most of whom are not union members

“None of them had a clue about what to do with a large group of angry workers.”

Like GM was, Amazon is the iconic employer of our period of capitalism, one that has been notoriously hard for unions to penetrate.

Workplaces where jobs are monitored and measured—and workers required to meet certain performance metrics—pose a particular set of challenges for stewards.

More recently, with the tremendous growth in computing power and data collection, the ability to use technology to gather data about workers is ubiquitous, and bosses are eager to use these tools to maximize productivity and profits.

Remember that discussions about standards are, in essence, bargaining. As anyone who has been part of a bargaining team knows, you don’t get what you deserve—you get what you can win.

It took fewer than three months for Roosevelt to stretch the contours of “enemy” beyond the bounds of nationality, or even citizenship, to include a whole race.

Japanese Americans were not a threat to national security—a fact that two secret investigations commissioned by Roosevelt himself confirmed, along with the US Justice Department, the FBI, and military intelligence. But within a few months, the Roosevelt administration had created the War Relocation Authority, charged with rounding up and interning “all people of Japanese descent” on the West Coast. At least 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry—more than two-thirds of whom were US citizens—were incarcerated in military camps based exclusively on their ethnicity, in violation of their constitutional rights.

public fear, ethnic scapegoating, political expedience, and disdain for civil liberties

workers who get pregnant are penalized at work.

Pregnancy discrimination is very real. Many jobs make it tough to get light duty or accommodations. And parenthood brings the “mommy tax”—a lifetime loss of income for women who have children, thanks to stingy parental leave and unaffordable childcare.

Missed opportunities, resume gaps, reduced work hours—all these impinge on women’s equality at work, not to mention their union participation.

“Salting” refers to taking a job with the specific intent of starting or furthering an organizing campaign.

When we criticize a staff-driven model of organizing, it is because staff can be a substitute for worker’s self-activity and lead to a division where union professionals design the broader organizing strategy while workers are confined to more minor roles.

Meanwhile, the priorities of the campaign came to be dictated by the logic of the labor relations process, which requires a narrow focus on getting out the vote to win the election, with direct action being left for some time in the future.

For any worker entering a job, there’s a kind of unwritten law: Listen to who’s complaining about what, who’s agreeing, who’s keeping away from the mess, and you’ll learn a lot about the boss and power relationships on the floor.

But complaining to “let off steam,” if you take no action to change the problem, demonstrates something that’s poles apart from organizing—powerlessness.

What if, instead of complaining, she sought to learn more about the policy, educate her co-workers about its impact on individuals, and invite discussion about possible solutions? Then the result could be alignment rather than division.

It confirms that a policy of mass infection, mass death and mass murder is the agenda of the US president and the ruling class for which he speaks.

At yesterday’s White House COVID-19 press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared, “As we have said, almost everyone is going to get COVID and because of the hard work we have done since day one turning around the disjointed COVID response we had inherited, we have the tools to ensure that people can go about their daily life and work.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), announced in an interview with Politico last week that he would retire before the end of Biden’s first term.Asked if he was staying in his role at age 81 out of a sense of obligation, Fauci replied, “We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this.” This was an astonishing statement, implying that the COVID-19 pandemic would continue to plague the world for another quarter century. There have already been three Omicron waves since December, ultimately producing the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant. What does a scenario of 25 years of global pandemic mean for the human race?

For many of those new to the labor movement and those who have been in it for decades, there was simply nowhere more important to be last weekend.

Meinster’s question — how to translate an upsurge in energy into an uptick in unionization, how to transform staid unions into fighting forces for working-class power, how to change the world — hung over the weekend. The stakes could not be higher, and the sobriety among attendees, many of whom have known more defeats than victories, suggests an awareness that if we are to accomplish those goals, this year’s conference will have been a part of the story.

Labor Notes’ conference program offered an exhaustive array of workshops on union issues, perhaps the most comprehensive militant-labor curriculum assembled in the U.S. in recent decades.

We will never have enough union staff to do all the organizing that is needed.

Traditionally, the suburbs are thought of as bastions of conservatism, where workers go to become atomized consumers free from the common public spaces that feed solidaristic action.

Despite the very real challenges that suburbanization present, the labor movement cannot resign itself to the impossibility of maintaining strong unionism in the suburbs. History can serve as inspiration here.

Like any good union organizer, Mazzocchi knew that a credible strike threat was the best way to make gains in the contract. For over a year before the contract expired, the union prepared for a showdown with the company. “Tony asked members to assess themselves special dues to establish a strike fund,” Leopold writes, “but Tony recognized that the act of collection sent a militant signal both to members and management.” The local rented a very visible strike headquarters that the company could see. These moves brought back memories of the open-ended 1941 strike to management.