Alexandra Bradbury

Teamsters in an Indiana grocery warehouse scored big this year with a contract campaign like never before.

They organized in five languages and sported a multilingual union button. They opened up bargaining sessions for any member to come observe—on the peak day, 150 showed up. They even pulled off a daring work-to-rule action the week before bargaining kicked off, to start from a position of strength.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at Trump’s Republican National Convention on Monday. This was a bad move.

Much of the speech would have been fine if he had delivered it somewhere else. O’Brien railed against corporate greed, singling out Amazon and the private equity vultures that killed Yellow Freight. He called for stronger labor laws. Nobody says that stuff at the Republican convention, so some unionists were pleased to hear righteous themes reach a new audience.

Viewpoint: Migration Isn't Going Away. Unions Have to Get Sharper on It.

Blog: 
Author(s): 

The Trump campaign is doing a great job of stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment. Maybe you’re getting an earful from co-workers. Maybe you’re worried yourself.

Sixty-two percent of voters, including two-thirds of white people and even a majority of Latinos, an Axios poll found in June, now say they support what Trump is promising: mass deportations.

North Pole Elves Win Big with Escalating Strike

Blog: 
Author(s): 

NEW: Listen to a wonderful radio version of this story (including additional quotes from Vixen), created by the good folks of Labor Radio on WORT in Madison, Wisconsin.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a S.A.N.T.A. clause!” shouted Elves, Reindeer, and Candy Stripers Local 1224 President Cindy Lou Who to whoops and cheers as North Pole workers celebrated their new contract, ending a two-month strike.

Record-Setting Strike Moves Kaiser the Old-Fashioned Way

Blog: 
Author(s): 

Seventy-five thousand Kaiser Permanente health care workers struck October 4-6 in what was billed as the biggest health care strike in U.S. history.

It was also the first strike in decades by the SEIU-led Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, the longtime standard-bearer for labor-management partnership. That partnership has frayed to the point of unraveling—though not for lack of interest on the union side. It’s Kaiser that has gotten mean.

The death of UPS driver Chris Begley, 57, who collapsed in August while making a delivery in 103-degree Texas heat, was no isolated incident.

Monitoring co-workers for signs of heat exhaustion has become a routine feature of the job, says fellow driver Seth Pacic, a shop steward in Begley’s union, Teamsters Local 767.

Pacic has learned to discern over the phone when a co-worker needs to find air conditioning ASAP—and when they’re deteriorating so badly that he should call paramedics and brave management’s wrath.

Lessons from Lively Picket Lines

Blog: 

The heat was scorching in Louisville, Kentucky, last Thursday. But what the windless day lacked in gusts, it made up in guts.

The union-made placards read: “United for a Strong Contract.” That resonated with auto workers at Ford who hadn’t been part of a contract rally for as long as anyone can remember.

And the picket line came alive when they broke away from the tedious repetition of “Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power!” and used their own chants.

Pages