By Gerard Di Trolio There has been a modest but not insignificant revival of the strike in the United States. After all, it is the ultimate weapon of workers and its decline alongside that of the American labour movement has had a disastrous impact on economic inequality and working conditions. Teacher strikes have been a Continue readingBook Review: Red State Revolt
United States
By Nick French After decades of decline, the past year has seen a dramatic revival in labor militancy. Public school teachers have been at the forefront of this resurgence, starting with a dramatic wildcat strike in West Virginia in February 2018, then a wave of teacher strikes that swept the nation, moving from red states like Arizona and Oklahoma to blue California and Colorado. Continue readingA Different Kind of Teachers’ Strike Wave
By Gerard Di Trolio Everyone has a take on the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Trump likes the way it sounds. Trudeau thinks it will grow the middle class. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer thinks Canada gave up too much and that he would have somehow managed to get a better deal out of Trump. Scheet Continue readingUSMCA: A new deal but still a bad one
By Chris Brooks According to some critics, New York City’s militant Taxi Workers Alliance is standing in the way of progress. The union represents 21,000 taxi and other for-hire vehicle drivers and recently scored a major victory over Uber, passing legislation capping the number of for-hire vehicles on the city’s streets — an affront to those Continue readingUber’s big lie
By David Bush On June 27 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Janus v. AFSCME case. In a 5–4 decision the court ruled that public sector union fees to non-members is a violation of First Amendment rights. In effect the ruling obliterated closed shop unions in the public sector across Continue readingWhat Janus means North of the border
By Chris Brooks Strikes are won by workers—often with a little help from their friends. During their two-week strike, West Virginia’s salaried classroom teachers still got paid, because superintendents closed schools. The days missed were treated like snow days to be made up later. But workers paid by the hour or day—such as substitute teachers, Continue readingHow West Virginia activists organized a solidarity fund for the uprising
By Gerard Di Trolio Lane Windham convincingly shows that the history of U.S. unions in the late 1970s and early 1980s is not one of stagnation that easily led Ronald Reagan to declare war on them and win. There were significant organizing drives led by women and people of colour that showed the possibility of Continue readingBook Review: Knocking on Labor’s Door
By Gerard Di Trolio The first round of NAFTA negotiations are now over. The talks will be moving next to Mexico and then to Canada during September. We don’t know where there is broad agreement or major contention over the issues. We do know however, that given the length of time that it took for Continue readingDon’t trust Trudeau on NAFTA
By Jonathan Rosenblum Arshiya Chime is a union member helping to rescue the world from climate change. Once she gets her doctorate degree later this year from the University of Washington, she will become a highly prized mechanical engineer, helping economies become less dependent on oil while protecting the environment and creating jobs. But Chime, Continue readingAn Injury to One is an Injury to All? U.S. Labour’s Reactions to Trump