By David McCall Tanya Gaines and her co-workers launched a union drive in 2014 because it was the only way to win livable wages, fair treatment, and safe working conditions at the Golden Dragon copper tube manufacturing plant in Pine Hill, Alabama, one of the state’s poorest areas. Workers anticipated management’s opposition, but they felt blindsided when […]
Why Workers and Employers Both Need Paid Family Leave
Mike Morales’s doctor advised him to take four weeks off for an important procedure, and the longtime crane operator readily agreed, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t lose a dime in pay or face other repercussions at work.
Why Capitalism Cannot Finally Repress Socialism, by Richard D. Wolff
Socialism is capitalism’s critical shadow. When lights shift, a shadow may seem to disappear, but sooner or later, with further shifts of light, it comes back. Capitalism’s ideologues have long fantasized that capitalism would finally outwit, outperform, and thereby overcome socialism: make the shadow vanish permanently. Like children, they bemoan their failure when, in the […]
How California’s Fast-Food Workers Won $20 an Hour
More than half a million fast-food workers in California are about to get a raise—not because of the voluntary generosity of their bosses, but as a result of a hard-won labor victory. Governor Gavin Newsom on September 28 signed AB 1228 into law; its title says it all: “Fast Food Council: health, safety, employment, and minimum wage.”
The Deadly Intersection of Labor Exploitation and Climate Change: By Sonali Kolhatkar
As temperatures soar in the United States this summer, some among us are lucky enough to be able to remain in air-conditioned interior spaces, ordering food, groceries, clothing, and other products to be delivered to us.
Five Critical Lessons From UPS’s Union Workers
Narrowly avoiding, for now, what might have been the largest strike in United States history of workers employed by a single corporation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters came to a tentative agreement
Hollywood Executives Bring Industry to Halt Rather Than Pay Workers a Fair Price
By Sonali Kolhatkar Hollywood has come to a standstill this summer as actors join their writer colleagues on the picket line. The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) announced that it would be on strike starting July 14, 2023, over negotiations breaking down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television […]
Why Workers Demand Julie Su’s Confirmation as Labor Secretary
By Tom Conway It wasn’t enough for owners of lucrative Southern California car washes to cheat their workers out of wages and overtime. They made workers pay for the towels they used to clean cars, denied them rest breaks, forced them to toil in filthy water that bred foot fungus, and even required the so-called “carwasheros” to hand-wash […]
LA Schools’ Lowest-Paid Workers Walk Out, With Teachers by Their Side
Tens of thousands of Los Angeles teachers went on strike March 21-23, 2023, for the first time in four years, shutting down the nation’s second-largest school district for three rain-soaked days.
Tipping Is Not a Reward—It’s an Insult
It’s time to end our national reliance on tipped workers. The unhealthy dynamic created by tipping emerges from decades of legalized subminimum wages and keeps workers subservient to the whims of employers and customers.