- The de Blasio Paradox (5/24/2019) - New York Mayor Bill de Blasio launched his bid for president last week, amidst protests and jeers. On Good Morning America, where he was having what should have been his first softball interview as a candidate, chants of “LIAR” could be heard from a rally outside the Times Square studio. The anti–de Blasio protest somehow united the local cop union and Black Lives Matter protestors, along with housing advocates and anti-poverty activists. While New Yorkers greet de… …
- This May Day, It’s Time to Cut Work Down to Size (5/1/2019) - [This article was co-authored by Leo Gertner.] Every year, the rest of the world marks the first of May with worker celebration and protest. American unions that sprung up in the years after the Civil War picked the day to launch their inspirational campaign for a better balance between work and life, captured in their slogan: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what you will.” Back then, the average… …
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- Fighting Against Racism—And For a Better Paycheck—On the Docks (4/3/2019) - “Dockworkers have power.” With that simple statement, Western Illinois University professor and In These Times contributor Peter Cole kicks off his compelling new history, Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press). The story of the west coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), its legendary founder Harry Bridges, and the 1934 San Francisco general strike he led is broadly familiar to Americans who enjoy romantic stories of derring do from the labor… …
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- “The Class Idea” (And How to Get It) (3/29/2019) - Many progressives in the United States are prone to making gloomy jokes about moving North whenever conservative forces grip our national institutions. After all: Canadians have unions! They have health care! They don’t pretend that everyone’s middle class! Why, people wonder, are the politics and labor movements of the two countries so different? In his new book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada, sociology professor Barry Eidlin grapples with this… …
- Can the Courts Strike Down Right-to-Work? (3/5/2019) - Last week, in a move that’s as likely to baffle union activists as it is to encourage them, a West Virginia judge struck down key portions of the state’s “right-to-work” law. The Kenawha County judge’s ruling may amount to no more than a temporary hiccup in West Virginia Republicans’ war to destroy unions. But it’s another example of how hotly provisions of the 1947 federal Taft-Hartley Act are being contested in the courts as it becomes clearer… …
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- Will Trump’s Labor Board Say Workers Have No Right to Float a Balloon? (1/29/2019) - Union activists eager for a free speech fight after the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME attack on union rights may have found one in the form of a giant inflatable rat. Bloomberg reported last week that Trump-appointed General Counsel Peter Robb wants to issue a rule making it illegal to engage in any protest activity in the company of a balloon rat. Cartoon rats—often with nasty red eyes, gnarly teeth and occasionally suitcases and neckties—have been a feature… …
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- The Rise of Feminist Labor Unions in Japan (1/18/2019) - A good union is a feminist organization. We reduce the gender wage gap, fight for family-work-life balance and non-discriminatory promotion standards and sometimes literally sound the alarm on workplace sexual harassment and assault - among many other ways that working women use their union membership to fight for equality. For a time, Japanese labor unions fell far short of that standard. Although there are very strong labor protections and anti-discrimination laws on the books in Japan,… …
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- You’re a Sad Scab, Mr. Chait (12/14/2018) - Is there a German word for when a presumptive scab confirms your lowest expectations? The writers and editorial staff at New York Magazine have formed a union, joining a veritable organizing wave in digital and traditional news media. Nearly 80 percent of the workers have signed union cards and are asking management to voluntarily recognize their union. Longtime columnist Jonathan Chait did not sign a union card, and rushed to Twitter this week to lick… …
- Staten Island Goes Purple (11/13/2018) - Voters on Staten Island—long the only Republicn corner of New York City—have turned their Republican Congressman Dan Donovan out of office. New York’s 11th District—which the island shares with a couple of neighborhoods across the Verrazanno Bridge in Brooklyn—was the last part of the city to be represented by a Republican in the U.S. House. Although Democrats in the district outnumber Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin, Donald Trump won 58 percent of the vote there… …
- America’s Great Strike Waves Have Shaped the Country. We Can Unleash Another. (10/1/2018) - Workers’ power is rooted in the work we do and our occasional refusal to do it. But, until recently, that refusal had become rare: Work stoppages have declined to historically low levels over the past four decades. There were 187 major strikes in 1980, involving 795,000 workers. In 2017, there were just seven, with 25,000 workers. How then do we revive the strike when so few workers have seen one, let alone participated? For one,… …
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