- Making Abortion Rights Real (6/27/2016) - The week began on a surprisingly strong note for reproductive justice advocates, as the US Supreme Court, by a 5–3 margin, overturned Texas’s draconian House Bill 2. The law, which Wendy Davis famously filibustered in her pink tennis shoes, purported to protect women’s health by requiring that health clinics providing abortion services “meet the standards for ambulatory surgical centers, including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing” and that “doctors performing abortions . . . have… …
- The Right to Strike Must Mean the Right to Return to Work After a Strike (6/16/2016) - With the decisive victory for union members at Verizon, 2016 is already on pace to be the second year in a row where recorded strike activity has increased over the previous half-decade. Now, a new decision from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could restore legal job protections for striking workers, making workplace job actions a more common—and more powerful—union strategy. Workers simply do not have a meaningful right to strike if they do not… …
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- What Will It Take To Wake Up the ‘Sleeping Giant’ of the New Working Class? (6/8/2016) - The American working class has been dissed and dismissed. Our unions busted, our wages slashed, our homes foreclosed and our rents raised. We’re blamed for the rise of Trump, but otherwise do not exist in the media landscape. But the working class is a sleeping giant that is beginning to stir and will soon instigate a great campaign for racial and economic justice, according to a new book by Tamara Draut. A vice president of… …
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- One Day Longer (5/15/2016) - As the massive strike at Verizon enters its second month with no end in sight, the stakes — for the workers, the company, and the broader labor movement — are rising. Even mainstream media outlets like the New York Times have taken note, casting it as something of an epochal battle over whether the economy can tolerate good jobs that actually deliver economic security and decent benefits. The strike began on April 13, when forty… …
- The Legal Argument That Could Overturn ‘Right-to-Work’ Laws Around the Country (4/21/2016) - Union supporters had reason to cheer earlier this month when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s hated “right to work” law was overturned by a Dane County Circuit Judge. Unfortunately, the decision is all but certain to be overturned by Wisconsin’s conservative Supreme Court. But contained in the case is a line of questioning over the constitutionality of the right-to-work concept that has quietly been playing out in federal courts. The result could be that all right-to-work… …
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- Bernie Sanders Wasn’t Our First Socialist Mayor: Remembering Milwaukee’s Socialist Party History (4/6/2016) - As the country’s politics take a right turn, an unlikely progressive wins office as mayor of a major U.S. city. In an era marked by conformity and the primacy of business interests over the common good, he has the temerity to call himself a socialist. Both locally and nationally, his example serves as a beacon of hope for the waning left and a lightening rod of criticism for the resurgent right. His fundamental decency and… …
- It’s Time for the Labor Movement To Pursue a New Judicial Activist Agenda (3/21/2016) - Unions that were bracing for a major defeat in Friedrichs v. CTA breathed a sigh of relief following the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was expected to be the decisive fifth vote against the California Teachers, and the outcome likely would have severely weakened American public sector unions. But Friedrichs likely died with Scalia. More than a respite between anti-union attacks, this moment is an opportunity for a new judicial activism by… …
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- Our Political System Is in the Midst of a Massive Realignment. Here’s How the Left Should Respond. (3/14/2016) - America needs a New Democratic Party. No, I don’t mean a Democratic Party made new by a restored commitment to liberal idealism (although that would be useful, too). I mean an American version of Canada’s NDP: an explicitly socialist party that can win on a regional basis, credibly compete on a national basis and actually win on issues that matter. The leftist debate on electoral activism is depressingly reductive. It’s either be the “left-wing of… …
- Friedrichs Is Dead; Labor’s Crisis Is Not. The ‘Scalia Dividend’ Is a Rare Opportunity for Unions. (2/16/2016) - The Friedrichs vs. CTA Supreme Court case, a nakedly partisan assassination attempt on the labor movement, has died with Justice Antonin Scalia. What cannot die with it is the sense of existential crisis within the labor movement. We need a far-reaching conversation about the pathway back to increased activism, membership and power. Like few moments before it, the Friedrichs case sparked a broad consensus within labor that our movement faced an existential crisis and that… …
- With 3 Recent High-Profile Walkoffs, Is the Wildcat Strike Back? (2/12/2016) - Three high-profile wildcat strikes have caught business watchers and union leaders by surprise in recent weeks. Could they be bellwethers for a rising tide of worker militancy? A wildcat strike is one that occurs with little notice or legal sanction. Wildcats are often organized in violation of a contractual commitment not to strike or a legal prohibition to do so, and in defiance of both the employer and official union leadership. Non-union workplaces wildcat by… …
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