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Jenny Brown is an assistant editor at Labor Notes. She is author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women's Work. Her latest book is Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now.
Last week, in a particularly flagrant act of union busting, Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security canceled the union contract for the Transportation Security Administration’s 47,000 employees.
On Wednesday, striking Boeing machinists went back to work after approving a new contract. Among other wins, the agreement increases wages by 38% over four years and contains a promise to build the next plane at union plants in the Puget Sound area.
After 40 days on strike, on Wednesday 33,000 Boeing machinists voted to reject an improved contract offer from the company. Workers say they are holding out for the restoration of their pension plans and bans on mandatory overtime, among other demands.
The International Longshoremen’s Association secured a considerable pay raise after a three-day strike that brought port operations to a halt. But the fight against job-killing automation continues.
Flight attendants typically aren’t paid during boarding time. Earlier this month, after a three-year contract campaign and a credible strike threat, flight attendants at American Airlines became the first to win boarding pay.
After overwhelmingly voting down a proposed contract, 32,000 machinists at Boeing in Washington and Oregon went on strike Friday as their contract expired. It’s the biggest strike in the US so far this year.
The Boeing contract for over 32,000 workers in Washington and Oregon expires next month, and workers have voted to sanction a strike. Their complaints include low pay, frozen pensions, and mismanagement that has resulted in deadly disasters for the company.
Much attention has been paid to the antidemocratic aspects of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a radical playbook for the first 180 days of a new Trump term. But few have focused on its plan to kneecap unions and attack workers’ rights.
In 2023, half a million workers, including machinists, teachers, baristas, nurses, hotel housekeepers, actors, screenwriters, and autoworkers, went on strike and won. Their historic gains underscore the momentum of a rising reform movement in US unions.
Union flight attendants at American Airlines recently delivered a strike authorization vote of 99%, with 93% turnout. The staggering total was the result of not only a membership itching to walk out but a campaign that engaged rank-and-file members.
Organizing workplaces like Amazon with enormous turnover is a steep challenge. But workers there and elsewhere are experimenting with different tactics to unionize despite the churn.
A Queens Starbucks worker was one of many across the country fired in retaliation for union organizing. Thanks to NYC laws that require due process for firing fast-food workers, he was reinstated.
The American labor movement remains weak. But from the sweeping Starbucks unionization drive to UAW reformers’ successful bid for union leadership, there were serious glimmers of hope in 2022 for a stronger, more assertive labor movement.
One reason the corporate elite has an interest in antiabortion policies is because they hope to lower the price of labor — the labor of bearing and rearing children.
Since the turn of the 19th century, crackdowns on women’s reproductive rights have come in cycles. The attack isn’t only about controlling women but about pushing up the birth rate to suit capital’s needs.
A leaked SCOTUS decision draft suggests the court is planning to overturn Roe v. Wade, permitting states to ban abortion. The response from Democrats should be obvious: skirt the Supreme Court and demand federal legislation codifying the right to abortion.
Abortion rights shouldn’t be at the mercy of the judiciary. We need federal legislation codifying Roe v. Wade — and Democrats need to buck up and eliminate the filibuster to pass it.
The Supreme Court is useless. Now is the perfect time for feminists to campaign to end the filibuster and pass a federal law codifying abortion rights.
The Supreme Court’s abortion rights decision yesterday provides a brief respite to women across the South. But we’re still playing defense in the courts. Our offensive should be in the streets.
The news broke this week that Jane Roe, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, was paid by the anti-abortion right to publicly switch sides later in life. But while the news is shocking, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that no single person was responsible for the partial victory of Roe — it takes collective action to win social change.