How Unions Can Still Win Big: An excerpt from A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

• January 12, 2020
• Posted in Labor Movement, Organizing, Strikes, Unions

There are only two sides, the owners and the rest of us. It’s October 20, 2018, and it’s louder than an orchestra or rock concert on the 2200 block of Broadway in downtown Oakland, California. Irma Perez is working her bullhorn like a trumpet virtuoso. She’s standing in the middle of hundreds of people who’ve made plastic buckets into drums, their hands holding perfect rhythm as they harmonize their chant: “Hey hey, ho ho—Mar-ri-ott has got to go!” Read More

The Assault On Workers Seventy Years In The Making: An excerpt from A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

• January 12, 2020
• Posted in Labor Movement, Organizing, Published work, Strikes, Unions

Workers who fought to build strong unions turned horrible jobs in the auto factories into the kind of employment that became the backbone of the American Dream. Liberals yearn nostalgically for a time when corporate leaders seemed more responsible, for an era when CEOs seemed to understand that employees, the people who make the profits, were considered more important than, if not equal to, the shareholders. Read More

The hottest stop for candidates on the 2020 campaign trail? The picket line.

• November 2, 2019
• Posted in Elections, Labor Movement, Strikes

Jane McAlevey, a former organizer and a policy fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, argued in an essay she wrote for the Nation that candidates were offering workers photo opportunities but not actual power. “The GM strike could have been an incredible opportunity for Democrats to drive home a core message: Trump promised workers not one plant would close on his watch, and now that promise is broken,” she wrote in the magazine. Read More

Can unions save democracy?: Pre-publication review of "A Collective Bargain"

• October 31, 2019
• Posted in A Collective Bargain, Book Reviews, Labor Movement, Organizing

“American democracy is endangered by inequalities of wealth and political power, and only the labor movement can save it. This is the bold, central message of Jane McAlevey’s forthcoming book, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy (Ecco/HarperCollins).” Read More

Amazon Is on the Attack Against Kshama Sawant: Seattle socialist city councilmember Kshama Sawant has pushed a $15 minimum wage, landmark renters’ rights legislation, free public transit, and more

• October 30, 2019
• Posted in Elections, Labor Movement

The biggest prize by far for Amazon is twice-elected socialist city councilmember, Kshama Sawant, a rank-and-file union member who through movement building in the last six years has pushed a reluctant City Council to adopt a $15 minimum wage — the first major US city to do so — enact landmark renters’ rights legislation, and take up issues like free public transit, indigenous rights, and anti-gentrification measures. Read More