Keith Brower Brown

Stewards Corner: Organizing to ‘Green’ Your Job: What Works?

Stewards often build fights around small issues, and they need to. But stewards also have a special charge to stay ahead of the boss—to think big about shifting power on the job, including by driving the move to green production.

The union can fight smarter when it’s not just reacting to the boss’s plans—when members have talked over their own goals for making work different.

The Big Union Contract Fights Coming in 2025

In some of the most exciting fights of 2024, strikers shut down ports on the East Coast and backed up plane orders on the West. The coming year is full of expiring contracts that could keep the strike wave rolling.

ALIGNED TO FIGHT

The list includes some big contracts lined up so unions can bargain and possibly strike together.

In Hurricane Ruins, North Carolina Food Workers Organize and Fight

Twenty-one days without running water. A week before any cell service or internet. Hospitals closed, and thousands of houses swept away.

Not long after developers started trumpeting the city of Asheville, North Carolina, as a “climate haven” from coastal storms, the area experienced catastrophic flooding. Upland Tennessee and North Carolina were the hardest hit by Hurricane Helene on September 27.

You're Already On Strike. How to Turn Up the Heat?

Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities.

UAW Reformers Muster Forces to Hold Bosses to Their Word

A year after the United Auto Workers’ Stand-Up Strike, the union caucus that helped make it possible is setting out to transform locals still stuck in the mud. Their first step is to fight a new onslaught of layoffs, broken promises, and retaliation from CEOs.

Marathon Petroleum Teamsters Strike

For the first time in 30 years, Teamsters at the Marathon oil refinery in Detroit are on strike. Close to 300 workers walked out September 4. Welders, firefighters, and heavy equipment operators in the union are demanding a raise that keeps up with cost of living, along with better hours. See a great video here.

Beat the Heat: How Workers Are Winning Fans, AC, and Even Heat Pay

If you’re dreading summer on the job this year, you’re not alone.

Every month last summer was the most scorching on world record. Trapped under heat domes, dozens of metro areas busted their longest streaks ever of highs over 100 degrees. Phoenix afternoons were over 110 for a month straight.

On asphalt yards nearly hot enough to melt, bonus-hungry managers forced workers to keep up the usual pace. The results were lethal.

How Solar Ironworkers Zapped Tiers

California’s solar power plants now rival the scale of any in the world. What stands out most is how they were built: under union contracts.

Across the U.S., nearly 90 percent of solar workers had no union last year. In California, the situation was different—at least on paper. The vast majority of its solar power plants have been wrenched in place by unionized construction workers.

Auto Workers Debate Contracts: Tall Gains, Taller Expectations

On breaks between harnessing wires and bolting fenders, Auto Workers across the country are debating the contract offers their strike wrenched out of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.

Just a fraction of plants have voted, with the rest set to cast ballots in the next two weeks. Contract details are here.

Despite Intimidation, Union Voices Get Louder for Ceasefire in Gaza

Blog: 
Blog
Author(s): 
Keith Brower Brown
Caitlyn Clark

In the U.S. and across the world, hundreds of thousands of people have taken the streets to protest Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 8,300 Palestinians, including 3,300 children, since October 7. On October 27, the United Nations called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce.”

In the U.S., those protesting Israel’s attacks have faced a wave of repression by employers.

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