Joe DeManuelle-Hall is a staff writer and organizer at Labor Notes.
Union negotiations covering East and Gulf Coast longshore workers have been stalled since June, making a strike more likely as the September 30 contract expiration looms. A strike would have a massive economic impact, costing billions of dollars per day.
This week, workers in Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools voted to unionize, forming a wall-to-wall union of 27,500 teachers, custodians, teaching assistants, bus drivers, and more. The vote has created one of the largest K-12 unions on the East Coast.
In a new survey, the overwhelming majority of railroad workers say they reject a proposed settlement that fails to improve their draconian working conditions. They could strike as soon as September 16.
With railroad companies refusing to offer employees a favorable contract, 115,000 railworkers could soon launch a nationwide strike. We spoke with a train engineer about the industry’s brutal working conditions — and why a strike could spread like wildfire.
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.
In what may be the first coordinated strike at a US Amazon facility, fifty Somali-American workers walked off the job in Minnesota recently to protest work speedups. And organizers say it won’t be the last strike.