As Joe Biden Takes Office, Labor Marches On
In the first 24 hours of the Joe Biden administration, Teamsters are on strike in the Bronx, Chicago teachers are preparing to stop work, and even the staff of the New Yorker are engaged in a work stoppage.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins striking workers at the Bronx’s Hunts Point Produce Market in New York City on January 20, 2020. (Teamsters JC 16 / Twitter)
While Joe Biden took the oath of office at noon in Washington, DC yesterday, elsewhere, workers were facing down police officers to prevent the flow of goods into the largest city in the United States.
“No Justice No Peas” read one sign stuck to the front of the Teamsters mobile command unit at the strike line in Hunts Point Produce Market in the South Bronx. There, 1,400 workers who handle the majority of New York City’s produce are striking over the demand for a $1 an hour raise.
The strike began Sunday in response to the distance between the workers’ proposed wage hike and the 32 cents an hour offered by management, a counterproposal workers call “disrespectful.” The workers, members of Teamsters Local 202, have been picketing the terminal every day around the clock.
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