labor movement Archives - Page 4 of 13 - Jane McAlevey

WGA picket line

These Unions Are on the Front Lines Fighting Against the Uberization of Us All: Some long established unions are challenging Silicon Valley’s agenda by pushing back on AI, surveillance, and wage theft.

In the past year and a half, start-up unionization efforts such as those at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Apple have been satisfying to witness for those of us hungry for social justice in the United States. We have their backs, and we’ll continue to root for them. But the workers with the best chance of actually slowing the spread of oppressive technology (which aims to supplant humans with artificial intelligence and tries to maximize productivity by surveilling workers and controlling their time down to a fraction of a second) and stopping the Uberization of the workforce (which replaces full-time workers with contractors, turning good jobs into underpaid gigs with no benefits) are in unions that are already established. Read More

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The Lessons The Legacy Unions Need To Learn w/ Jane McAlevey: Jane McAlevey discusses using big, open, democratic bargaining tactics to win major gains at the table and in the contract.

Jane’s interview begins at 19:00 The wave of unionization continues apace across the United States and elsewhere in the world, but there’s often much less attention paid to the part of the process that comes after the winning of a union election: the bargaining of a contract. It can seem like the hard part is over when the votes are counted, but our guest this week reminds us that the hard part is just beginning. Read More

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Belabored: How to Bargain for Power, with Jane McAlevey: The longtime organizer and theorist discusses tactics that unions can use to win major gains at the table and in the contract.

The wave of unionization continues apace across the United States and elsewhere in the world, but there’s often much less attention paid to the part of the process that comes after the winning of a union election: the bargaining of a contract. It can seem like the hard part is over when the votes are counted, but our guest this week reminds us that the hard part is just beginning. Read More

ATU victory

How Open Bargaining—and Not Letting Management Set the Ground Rules—Led to a Union Victory: In 2017, Kentucky became the most recent “right-to-work” state in the US. Which makes the recent victory by the Amalgamated Transit Union all the more significant.

In this right-to-work state where only 7.9 percent of the workforce are covered by union contracts, the members of Local 1447 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) beat back racist divide-and-conquer proposals by management last November to win a great contract. But their victory relied on method—not luck. Read the complete article here >> Read More

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Reinventing Strategy – “Labor Power and Strategy” from CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies: This episode tackles the big labor organizing questions of the day.

Jane McAlevey, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Stephanie Luce, and Peter Olney tackle the big labor organizing questions of the day: What is the relative strategic importance of organizing workers at the commanding heights of the 21st century economy, like the docks for example, versus organizing workers whose solidarity is strong, yet whose structural power within the economy is weaker, like those at Starbucks? Read More