Jenny Brown

Foreign students on cultural exchange visas walked off the job again, this time from three McDonald’s restaurants. Can guestworker programs incorporate labor rights?

Seven thousand technical workers at Boeing narrowly rejected the aircraft company’s final contract offer on Tuesday and authorized a strike.

The old argument that unions must choose between jobs and the environment is losing its grip, as climate change becomes more evident and more urgent.

Small but highly publicized strikes by Walmart retail and warehouse workers last fall set the labor movement abuzz and gained new respect for organizing methods once regarded skeptically.

“The labor movement is all about results,” says Dan Schlademan, who directs the Making Change at Walmart project of the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). “The results are creating the energy.”

Walmart is a particularly rich target because the company is so large that it sets wages and prices among suppliers and competitors.

After a slog of an election season, workers braved high unemployment rates to strike their low-wage jobs in 2012.

Plans for Black Friday walkouts at Walmart stores have spread dramatically, in what has been dubbed the first “viral strike.” Organizers suggest that protests may hit 1,000 stores, including what the group calls “marquee events” in nine cities.

Toronto Retail Workers Defend Holidays

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While Walmart workers protest having to work Thanksgiving, retail workers in Toronto—who’ve never been forced to work on holidays—are trying to fend off a push for holiday openings from big box retailers there.

A familiar cry for the 40-hour week has gone up, but among retail workers the meaning is new. Part-time workers are demanding an end to erratic scheduling and a chance to work enough hours to survive.

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