Workers are losing their jobs and professional opportunities for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment. Others are choosing to self-censor amid a climate of fear.
International
The Call Is Out for Mass, Simultaneous Strikes in 4 Years
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These labor leaders are organizing for 2028. Cooperation across unions and sectors—if carried out on a large scale—would be unprecedented in the 21st century United States.
#GeorgeFloyd
Every Life Is a World: Sarah Jaffe on the Power of Collective Grief
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An argument for public memorialization as a path through the crises of capitalism.
International
The Auto Workers Who Stand with Gaza
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More than half of organized labor in the US is part of a union that has called for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. One worker explains why.
International
These Teachers Want the Largest Union in the Country to Rescind its Biden Endorsement Over Gaza
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This article was jointly produced by Workday Magazine and The Nation. When Israel escalated its military operations against Gaza in October, Rahaf Othman was so distraught, she said, she “couldn’t think straight.” The 45-year-old Palestinian American, who teaches social studies at Harold L. Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Ill., recalled that she “started getting nightmares from my own experiences when I was in Palestine. I was functional at work, but barely functional. My brain was mush. I was getting traumatized every time I turned on my phone.”
“For the first month, people were asking me what we should do, but I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus.” While in this state, she said she discovered that she could lean on some of her colleagues.
Commentary
“The World Depends On Us”: Our Favorite Labor Stories of 2023
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A year chronicling worker struggle.
International
This Union Is Famous for Opposing South African Apartheid. Now It’s Standing With Gaza.
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In 1984, ILWU Local 10 refused to unload goods shipped from South Africa. Today it’s demanding a cease-fire.
International
Why These Teachers Unions Are Demanding a Cease-fire
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A flurry of state and local teachers unions have passed ceasefire resolutions, but few national unions have followed.
International
Republicans Are Using Anti-China Rhetoric to Undercut Striking UAW Workers’ Demands
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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Three and a half weeks into the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) stand-up strike against the Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the GOP is coalescing around a talking point: that the autoworkers’ real enemy is China. The argument goes something like this: Biden’s federal policies are driving up electric vehicle production, which requires the import of components, like batteries, from China. This process, according to Republicans, is not only enriching an official U.S. rival, but also threatening U.S. jobs. This line of thinking fits perfect for a staunchly anti-union Republican Party, because it allows its purveyors to look like they are standing with striking workers, without supporting any of their actual demands, like a 36% pay increase, an end to tiers, stopping the abuse of temporary workers, cost-of-living adjustments and more paid time off.
International
5 Things Unions Can Do To Defend Transgender Workers
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Trans rights are workers’ rights.
International
Stop Letting Auto Companies Pit Workers Against the Environment
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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. In recent media coverage of the United Auto Workers’ stand-up strike against the Big Three car makers — Stellantis, Ford and General Motors — a false narrative is circulating: that the walkout is in conflict with the urgent need to mitigate climate change. The basic argument is that if wages and benefits were to improve, this would make the transition to electric vehicle manufacturing unprofitable, and would therefore imperil a centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s environmental policy.
“Union demands would force Ford to scrap its investments in electric vehicles, Jim Farley, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview on Friday,” reporter Jack Ewing wrote for the New York Times on September 16. Ewing goes on to quote Farley saying, “We want to actually have a conversation about a sustainable future, not one that forces us to choose between going out of business and rewarding our workers.”
In an article that ran on September 13, the day before the strike began, New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber put it similarly: “The companies say that even if they could raise wages for battery workers to the rate set under their national U.A.W. contract, doing so could make them uncompetitive with nonunion rivals, like Tesla.”
These reports echo the talking points of the same companies that have had a direct hand in slowing the transition to electric vehicles. All of the Big Three automakers are members of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group, that lobbied against a proposed Biden administration rule to require that two out of three new passenger cars sold in the United States are electric vehicles by 2032.
These companies have also played a key role in fueling climate change. Scientists at Ford and General Motors knew about the impacts of global warming as early as the 1960s, yet the companies intensified their fossil-fuel heavy business model, turning to the manufacturing of trucks and SUVs over the ensuing decades while donating “hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups that cast doubt on the scientific consensus on global warming,” as revealed in a 2020 investigation by E&E News.