Dan DiMaggio is an assistant editor at Labor Notes.
This past year saw a number of historic contract battles, from UPS to the Big Three automakers to Hollywood film and TV studios. Several big contract fights may be on the horizon in 2024 — here are some of the big contract expirations to watch.
Calls for a general strike usually skip over the hard work of organizing one. But UAW leader Shawn Fain is urging unions to align their contract expiration dates for May 1, 2028 — setting up the possibility of a mass May Day strike.
Fifty thousand UAW members are heading back to work after securing tentative agreements that deliver landmark gains. The UAW strike has been a master class in how to flex worker power.
After autoworkers in Coahuila, Mexico, organized an independent union at a VU Manufacturing facility, the company shuttered the plant and fired all the workers. Now local business elites have imposed a hiring blacklist on all the former VU workers.
On September 14, the United Auto Workers’ contract with the Big Three automakers will expire. When it does, members may very well go on strike to win their ambitious demands, including abolishing tiers and establishing the right to strike over plant closures.
The United Auto Workers has begun contract negotiations with General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford. Under new leadership elected on promises of greater transparency and militancy, bargaining is looking very different from years past.
In a landslide victory, workers at the largest GM plant in Mexico just voted out their corrupt union, known for employer-friendly “protection contracts,” for an independent one.
Labor is going into a new decade weaker than it’s been in nearly a century. But the year was a promising one for those looking for sparks from the US working class — and hoping the new decade can stoke those sparks into a flame.
A longtime union organizer explains why socialists have a critical role to play in building the labor movement. We should pursue three tasks in unions: encouraging rank-and-file militancy, building an independent political infrastructure, and developing workers’ consciousness.
An organizer with Labor for Bernie argues that the gains won within the Democratic Party must be defended and expanded.