By ANN MONTAGUE The new wave of teachers’ strikes suggests one way that the fight for women’s liberation from the privatized tasks of social reproduction may unfold. The recent one-week strike in Los Angeles, which featured demands to arrest the privatization of public education and improve student health services, reaffirms the potential of political strikes…
By JEFF MACKLER After seven solid days on the picket lines in drenching rains and in the face of a poor-mouthing school district that swore they were dead broke, 34,000 Los Angeles teachers voted overwhelmingly to approve a three-year contract. Most teachers saw the agreement as an important first step toward stemming the decades-long tidal…
By MARTY GOODMAN On Nov. 13, after long secret negotiations, two New York “progressive” Democrats, Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, jointly announced that Amazon will place one of two new corporate “headquarters” in New York City and the other in Arlington, Va. Virtually kissing the feet of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, whose…
By ERNIE GOTTA Across the country, teachers in their thousands are fighting back against poor working conditions, low wages, overflowing classrooms, and unusable health care. Following teachers in Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia, Los Angeles teachers erupted in a strike last month. They are 34,000 teachers strong and ready to take a stand against…
Below, we present a statement by the Young Workers Committee of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO. Socialist Action believes that this statement is an excellent contribution to a discussion in the labor movement of what to do next in the fight against Trump’s government shutdown. One real strength of this statement is that it does not…
BY JEFF MACKLER For public consumption only, General Motors’ billionaire executives flew on public airlines to Washington, D.C., in 2009, leaving their private jets behind. Bleeding $1 billion in monthly losses, and threatening bankruptcy, this corporation—once the world’s largest—eased its way to the government troughs, with their kept media and the United Automakers Workers (UAW)…
By GARY PORTER On Nov. 29, analysts making 12-month price forecasts for General Motors Co. projected $45.16 per share—an increase of almost 23 per cent over the current $36.76. This is great holiday news, if you are shareholder. That includes the GM directors who receive 60 per cent of their compensation in stock options. It…
By ERNIE GOTTA and ERWIN FREED — STAMFORD, Conn. — The stakes were high for Sheraton hotel workers during their union election her on Dec. 13. Sheraton workers won a stunning but close victory, 69 yes votes to 32 no votes, in the face of a vicious anti-union campaign by the Davidson company, which manages…
By ERNIE GOTTA — STAMFORD, Conn. — On Nov. 19, workers at the Sheraton Hotel here launched a public campaign to form a union. Over 100 workers celebrated their new union with embraces and cheers that filled the courtyard of the St. John’s Episcopal Church as they gathered before making their way to the hotel.…
By ERNIE GOTTA Union hotel workers across the country are fighting and striking against an all-out offensive of hotel owners to crush the standard of living won through decades of struggle. In Chicago nearly all hotels in the city went out on strike. After three weeks, hotel bosses were ready to come to the table…
By JOHN LESLIE Trump’s reactionary immigration policies have created a climate of fear in immigrant communities. Deportations, workplace raids, and hate crimes are on the rise as ICE, police, and far-right vigilantes target immigrant workers and their families. Naturalized citizens are now the object of administration reviews of their citizenship status, based on the expansion…
By JOHN LESLIE Facing poor working conditions and mistreatment that made workers feel “like slaves,” workers at Jasic Technologies are attempting to form a union in Shenzhen, China. On May 10, a delegation of workers delivered a petition to the company and the officially recognized Workers Union. After first expressing support for the workers’ effort…
By MARTY GOODMAN A showdown between capital and labor in France over the privatization of the national railroad will extend into the summer and possibly beyond. France’s nationalized railroad, SNCF, is a source of pride for most French people—and in particular, for rail workers, who recognize the landmark rights they’ve won by striking over many…
By ERNIE GOTTA Hospitality workers from Local 217 Unite Here are hitting the picket lines across Connecticut this summer in solidarity with their coworkers waging contract fights at hotels in Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford. At a time when most unions are making concessions to the bosses, Local 217 has drawn a line in the…
By ANN MONTAGUE On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. That decision said that making non-union members pay for the union’s political activities violated the First Amendment, but that it was constitutional to require non-members to help pay for a union’s collective bargaining and…
By JEFF MACKLER North Carolina teachers capped off two months of unprecedented national teacher militancy as they rallied 20,000 strong at the state capitol on May 16. During their one-day “sick leave” strike, the teachers closed down 40 local school districts with one million students. As with the previous five statewide teacher strikes in 2018,…
By JEFF MACKLER It’s been a long while since anyone alive has seen working people successfully fight back against capitalist cruelty with winning class-struggle strategies and tactics. Today, teachers, and their allies among state workers and working-class families in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado have set an inspiring example for the entire U.S.…
By MARK BRUNT When West Virginia teachers walked out over health insurance premiums, few people predicted that, after feeling betrayed by union bureaucrats, the rank and file teachers would rebel and turn the strike into a wildcat action that would substantially increase their gains. Fewer still anticipated that the walkout would spark coordinated labor actions…
By MARK BRUNT Across the country, teachers have taken West Virginia’s lead after a successful wildcat strike. In Kentucky, legislators passed a teacher pension reform bill, and, although a strike on the specific day was not planned, so many teachers called out on March 30 that 20 counties were forced to close schools. They remained…
By UCONN YOUTH FOR SOCIALIST ACTION Since Oct. 19, 2017, University of Connecticut’s Graduate Employee Union-UAW Local 6950 has been in negotiations with the university administration for a second collective bargaining agreement. Under the leadership of university President Susan Herbst’s administration and the state appointed Board of Directors, the university has hired the union-busting law…
By ERNIE GOTTA — STAMFORD, Conn. — Workers at the Stamford Hilton Hotel walked off the job Thursday, March 8, to strike for a good contract. They picketed in front of the entry way for nearly two hours, chanting, “No contract, No Peace.” [See the video: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.abbe.7/videos/10214115775642871/ ] Members of International Women’s Strike Connecticut joined…
By HUGH STEPHENSON — CHARLESTON, W.V. — West Virginia teachers stunned politicians, the media, and labor officials across the country when they launched a nine-day wildcat strike demanding wage increases and better health-care benefits for all state employees. Some 27,000 teachers from all 55 counties of West Virginia walked out of their classrooms on Feb.…
By HUGH STEPHENSON While teachers in West Virginia were occupying the state capitol building and continued their wildcat strike for increased wages and better health care, a Cargill poultry processing plant in nearby Dayton, Va., pursued its campaign to deny the right of plant workers to organize a union. Cargill is an international food conglomerate…
By ANN MONTAGUE Activists with Fight For $15 renewed their struggle on Feb. 12 with rallies and strikes throughout the South in remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the Memphis, Tenn., sanitation worker’s strike. Fight For 15 teamed up with civil rights leader William Barber for a day of action in support of racial justice.…
By BILL ONASCH West Virginia “Wildcats”—Technically, public sector collective bargaining is illegal in West Virginia. But practically, governors have negotiated in the past with teachers—and school service employees including bus drivers, cafeteria, clerical, and maintenance workers—for salary and benefit packages passed by the legislature. While perhaps better than nothing, the teachers have been falling behind.…
