Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin who covers labor organizing.
Jamie Gorelick, a high-powered lawyer who defended the city of Chicago after the police murder of Laquan McDonald and sits on the board of Amazon, is a case study of the influence big corporate law firms wield behind the scenes in Washington — and she has friends like Merrick Garland in high places in the Biden administration.
The union organizing campaign currently underway at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama could prove to be the most important labor fight in the South since the failure of Operation Dixie, the movement’s last large-scale push to organize the South in the late 1940s. The story of that historic effort holds lessons for the struggle today.
At Collin College, an institution of higher learning in McKinney, Texas where two professors involved in union organizing were recently fired, the president proudly boasts of the school’s “Amazonification.” The episode offers a dire picture of the direction higher ed is rapidly heading nationwide.
Some of the country’s most profitable companies, like Kroger and Amazon, have been escalating their hardball tactics against workers. Flush with cash, they’re more confident than ever — and they’re doing whatever they want.
The Left needs a revived labor movement, and a revived labor movement needs the Left.
With Chicago teachers deadlocked in a fight with mayor Lori Lightfoot over reopening schools, a group of public school parents and students staged a “sick-out” from online learning, protesting moves for a quick reopening.
Gig economy companies and organized labor are at war over the future of work and the definition of “employee.” The companies’ strategy has split the labor movement by enticing some unions into a partnership-based company unionism instead of independent workers’ organizing.
Nearly 6,000 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are preparing to vote on unionizing. It’s the most important labor battle in the US right now — and Joe Biden should say he stands with the workers.
Today, a 1,400-person strike by Teamsters Local 202 ended. Workers won an immediate 70-cents-an-hour raise, and gave up no concessions to their bosses. It’s a victory worth celebrating and proof that going on strike works.
Joe Biden promised to be the most pro-union president in modern history. He has a chance to prove it by passing the PRO Act, a sweeping labor law reform bill.
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.
More than a thousand workers at Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx are striking for a dollar-an-hour raise. They risked their health to feed New York City throughout the pandemic — they deserve the city’s solidarity.
California nurses fought for over a decade to win safe-staffing legislation, a crucial set of rules protecting both nurses’ rights on the job and the well-being of hospital patients. So far, no other state has followed suit — but nurses nationwide are struggling to change that.
The National Association of Manufacturers has strong ties to the Trump administration and a long history of waging war on one of the most important democratic institutions in the United States: unions. Of course it couldn’t help releasing a statement about the storming of the capitol and the need to “preserve democracy.”
The newly announced Google employees union, the Alphabet Workers Union, is the first union of white-collar workers at a major tech company. They’ll be tasked with figuring out how to wield power while only a minority of the workforce.
We spoke to a Chipotle employee forced to work amid rodent infestations so extreme that he and several colleagues were bitten by rats. All this while COVID devastates their ranks. No one should have to risk their health for the sake of corporate profits.
The documentary One Long Shift in the Weeds captures the devastation of Pittsburgh’s culinary industry since the pandemic began. But it also shows the life-changing effect of enhanced unemployment benefits, which offered millions a temporary respite from life on the edge of financial ruin.
Walmart and Amazon, millions of whose workers and suppliers have struggled to make ends meet amid the pandemic, are flush with cash — and just as virulently anti-union as ever.
Writer David Roth has been the preeminent chronicler of Donald Trump’s presidency. In an interview with Jacobin, Roth talks about four hallucinatory years and what makes the deranged president at the center of them tick.
Working in a restaurant has always been tough. But servers say that the pandemic has created new problems and intensified old ones. Unsafe health conditions, meager tips from vindictive customers, and sexual harassment are now the norm under coronavirus.