Luis Feliz Leon

Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Collect Strike Pledges as Company Stalls at Table

Volkswagen has dug in its heels in first-contract negotiations at its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where workers won a landslide victory in last year’s union drive.

“We’re still waiting for the company to agree to a proposal that simply affords us a fair share,” auto worker Steve Cochran testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on October 8. “We are living with health care that forces people into bankruptcy. We are living with no protection from inflation.”

We Who Believe in Democracy Must Fight to Make It Real

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Author(s): 
Luis Feliz Leon

We wake daily to new spectacles of violence and humiliation: kidnappings in broad daylight, attacks on unions, LGBTQ people, women, and immigrants, the erosion of long-cherished rights. It’s no longer a tricky question whether we have tipped into authoritarianism. The answer is yes.

To fight back, we have to confront what the Trump administration is exploiting: fear.

We are living in fear, cowed by it. Each workplace and free speech crackdown, each violation of democratic norms, feeds on the paralysis that fear produces. Fear is the fuel of authoritarianism.

Georgia Battery Plant Raid Spotlights Hyundai’s Horrible Labor Practices

Four hundred and seventy-five workers were arrested at a joint Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions electric-vehicle battery plant under construction in Ellabell, Georgia, on September 4. It was the largest immigration raid at a single location in U.S. history.

Kentucky Battery Plant Joins United Auto Workers in Close Vote

Kentucky battery plant workers at the BlueOval SK Battery Park (BOSK) in Glendale have voted to join the United Auto Workers. The workers make batteries to power Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and E-Transit cargo van.

May Day Rallies Confront Billionaire Assaults

Hundreds of thousands of people across the United States rallied, engaged in civil disobedience, or struck on May 1, International Workers’ Day, joining hundreds of thousands around the world. Overall, actions organized by the May Day Strong coalition numbered more than 1,300 across all 50 states in over 1,000 cities and towns, extending into Saturday, May 3. The unifying cry was “Workers Over Billionaires.”

Amazon Strike by the Numbers

An estimated 600 Amazon workers went on a short strike or participated in pickets from December 19 to Christmas Eve across eight warehouse locations, from Queens to San Francisco. The coordinated mobilization was an opening salvo to Amazon, and a test of capacity for the Teamsters’ growing national network.

Kentucky Battery Plant Workers Launch Union Drive with UAW

A majority of the 1,000 auto workers at the car battery park BlueOval in Glendale, Kentucky, have signed union cards to join the United Auto Workers.

The battery park, a joint venture between Ford and South Korea’s SK On, is expected to ramp up hiring to 5,000 hourly workers by 2030. It has twin battery plants. But the second one is on hold due to low demand for electric vehicles. At the first plant, workers are testing battery module packs from facilities in Georgia, as the plant prepares to become fully operational next year.

A National Movement to Organize Amazon Takes Off

The Teamsters are spinning off momentum from recent organizing fights to new battle fronts across Amazon’s logistics chain.

A group of 100 warehouse workers at DCK6, an Amazon delivery station in San Francisco, marched on company managers October 2 demanding voluntary recognition rather than filing for a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election.

Will Auto Workers Strike to Hold Stellantis to Its Promises?

Contracts come and contracts go, but the bosses keep on scheming forever. So workers’ resistance must be permanent. In August, 17 union locals representing tens of thousands of workers charged the automaker Stellantis with failing to honor its agreements by reneging on investment promises, including the celebrated reopening of the Belvidere assembly plant in Illinois.

New York Amazon Delivery Drivers Join the Teamsters in Surge of Momentum

Hundreds of Amazon drivers at a delivery station in Queens, New York, marched on their bosses today to announce they are joining the Teamsters. They are demanding the logistics giant recognize their union and negotiate a contract.

“To march today and walk in there with everyone behind us, all of us standing together as a union, it was so amazing,” said Latrice Shadae Johnson, who earns $20 an hour delivering packages for Amazon, where she has worked as a driver since last November.

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