Jenny Brown

Strike Captains and Practice Pickets: Starbucks Workers Aim to Bring a Contract Home

Unionized Starbucks workers are electing strike captains and getting customers to pledge they won't cross picket lines. They’re amassing in front of stores with picket signs, borrowing a slogan that UPS Teamsters used during their 2023 contract campaign: “Just Practicing for a Just Contract.”

Labor Needs an Independent Political Program, Says UAW’s Fain

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain recently laid out four priorities he says should form the nucleus of a workers’ political program. And he said that a broad strike in May 2028 is one way to fight for those priorities.

‘Willingly Forgoing Paychecks’: Federal Workers Support Shutdown Fight

Thirty-five union locals, nationals, or other levels of union bodies in the federal sector signed on to an extraordinary Federal Unionists Network letter September 29 urging the Democrats to fight Trump administration cuts, even at the price of a government shutdown. It was titled “No Bad Budget in Our Name,” and signers represent tens of thousands of federal workers.

Federal Workers Declare Five-Alarm Fires at Agencies

Braving retaliation, thousands of federal workers across six agencies have signed open letters charging that their workplaces are being hamstrung or dismantled by the Trump administration. They join federal unionists at dozens more workplaces who have been sounding the alarm to Congress and the public.

Defying Back to Work Order, Air Canada Flight Attendants Secure Tentative Agreement

Flight attendants with Air Canada and subsidiary Air Canada Rouge walked out early August 17. As expected, the Liberal government ordered them back to work 12 hours later, declaring their strike unlawful.

In a bold move with wide implications, the 10,000 striking flight attendants defied the order. They’d voted 99.7 percent to strike earlier this month.

Uncover How Your Employer’s Power Flows

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Jenny Brown

Review of What the Boss Doesn’t Want Us to Know: Discovering Power and Winning Campaigns by Tom Juravich, Olivia Geho, and Andrew Gorry (PM Press, 2025)

When workers at one company started researching their employer, says a union leader in What the Boss Doesn’t Want Us to Know, “it felt like the curtain was pulled back on Oz. All these things that didn’t make sense to them for so long suddenly made sense.”

Salts and Peppers Build a Union at Starbucks

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Jenny Brown

Review of Jaz Brisack, Get on the Job and Organize (Atria/One Signal, 2025).

Starbucks Workers United recently celebrated the unionization of their 600th store, disproving reams of conventional wisdom: you can’t organize small shops… you can’t organize high-turnover workplaces… you can’t organize young people.

For a gripping first-person account of how it happened, read Jaz Brisack’s new book Get on the Job and Organize.

Columbia Tries to Undermine Its Unions, Hire Scab Instructors

Imagine you get a letter from your manager a week before you are set to teach classes, removing you from teaching duties but saying you’ll get paid anyway. This odd experience has happened to around 137 graduate students at Columbia University in New York City who teach core curriculum, language, and writing classes. They are members of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), Auto Workers Local 2710.

Getting paid to not teach might sound pretty good, but in fact the university is hiring adjuncts with no union contract to do the work of union members.

Environmental Protection Agency Workers Investigated for Defending Its Mission

After signing a critical letter to their boss, 139 EPA workers were put under investigation and on a 2-week paid administrative leave July 3.

The Government Programs They’re Axing Came from Our Struggles

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Jenny Brown

Ronald Reagan used to say the scariest nine words were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Wait, what?

When my house was half destroyed by Hurricane Frances in 2004, a Federal Emergency Management Agency agent showed up three days later and cut us a check so we could get the giant tree off the house and do temporary repairs. Through FEMA, we were able to get a $20,000 low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration so we could rebuild. The federal government was there to help.

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