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Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He blogs at the Substack Labor Politics and is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.
Elon Musk would like you to think he is invincible right now. But the world’s richest man is actually extremely vulnerable to public pressure at the moment — public pressure that federal workers and their unions can take advantage of.
In the face of what they say was a vicious anti-union campaign, and at a time of anti-worker right-wing advance nationally, Philadelphia Whole Foods workers successfully voted to form a union. We spoke to one of the workers about how they did it.
Donald Trump is rolling out a blitz of attacks on workers in hopes of paralyzing organized labor’s energy to fight back. But unions can only survive this onslaught by fighting, not by burying their heads in the sand.
We asked scholar Eric Blanc to recommend reading on the party’s contentious relationship to the trade union movement.
Donald Trump will do his best to undermine unions. But the labor movement still has momentum on its side and numerous opportunities to seize. Trump’s presidency has to be a time for labor action, not despair.
Donald Trump’s reelection is awful, but wallowing in misery only benefits his far-right agenda — and risks squandering the many opportunities we actually have to stop the worst of his plans.
To the surprise of many labor activists and leftists, Joe Biden’s National Labor Relations Board has boosted bottom-up unionism since 2020 — a fact that has key strategic implications for union revitalization efforts.
Interest in unions and workplace organizing is high, but proactive workers have few opportunities to launch their own organizing drives. The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee is trying to change that.
The late labor strategist Jane McAlevey’s horizons were never limited to winning particular campaigns or even to revitalizing unions. What she wanted above all, and what she believed was possible if our side got “serious,” was for workers to take power.
The UAW’s defeat at a Mercedes plant in Alabama was crushing. It’s also the cost of waging risky, potentially transformative fights. If labor wants to win big, it can’t be afraid to lose big.
Can the new models of union organizing coming out of recent high-profile campaigns like Starbucks be a potential way to capture the current upsurge of support for and interest in unions? Labor scholar Eric Blanc thinks they can.
At the heart of the current uptick in union organizing at companies like Starbucks has been “worker-to-worker unionism.” That model could be key to scaling up organizing and revitalizing the labor movement.
In recent decades, structural changes in the US economy have dispersed workers across workplaces and geographic areas. Labor’s decline can’t be reversed without addressing this new reality.
The entire labor movement should wake up and pay attention to the lessons from Starbucks workers’ victory this week.
From logistics to Hollywood to higher ed to auto, 2023 saw a promising upsurge in US labor militancy. Unions must seize this historic opening to reverse decades of decline.
Gen Z and Millennial workers overwhelmingly support unions, and they’re at the forefront of the current organizing upsurge. Labor can take advantage of this opening — if union leaders get off the sidelines and devote massive resources to new organizing.
Consumer boycotts have a storied history in labor struggles like the United Farm Workers’ organizing campaigns in the 1970s. But they’re difficult to pull off. Veteran union organizer Stephen Lerner explains when a boycott can work for workers.
The US labor movement has a long way to go to reverse its decades of stagnation and decline. But it’s undeniable that things are currently looking up for unions — particularly in rank-and-file workers’ interest in organizing.
Conditions are ripe for labor’s revitalization. So why aren’t unions stepping up with massive financial and organizational support for workers’ organizing efforts?
The latest union hot spot is a Trader Joe’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As at union drives at companies like Starbucks and Amazon, workers say Trader Joe’s has fired a key organizer for union activism. We talked to the fired worker about the campaign.