The atmosphere was electric at a prevote rally Sunday in Staten Island where workers prepared to cast ballots on whether to become the second Amazon facility to join the Amazon Labor Union. Bernie Sanders was among the speakers.
More than half a million workers in the US went on strike this year, winning gains not only for themselves but for nonunion workers too. While there’s much more work to be done, 2023 was a year when the working class punched back at the capitalist class.
Union organizing is gaining steam in both Canada and the US, and support for unions is the highest it’s been for decades. The labor movement should take advantage of this moment.
When and where organized labor’s been on the move.
This summer could see 350,000 UPS workers walk off the job in the United States’ largest strike in decades. The Teamsters are getting ready. Here’s a look at how.
Slavoj Zizek has made some serious missteps in recent years — but he remains an important theorist for the Left in our postmodern, neoliberal era.
A specter is haunting America — the specter of negligibly higher chicken bowl prices at Chipotle. That’s the latest talking point in the conservative crusade against fair wages and unemployment benefits.
Boycotts against corporations can be powerful tools. But they have to be waged as part of larger collective struggles with real plans to win — not simply as acts for frustrated individuals to take on their own.
If unions are serious about reversing their decline, then shorter, smaller, faster first contracts might be what is needed to scale.
Right-wing billionaire Richard DeVos, who died at ninety-two last week, tried to cover up his life’s record — pioneering the cruel pyramid scheme Amway, attacking organized labor, fighting LGBTQ equality — with philanthropy. But he should be remembered as a bigoted con artist.
New numbers show that the number of strikes and the number of workers on strike both went up last year. Labor is still incredibly weak, but more workers walking off the job is a very good thing.
Since first winning office in 2013, Seattle socialist city councilmember Kshama Sawant has pushed a $15 minimum wage, landmark renters’ rights legislation, free public transit, and more. Which is why Amazon has declared war on her.
Montana’s beautiful, serene rivers were sites of life-changing experiences for me. The rights of all Montanans to those rivers were won through working-class struggle — a history we can draw on today as Montana’s rich aim to hoard those rivers for themselves.
In the United States and Canada, we’ve seen an increase in labor militancy. This upsurge is a chance to inject working-class politics into the political arena, which has so far been mostly unresponsive to workers’ demands.
At a time of severe austerity, Spain has made key progressive advances. We spoke to labor minister Yolanda Díaz about her government’s attempts to bolster labor rights, fight climate change, and how the Left needs to build social movements beyond party structures.
Amid soaring temperatures across the US, workers at risk of heat stroke and death on the job are demanding better protections. In some cases, the threat of overheating has fueled unionization efforts and innovative demands like heat pay.
Last month, Blue Bottle Coffee workers at six cafés in the Boston area voted overwhelmingly to unionize. Jacobin spoke with three Blue Bottle workers about their organizing drive.
The labor movement and the Palestinian solidarity effort have common enemies, and not just on principle. Some of the biggest donors to the pro-Israel electoral machine are also financing the United States’s union-busting infrastructure.
As a longtime labor organizer, scholar, and writer, Jane McAlevey has repeatedly articulated how mass numbers of workers can organize, negotiate, strike, and change the world. In an extended interview with Jacobin, McAlevey reflects on her life and work.
The 1930s saw the biggest labor upsurge in US history. Just like today, there was economic discontent and a general pro-labor atmosphere. But labor didn’t just passively benefit. Instead, it saw its opportunity to act, building unions for the long haul.