Troublemakers Blog
August 24, 2017 /
When the Memphis Bus Riders Union (MBRU) was just a year old and growing, the transit authority announced the biggest service cut since the 1980s.
On the chopping block was a 40-year-old residential route, the 31 Crosstown, that connected two historically Black and impoverished areas known as North and South Memphis. »
August 21, 2017 /
In July 2016, personal trainers in Toronto at GoodLife Fitness, Canada's largest fitness company, voted to unionize with the Canada Council of Workers United, forming the first fitness sector union in North America. »
August 18, 2017 /
How should unions respond to the chilling events in Charlottesville? As believers that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” what's our special responsibility? Can we survive if our own unions are split along racial lines? »
August 11, 2017 /
Some 1,800 members of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 have been on strike at Spectrum/Time Warner Cable in New York and New Jersey since March 28, more than four months ago. Since then, only a fraction of the workforce has crossed picket lines, but the company is working hard to keep up normal operations by using scabs and subcontractors to break the strike »
August 08, 2017 /
Mexican blueberry picker Honesto Silva Ibarra died in Washington state on Sunday after complaining of headaches but being forced by his supervisor to return to work in the blazing sun. He ended up in a coma. »
August 03, 2017 /
As right-to-work laws proliferate, it's worth remembering that they originated as a means to maintain Jim Crow labor relations in the South and to beat back what was seen as a Jewish conspiracy. »
August 01, 2017 / Alexandra Bradbury
After two passengers died in a horrific stabbing on a train in Portland, Oregon, the transit agency upped police presence. But the union is pushing for a different solution.
The May 26 incident began with a man yelling racist slurs at two young women of color. When three passengers defended the women, the man stabbed them. »
July 28, 2017 /
A beloved 53-year old miner named Larry Marek was killed on the job at the Lucky Friday mine in Mullan, Idaho just a few years back. Steelworkers Local 5114 had been warning the company about the stability of a certain area called a stope. Management had Marek mine out the last piece of earth supporting the cavern for the ore it contained and the roof collapsed. »
July 20, 2017 /
On the night of July 13 Katy Balaguer thought she was ready for what was coming next. She was no stranger to protests, to tear gas, to the cops’ batons and the sound they make when they hit the body of your co-workers. That day, from the roof of the PepsiCo factory in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she watched as her co-workers and their supporters were brutally »
July 06, 2017 /
The final two decades of the 19th century, beginning with the great strike wave of 1877, and the first two decades of the 20th century were a period of intense class combat in the United States. »