Fifty years ago inmates at Walpole Maximum Security Prison in Massachusetts assumed the management of the prison for two months until the state and the prison guards’ union pressured the Corrections Commissioner to allow what became a violent retaking of the prison.
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.
Gig companies pushed through California’s Prop 22 denying workers recognition as employees, and want similar laws in other states and countries. Other workers are bracing to see if the “gig economy” will be able to overtake their own industry.
The strike of more than 1,500 copper miners and smelters in Arizona and Texas against Asarco/Grupo Mexico has entered its fifth month, part of a new wave of labor solidarity and revolt.
Lyft and Uber drivers forced Los Angeles to move toward a minimum wage for them.
The massive increase in inhuman attacks against immigrants and undocumented people in the U.S. is spurring new activism and urgency. .
Long Island University-Brooklyn locked out their teachers but were not prepared for the support the teachers received from students and staff and finally had to end their lockout.
Teachers at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, with support from students and staff, won their strike against the University who locked them out after they refused to accept a bad contract.
The shocking defeat of the United Auto Workers in a union election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, dealt a serious blow to the organizing strategy of the UAW in the South.
by Michael Gilbert
The theory and practice of how to organize workers to take power into their own hands and fight for a new social order has always been uppermost in the minds of all true revolutionaries, even in the darkest moments of capitalist and state-capitalist repression. Following Marx, the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, has [=>]
Workshop Talks
by Htun Lin
The spreading Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has gripped the attention of the country. Some signs in these tent cities say “Occupy Everything!” The police continue to look for leaders while city leaders try to figure out a way to remove the tent cities.
The California Nurses Association (CNA) declared its support for [=>]
Chicago–Thousands of people rallied on June 14 under the banner, “Give It Back!” Three separate marches downtown, each led by a 12-foot-tall “corporate welfare king” puppet, met up outside a Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce summit. Then 24 people sat down in the street and were arrested. There were contingents of teachers, healthcare workers, janitors, anti-eviction [=>]
From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
Workshop Talks: Who lost to SEIU?
by Htun Lin
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced the results of the recent union election at Kaiser Permanente in California. The media declared that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had won a “decisive victory” to continue to represent some 45,000 [=>]
