Luis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.
Seven thousand more UAW members just walked off the job, expanding the strike to two more plants. Twenty-five thousand autoworkers are now on strike, and the walkout could continue to escalate if the Big Three don’t budge in negotiations.
With the UAW strike spreading, GM is dispatching nonunion workers and managers to try to keep their parts distribution centers running. “I wish them luck,” one striking worker said. “They’re gonna be so goddamn lost.”
The UAW strike just got bigger. The union announced this afternoon that workers at 38 GM and Stellantis locations would join the walkout — and the pressure tactics are already working, with Ford making significant concessions at the bargaining table.
Jubilant pickets. Rattled managers. Here’s what the first day of the historic United Auto Workers strike looked like on the ground with rank-and-file autoworkers.
The UAW launched a historic strike this morning, with workers at three plants across the Big Three walking out and UAW leader Shawn Fain declaring that an “all-out strike is possible.” It’s the first time ever the union has struck all three major automakers.
The United Auto Workers’ contract with the Big Three automakers expires tomorrow at midnight. If no agreement is reached, the UAW is ready to strike to recoup concessions made over the past two decades, end tiers, and boost wages.
Contract negotiations are ongoing between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. Last month, 500 UAW members at the Ford plant in Louisville, Kentucky, held rallies in preparation for a potential strike.
Under new leadership, the UAW is waging an aggressive campaign to win a new contract at the Big Three automakers. For the first time in decades, UAW workers are mobilizing for contract rallies at Ford, Stellantis, and GM plants ahead of a potential strike.
At UPS, Teamsters just won a historic tentative agreement. Some workers are looking at what the union won without a strike and concluding it should have demanded even more — and creating demands for the next contract fight.
UPS Teamsters used a strike threat to win big wage increases in their tentative agreement. Amazon workers are looking at the pay gains as proof they can do the same.
Contract negotiations between shipping giant UPS and its 340,000-strong Teamsters workforce resumed last week. If they can’t come to an agreement by August 1, the union will go on strike — which would be the largest at a private employer in decades.
Joined by striking delivery drivers, last week Amazon workers in a Michigan warehouse staged the largest delivery station strike yet.
This spring, Amazon delivery drivers unionized with the Teamsters — but the logistics giant refuses to bargain with them. The workers are now setting up picket lines at Amazon warehouses across the country, joined by fellow Teamsters from other employers.
Electric vehicle manufacturing in the US is overwhelming nonunion, but 1,400 workers for an electric bus manufacturer in Georgia have just unionized. It’s one of the labor movement’s biggest victories in the South this century.
In a stunning upset in the United Auto Workers leadership election, reformer Shawn Fain is set to win the presidency. Fain is part of a reform slate that will now control the UAW after vowing to bring democracy and militancy back to the long-calcified union.
UAW reform candidates have made sweeping gains in recent leadership elections. In an interview, recently elected rank-and-file worker Daniel Vicente explains how the reform slate is seeking to deliver members a more democratic, militant union.
The proliferation of noncompete agreements in even low-wage jobs keeps wages low by preventing workers from finding new jobs in their field. For a Minnesota couple allegedly fired for unionizing, such agreements may also make them homeless.
Last August, workers in an auto parts plant in Mexico voted to form an independent union. As their employer, VU Manufacturing, continues to try and bust the union, workers are fighting for a contract.
Last week workers at four different Amazon warehouse across the US walked out to protest the company’s low pay and brutal working conditions. The actions were timed to coincide with Amazon’s Prime Day promotional sales rush.
Trying to win progressive change without rebuilding the labor movement is a fool’s errand. That’s why the union victories at Starbucks and Amazon are so promising: the current uptick in labor militancy could become a transformational upsurge.