Category: Organizing Labor
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Strikes, protests, collective action: “hustling” wasn’t always how workers fought to afford living costs
Most people today are coping with the rising cost of living individually: cost cutting, looking for a better paid job, taking on “side hustles”, and so on. But not so long ago, many workers globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand approached the same problem in far more collective ways.
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No Union? You Still Have a Right to Strike
Written by Richard de Vries, originally published by LaborNotes on December 08, 2022. Shared per LaborNotes republishing policy. Last year there were 87 strikes by non-union workers, according to Cornell’s Labor Action Tracker, accounting for one-third of all work stoppages in the U.S. Even without a union, you have the legal right to organize strikes, job…
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EndSARS, Workers’ Power, and War
Written by Kunle Wizeman Ajayi, originally published in October of 2021 on africaisacountry.com The working class that organized #OccupyNigeria should collaborate with #EndSARS. If these two boiling points burn together to produce the fire next time, a new Nigeria will be possible. The present shape of Nigeria’s ruling-class oppression goes back to the mid-1980s, with…
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Union from the Start (You Don’t Have to Wait)
Win a union election, and it’s a long road to a signed contract. Lose a union election, and workers may think the fight is over. But win, lose, or not even close to an election, workers at all kinds of workplaces can fight for their unions and win demands here and now. It’s a strategy…
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New Book Labor Power and Strategy Helps Organizers Think Seriously About Chokepoints
By Peter Olney and Rand Wilson for LaborNotes, published Feb. 15th 2023 John Womack is well-known in the United States as one of the foremost historians of the Mexican revolution, as the author of the seminal Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. However, his writings on strategic sectors and strategic workers have not received the same attention.…
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UAW Members are on the Verge of Taking Back their Union
Stephen J. Silvia, American University School of International Service A fight for control of the United Auto Workers union is coming to a head in a historic election that’s expected to give rank-and-file workers a greater voice and could ultimately end decades of declining blue-collar compensation in this key sector of the economy. Ballot counting…
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Shoved From the Ivory Tower
By Heather Ringo and Julia Métraux for Disability Visibility Project, CC-BY-NC 4.0 Shoved From the Ivory Tower: Disabled Graduate Students Crushed Between the University of California & Their Union On November 29th, 2022, over 200 disabled union workers and allies gathered on Zoom to beg members of the UAW 2865 Bargaining Team (BT) not to…
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California’s Public Scientists Union Battles Covid-19, Climate Crisis, and Austerity on Pay from Newsom Administration
By Steve Sander for massolidarity.org, CC BY-NC-NA 4.0 The California Association of Professional Scientists (CAPS) represents toxicologists, biologists, veterinarians, geologists, chemists, and other scientific practitioners and researchers who play pivotal roles in ensuring that the state’s residents have clean and sanitary food, water, air, and soil. Many state scientists are also leading the state’s response…
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“Quiet Quitting” is a new name for an old method of direct action
Jonathan Lord, University of Salford The average UK worker now carries out approximately 22 days’ worth of overtime a year. Meanwhile, inflation is at a 40-year high of 10.1%, and real pay is dropping 2.8% – the fastest decline since records began in 2001. Audio recording of article available from original source. You can listen…
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An ASUU member explains why Nigeria’s university lecturers won’t back down
Dele Ashiru, University of Lagos Lecturers at Nigeria’s public universities have been on strike 16 times since 1999. On 14 February 2022 they went back on strike to make it the 17th. Only 11 of Nigeria’s 59 state universities haven’t taken part in the current strike action. The Conversation Africa asked Dele Ashiru, a lecturer…
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