Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted three to one to join the United Auto Workers. This gives hope that racial, ethnic and sexual divisions will not slow down the drive for auto worker solidarity in the South and across the country.
Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?
Garment workers poured out of factories in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh to demand a wage of about $200 a month. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Bangladesh is the second largest garment-producing country in the world after China.
The contributions and contradictions of the African revolutions of the 20th century speak to today’s very different situation. These excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s ‘Philosophy and Revolution, from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao’ aim not only to recapture the greatness of those revolutions, but also grapple with why they retrogressed after independence, so as to aid the creation of new beginnings now.
The race for mayor of Chicago is now between Brandon Johnson, a teacher endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and Paul Vallas, a former boss of the Chicago Public Schools who trashes the CTU at every opportunity. The runoff election on April 4 will be in part a referendum on rank-and-file unionism.
The Norfolk Southern train that derailed on Feb. 3, 2023, in East Palestine, Ohio, threatening the health and lives of thousands of residents, can’t be called an accident. Not when railroad workers were cut out of negotiating over safety, and not when decisions by the railroad made this and other ecological disasters predictable rather than surprising.
School support workers in Ontario, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, ratified a four-year contract on Dec. 6, after weeks of defying both school administrators and provincial politicians.
Takes up: Vanuatu, a Pacific island country, developed a national sign language, Storian wetem han; in Minnesota personal care assistants have won a wage increase through the SEIU Healthcare Minnesota union; the UN celebrated the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec. 3.
Unionized Costco workers achieved their first national master contract. This needs to form the basis for reaching out and organizing the majority of Costco warehouses that remain non-union.
On “Prime Day,” Amazon warehouse workers in Moreno Valley, Calif., filed enough signatures to schedule a union vote at their facility. On the same day, dozens of non-union Amazon workers walked out of warehouses in Stone Mountain and Buford, Ga., to rally for $24 per hour.
The Iranian hardline regime should be very afraid. The cries of: “Women, life and freedom!” “Death to the head scarf!” “Death to the dictator!” fill the streets. Iranian women have inspired the world and put Iran’s oligarchs on notice that their repressive regime is in grave danger.
Workers at the Apple Store in Towson, Md., outside Baltimore voted in June to unionize. Organizers of the successful union drive have reached out to employees at other Apple locations.
A unionization wave at Starbucks continues to percolate. As of April, workers at 28 stores have had their unions certified. Workers at about 200 other stores are still in the process of getting to a certification vote.
Takes up: student workers at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, who struck on March 3 to protest the elimination of a farm residency program; graduate students at Indiana University went on strike April 13 for better wages, benefits, and to stop fee hikes, and for recognition of their union; and on April 25, about 20 students at Tufts U. held a protest against General Dynamics recruiting on campus.
The Diné, one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S., show a strikingly different attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a strong sense of group responsibility as opposed to the phony “rugged individualism” that reveals a warped idea of what freedom means.
The Diné, one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S., show a strikingly different attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a strong sense of group responsibility as opposed to the phony “rugged individualism” that reveals a warped idea of what freedom means.
Voices of Starbucks workers around the country who are filing to start unions. As of Feb.21, the movement had spread to 103 stores, and three union elections had been finalized, with two Buffalo, N.Y. stores going union.
Voices of Starbucks workers around the country who are filing to start unions. As of Feb.21, the movement had spread to 103 stores, and three union elections had been finalized, with two Buffalo, N.Y. stores going union.
Readers’ Views on Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2021-2022; Labor shortage?; Workers as reason; Support El Milagro workers!; Detroit women’s march; Chapelle’s sexism; Afghans dead and buried; Betrayal of Haitians; and Which side are you on?
Readers’ Views on: Solidarity with Palestinians; Attacks on Democracy; Iranian Revolt; Musicians’ Labor; Damage to Homeless; Covid-19 Killers; Trump and Taliban; Far Right in Portland; Critical Race Theory; Prisoners under Fire; Voices from Behind Bars; Only the Dialectic Can Save Us
In the union vote at Amazon in Alabama, the overriding issue was the dehumanization of laboring activity underlying Amazon’s brutal working conditions. The tyrannical conditions begin from an algorithm that runs an army of robots that don’t get sick in a pandemic.
Participant report of a solidarity demonstration in Oakland in front of a Whole Foods store, as part of a national day of solidarity to support Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon workers struggling for union recognition.
An estimated 250 million Indian farmers have been on strike since last September in opposition to a series of new laws, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
The movement lost a powerful voice for workers’ liberty, self-development and freedom when Sarah White died of a heart attack on Oct. 5, 2020.
Workers in meatpacking plants across the country are being sacrificed to what Karl Marx called capital’s “werewolf hunger for surplus labor” as packing companies try to reap the benefits of the prevailing level of automation—but substituting intensified sweated labor for the capital investment of automation. If workers die from COVID-19, the capitalist doesn’t care.
Working at Kroger grocery store, you truly appreciate the saying that “goodness is its own reward” because, despite all the news and advertisements touting grocery store employees as heroes, I sure don’t feel rewarded like one.
A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the 40-day strike by the autoworkers at General Motors and its ramifications for the labor struggle in the U.S. and abroad.
Over 30 Lyft drivers and their supporters rallied at the Lyft office in Los Angeles for their labor rights and to reverse pay cuts forced by the company.
Excerpts of a talk by Polish Amazon worker/organizer Agnieszka Mróz, on a U.S. tour seeking cross-border solidarity among Amazon workers worldwide.
Marxist-Humanist Bob McGuire looks through history to Marx’s relationship to labor and the Black movement for freedom and then to our day and the relationship of Marxist-Humanism to labor and the Black struggle for freedom in speaking to the question many are asking today: What is socialism?
A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the state of the U.S. economy and the revolt of labor in the wake of country-wide teachers’ strikes, an historically long government shutdown, and an unsteady, uncertain worldwide economy.
Adele reviews “How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosures to Trump,” by Laura Briggs, which discusses “reproductive labor,” “the work necessary to the reproduction of human life.”
The journal “Labor Notes” published a special issue on organizing strategies which aims to guide members of public sector unions to a concept of an inclusive, participatory unionism.
This generation of Chinese workers, going on strike repeatedly to demand wages and benefits they are owed or fighting to control their own jobs, together with young intellectuals reclaiming Marx’s work, may be a threat to today’s Chinese rulers.
The pretenses of Iran’s greedy and murderous ruling class continue to be exposed by political prisoners like Esmail Abdi, teachers’ union activist, and Narges Mohammadi, engineer and women’s rights proponent.
We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
West Virginia public school teachers carried out a general strike across the state beginning Feb 22, first striking for two days with union approval, then forcing the union to extend the strike for two more days until the governor offered a 5% raise.
In celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we present excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s “Luxemburg as Feminist; Break with Jogiches.”
Report on the book launch on Oct. 14, 2017, at the Newberry Library in Chicago for “Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide,” by Lane Windham.
In Memoriam for Judy Tanzawa who was a radical union organizer, Los Angeles Local Organizer for News and Letters Committees, fighter for human liberation in all its dimensions. .
Striking journeyman speaking on their strike against about 140 new car dealerships in the Chicago area, for a better wage and to change the structure.
Participant report on the June 4 rally against the fascists’ “Free Speech Rally” in Portland, Oregon, and the police intervention on the side of the fascists. .
An activist reports on the June 4, 2017, action by anti-fascist protesters against a rally of hate made up of Proud Boys, Militiamen, and Nazis who were protected by Portland cops who attacked anti-fascists.
Participant report of the April 15, 2017, thousands strong protest in Los Angeles demanding that Donald Trump release his tax returns.
When Time Warner Cable became Spectrum, the company promised a new deal for consumers and small businesses. But the new corporation launched an assault on its employees; and now, three months into the strike, the union is hanging tough.
The unprecedented Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration revealed the blossoming of a universal movement with many particulars, from women’s demand to control their own bodies, to Black Lives Matter, to the struggle at Standing Rock.
Florida tomato pickers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and dozens of local supporters demonstrated in front of the Wendy’s restaurant on Division Street in Chicago.
As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.
Workers striking Spectrum-Charter explained that they had struck at the end of March because the new corporation was slashing pension and health plans and because the workers had not had a union contact since 2013.
Graduate workers at Columbia University who won representation with the UAW in an historic August 2016 NLRB election face further delays as Columbia seeks to overturn the results, seeking to stall union certification until after Trump stacks the NLRB with anti-union appointees.
