadcast and cable, movies and streaming—most based in Los Angeles and New York, decided May 1 to strike the industry over pay and job security, the first such strike in fifteen years. It may also be the first strike over artificial (...)
WITH THE NEW UAW International Executive Board (IEB) sworn in and the 2023 UAW Bargaining Convention concluded, the union must focus on the upcoming negotiations for its Big Three auto contracts.
For their part, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) are gearing up as the (...)
Kim Moody looks at the changing economic, internal union, and political contexts for workers whose contracts expire this year and argues that intransigent employers will face a union workforce with years of accumulated grievances, a cost-of-living crisis, and a rebellious rank and file. We can (...)
A rank-and-file interview about race, class, and labor organizing in US higher education
[(Editor’s note: The six-week-long strike across the University of California (UC) campuses last year marked the largest industrial action in higher education in US history. This strike also saw the (...)
Seven thousand nurses struck two of New York City’s largest private hospitals, Montefiore and Mt. Sinai on January 9. Saying that they were “exhausted and burnt out” because of staffing shortages, and with their contract expired on December 31, the nurses maintained huge, spirited picket lines (...)
Workers have filed the most union petitions since 2015 and the number of strikes have surged, but whether this turns into a sustained increase in membership rates is still unclear.
Workers organized and took to the picket line in increased numbers in 2022 to demand better pay and working (...)
The United Auto Workers (UAW), once the flagship of the American labor movement, later an authoritarian and corrupt organization, has just elected a new union leadership committed to reform. The vote is still being counted, but the reformers could take all the top offices in the union. The (...)
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