The following was released on The Nation. No one wants to dwell on the faults of a successful campaign. Featuring mass celebrity arrests and dramatic images of thousands encircling the White House, last year’s struggle to halt the Keystone XL pipeline has come to be regarded as a model of progressive activism in the Obama era. Read More
The labor-environmental partnership, or, more colloquially, the blue-green alliance, has fallen into a state of disrepair. Even though pro-union environmentalists and a few unions worked together to fight the Keystone XL pipeline, the two camps ultimately remain divided, to their own detriment. In this episode of Nation Conversations, Jane McAlevey joins executive editor Betsy Reed to identify the failings of both sides and the types of solidarity that could help them combine forces. Read More
I’ve penned another piece for The Nation titled “Labor’s Last stand” Emboldened by November’s election results, corporations and their right-wing allies have launched what they hope will be their final offensive against America’s labor unions. Their immediate target is government workers’ unions. While New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie has gained national fame by beating up on public school teachers, the threat to unionized workers is playing out in all fifty states, to the drumbeat in the media about states going broke because of government workers’ wages, pensions and benefits. Read More
This week, thousands of public employees, students and their allies flooded Wisconsin’s streets to protest Governor Scott Walker’s plan to take away workers’ right to collective bargaining. This very public display of workers’ power is a much-needed reinvigoration of a beleaguered labor movement, and as Jane McAlevey outlines in her article in this week’s issue of The Nation, could be the first step toward rebuilding an ethical American economy. Read More
I recently published a cover story in The Nation title “Making Unions Matter Again” Union organizers–paid staff and rank-and-file workers–should begin to take to the doors and begin to meet hundreds of thousands of workers and galvanize a movement to demand economic justice. If unions do this with unorganized workers and together they win campaigns, it’s more likely these same workers will consider unionization to be a good option in their work life. Read More