The UAW is calling up locals to stand by workers in Belvidere and hold Stellantis to its promises.
Commentary
“The World Depends On Us”: Our Favorite Labor Stories of 2023
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A year chronicling worker struggle.
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.
Media
Master Lock Factory in Milwaukee Closes After 100 Years
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After more than 100 years, Master Lock’s iconic factory in Milwaukee is shutting its doors in March 2024. The closure will result in 400 lost union jobs, and also mark the end of a former industrial region of the city that once housed some 50 plants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfmKb2dvimU
The Real News, In These Times, and Workday Magazine speak with current and former Master Lock workers on what the closure of this longstanding plant means for them and their community. Transcript
The following is a transcript of the video
President Obama:
Hello, Milwaukee. That’s what we’ve got to be shooting for is to create opportunities for hardworking Americans to get in there and start making stuff again and sending it all over the world, products stamped with three proud words, “Made in America.” That’s what’s happening right here at Master Lock.
Midwest
“Your Body Suffers”: The Unremarkable Pain of an Auto-Assembly-Line Worker
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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The Nation. Daniel Carpenter was one month past his 40th birthday when he suffered neck pain so severe that he thought he was having a stroke. “I was up north with my girlfriend at the time at a wedding,” said the autoworker, who has been employed for nearly 19 years at General Motors, almost all of it at the company’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center in Michigan, which produces the Hummer and Silverado. “We were staying at a cabin. I couldn’t walk.
Wisconsin Autoworkers Are Bundling Firewood for a Winter Picket Line
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Called out on strike on Friday, GM workers in Hudson, Wis., are ready for the long haul.
Midwest
UAW’s “Element of Surprise” Strike Appears to Be Working
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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Workers walked off their shifts on September 14 at midnight to cheering crowds, as the United Auto Workers launched its first simultaneous strike against the “Big Three” automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. The initial work stoppages were not company-wide, but instead targeted at three locations: GM’s Wentzville Assembly in Missouri, Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, and Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., just outside Detroit. The plants employ some 12,700 of the roughly 150,000 UAW members who work for the Big Three. The strike strategy, developed under the leadership of reform challenger Shawn Fain, was defined by its element of surprise.
Midwest
Exhausted, Injured and Angry: Autoworkers Are Ready to Strike
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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. CHICAGO – Wearing a red United Auto Workers (UAW) t-shirt, Anastasia Gibson, 48, is warm and polite, quick to flash a broad smile. But her anger rises when she talks about her sacrifices to Ford, which made $10.4 billion in profits in 2022. Gibson works 10-hour shifts and injured her back on the job in 2021. “They don’t value anything we do. They want us to get as many cars off the line as we can.”
Such anger was palpable among the roughly 200 workers who gathered alongside Gibson in the late afternoon of September 6 outside the UAW Local 551 union hall in far southeastern Chicago, not far from the Indiana border.
Midwest
The Conflicted Analysis of What an Auto Workers Strike Would ‘Cost’
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General Motors and Ford are clients of Anderson Economic Group, which released a study about a potential strike’s cost to ‘the economy.’
Midwest
In a Summer of Record Heat, These Striking Workers Are Making Climate Demands
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Pennsylvania workers represented by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America have been on strike since late June. They’re fighting for a green overhaul of the rail industry.
Midwest
“We Are Drowning”: Nurses Say Illinois Hospital Plagued With Unsafe Staffing
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Nurses warn Ascension St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet is failing to comply with a 2021 Illinois law to ensure safe staffing. Now, they’re fighting for improvements at the bargaining table.