This is a blog about building labor and community solidarity in Oregon's Mid-Willamette Valley and beyond. The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors only unless otherwise noted.
Four young organizers are running for City Council seats in Corvallis. Their stated priorities are as follows:
* Climate Crisis & Community Resilience – We are committed to meaningful and immediate action to address the climate emergency and build sustainable communities. We understand the urgency of climate action and the importance of preparing our city for current and future challenges.
* Housing Justice – Humane and supportive treatment of our unhoused neighbors.
* Transparency & Public Input – Accountable leadership and clear communication.Safe Streets – Prioritize safety over speed, and recognize that streets are for pedestrians, bikes, and transit, not just motor vehicles.
I am not aware of the four candidates having picked up any labor endorsements yet, but their website says that they are "an alliance of young organizers working to build a resilient, livable future. We come from backgrounds in climate, housing, labor, and tenant organizing, and we are ready to take our passion and commitment to the Corvallis City Council, where we will fight for the issues that are important to you."
Two of the candidates--Beckett Hunt and Alison Bowden--are union members. Information on the candidates can be found here.
I do want to encourage our readers in Corvallis to contact the candidates and to support union mermbers when they run for office on progressive platforms. I'm looking forward to carrying more information from the four candidates on this blog.
We often post about the New Seasons Labor Union on this blog. Our most recent post is here, and another recent post mentioning the New Seasons Labor Union is here. The following post regarding union contract negotiations at New Seasons comes from Portland Jobs with Justice:
In an update to coworkers, and shared over social media (X, IG), New Seasons Labor Union co-chairs and their bargaining team announced that after more than a year and a half of fighting for a fair contract at the bargaining table, the team has issued an ultimatum to the company:
"If substantial progress is not made by the end of our August 7th bargaining session, we will ask the membership to vote to authorize a strike."
The statement details the company's numerous and stall tactics in place of bargaining a fair contract for its 1,100+ workers at the 11 stores currently represented by NSLU.
JWJ stands with NSLU and every worker, whenever and wherever, they demonstrate unity and speak up, collectively, for justice in their workplace and in the community!
You can show your support by contributing to help NSLU win the contract they need: https://nslu.org/donate
Passing by a vote of 88%, roughly 250 postdoctoral researchers represented by Oregon AFSCME at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) voted 7/24 to authorize a strike if OHSU executives continue to offer scrimpy wages and benefits.The vote comes after nine months of OHSU refusing to offer a contract with fair wages, benefits and improved working conditions. With this vote, if necessary, postdoctoral researchers can deliver a 10-day notice to OHSU, indicating the start date of the strike.
“We are standing together for better pay, better benefits, and better working conditions. Our work helped OHSU get a record $600 million in research grants last year, but they refuse to offer us a penny above a nationally set minimum wage that doesn’t recognize the cost of living in Portland, said Paige Arneson-Wissink a Postdoctoral researcher in the study of pancreatic cancer. “What happens next is up to OHSU. If the executives don’t come to the table with a better offer that shows respect and recognition of the work we do every day, we will strike” continued Arneson-Wissink. Read more here.
As you are likely aware, postdoctoral researchers represented by Oregon AFSCME, whose work at OHSU includes finding cures for deadly diseases, are still without a first contract. After bargaining for nearly a year, the Postdoc Researchers United declared an impasse on July 5 and voted to authorize a strike which is set to begin next month.
It’s time to stand together, take action, and do everything possible we can as Oregon’s Labor Movement to ensure Postdoc Researchers United win the contract they deserve. That includes their primary demands of fair compensation reflective of the researchers’ expertise, and protections for international employees, who comprise over half of the postdoctoral population.
Personally call members on the board of the directors urging them to work with the President to avert the strike.
Please share any stories you have at OHSU that highlight the positive outcomes when workers and management work together to fulfill their mission. You can email your stories to Susan and Odalis at their email addresses listed above.
As we’ve seen during contract struggles and strikes in the past, Oregon Labor standing united behind a group of workers in a battle for a fair contract can create the pressure needed to win the fight.
AFSCME’s fight at OHSU is all of our fight because when any worker is injured, wronged, or treated unfairly we all suffer. Let’s do what we do best and come together to lend our strength and solidarity to the Postdoc Researchers United at AFSCME.
Before turning to the latest in Congress, a brief word about the presidential race. NEA’s PAC Council and Board of Directors last week endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the next president! Read President Pringle’s statement about the endorsement, as well as her comments following President Biden’s announcement that he would not seek another term.
Meanwhile, members of Congress are eager to be home and not in Washington, DC. House GOP leadership announced last week a change in schedule, canceling votes for the upcoming week and putting the House in recess until September 9. Part of this was also due to the majority’s inability to secure enough votes to advance funding bills, including the education appropriations bill that contains extreme cuts as noted in this space last week. Thank you for your quick advocacy to push back on those cuts. Let’s keep it going in August (see alert below), as Congress will need to come together for at least a short-term funding agreement before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.
We also continue to press for action on full repeal of the GPO-WEP Social Security penalties, with passage of the Social Security Fairness Act (HR 82 / S 597). With a record number now of co-sponsors in both the House and the Senate, it’s time for a vote. Take a minute to send a new message to Congress in support of a “discharge petition”, a parliamentary move in the House to force a vote on the bill.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a commentary on the upcoming November election. The post was written out of a siege mentality, little hope, and an assessment that the working class has little to gain in the November election, but a lot to lose; nothing more. The MAGA Trump campaign seemed unstoppable. People who were not MAGA/Trump were in despair; far too many conversations about leaving for Canada or Mexico. Among those who were fighting back against MAGA, there was a grim determination to fight this campaign to the end, all with a background sense that this will probably be a failed fight.
What a difference a week makes!
With Biden out and Kamala Harris very likely to receive the Democratic nomination for President, the whole outlook of the Democratic base changed. In a week, an overflow of Democratic enthusiasm! In the space of a week, it dawned on millions of Democratic voters, the labor movement, civil rights activists, communities of poor and oppressed people that indeed, winning is very possible!
Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing! With enthusiasm and a sense of winning, the focus immediately turns to what we want to win. Civil rights and the possibility of a world without police violence and civil oppression are back on the table again. The right to vote is back on the table again. Women’s right to control their own bodies as a guaranteed right is back on the table again.
Shawn Fain of the UAW was interviewed on MSNBC a day ago (see that post below), and he spoke of the UAW’s four objectives; a living wage (more than a surviving wage), healthcare, a retirement system that makes retired life comfortable and worth living, And let’s not forget a life for working people that includes more than the right to work 12 hour days, seven days a week just to survive (remember “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours for the thing we love best?”). Climate change is back on the table too, And I applaud Joe Biden’s announcement of Supreme Court reforms and term limits on Supreme Court Justices.
It seems right now that the overflow I was talking about is going hand in hand with an overflow of democratic possibilities and the possibility of a government that actually works for people and not for the billionaire class. And all that in just a week!
So I leave my gloom in the dust and let’s win this election!
The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is calling for a massive September 1 global labor mobilization for peace under thes two basic demands:
* Stop Imperialist Wars and Interventions * Resources for peoples’ needs and not for NATO’s plans
A long call for the mobilization by the Secretariat of the WFTU ends with the following:
The WFTU calls upon workers all over the globe, the militant trade unions to actively participate in the International Action Day of Trade Unions for peace, organizing militant activities to strongly denounce the uninterrupted increase in military expenditures and the ongoing imperialist conflicts; to assert the demand for dissolution of NATO and all military coalitions, the complete abolition of nuclear weapons, the respect for the independence and sovereignty of all states and to spread the message of internationalism and class struggle for lasting peace, for a world free of imperialist interventions and man-by-man exploitation.
Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017–2023 By David Van Deusen • Foreword by Kim Kelly • Introduction by Steve Early Series: PM Press / Working Class History Published: 07/30/2024 Formats: Paperback and e-book Pages: 288
David Van Deusen’s Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017–2023 is part labor history, part memoir, and part polemic. It may also serve as a guide for union activists who are seeking to influence their regional labor councils and labor chapters and American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)-affiliated state labor federations. Interest in transforming these bodies has been building and has become especially evident over the past twenty years. Van Deusen’s book takes up the matter of what a state labor federation might look like and argues for a particular model that he believes these bodies should adopt.
Van Deusen came out of an anarchist collective and was a local and statewide leader in a Vermont American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) local union before becoming president of the Vermont AFL-CIO. His journey has involved the usual work of representing workers in grievances and negotiating union contracts and engaging in political action, but Van Deusen has brought a particular set of guiding revolutionary principles to his work and along the way he helped found a radical union caucus that has led the transformation of the Vermont AFL-CIO. This on-going and transformative work has occasionally made national headlines. The book’s foreword and introduction by labor journalists Kim Kelly and Steve Early testify to the depth and import of Van Deusen’s work and help place it in a context that makes the book more readable. Van Deusen isn’t bragging or lying when he mentions in passing some of the key features of the union work that he has done over the years; he’s stating facts, and it’s this kind of work that builds real leader’s hard-won credibility.
We first meet Van Deusen in his book fighting the Republicans, helping to rescue Vermont’s mainstream labor movement from near oblivion, and coming into conflict with some of the leaders of Vermont’s unions and the state’s Democratic Party. There are strikes, debates, conventions, caucus-building, alliances, betrayals, and important strategic and tactical decisions made along the way that ultimately lead to union growth. The labor movement’s losses and steps forward often proceed in print as if our plot lines come from romance novels, and Insurgent Labor is no exception. Van Deusen brings a revolutionary biker’s passion to his work and it shows.
The book’s fifth and sixth chapters take up some of the all-important questions of what may happen when radicals take institutional power in the context of what has been both a top-down and horizontal institution. The AFL-CIO has had two identifying features which it inherited in large part from the American Federation of Labor. One is the Federation’s identity as a decentralized alliance of mainstream labor that has tended towards cautious liberalism and has often run behind the times. The other feature accompanying this, and sometimes contradicting it, are the tendencies in the labor movement towards centralization, inclusion, and assimilation.
The labor movement can rightfully and proudly claim to be the only movement in the United States that brings together working-class people of all identities and opinions and holds this membership in relatively stable and well-funded organizations. On the other hand, the labor movement’s institutional structures often leave much to be desired. The losses in union membership and union power have led to partial ossification. Van Deusen sees his efforts to set things in labor aright and change course as a fight against betrayals and selling out, opportunism, bureaucracy, reactionary ideas and individuals, and labor’s ties with the Democratic Party. The alternative structures and policies that Van Deusen believes must be adopted are contained in a transitional program (“The Little Green Book”), leaflets, speeches, and convention and conference resolutions that appear in the book. Having these documents at hand may give readers a good sense of what is at stake in the internal union battles that the author spends much time discussing, but these documents and the thirty-eight pages of footnotes also give the book a polemical feel. If readers can put aside the astringent lines of argument and tone that Van Deusen often relies on they will find a good argument for some commonsense steps that can be taken to make the AFL-CIO and its subordinate bodies inclusive, democratic, and more representative. Labor would probably gain a great deal of ground and power by taking up the direct election of AFL-CIO leadership and including all workers, union members and non-union workers, in regional decision-making as Van Deusen advocates.
Labor radicals who are working to change their regional labor councils and chapters and state labor federations can find in Insurgent Labor a very good introduction to how labor might break with the Democrats if that’s what they’re thinking about and trying to visualize. The book will also help radicals visualize ways to support a Green New Deal, oppose gun control, and challenge austerity in ways that are not opportunistic and are not dependent upon slogans. There are compelling arguments made in the book for national and international labor solidarity that go far beyond what the AFL-CIO and any of its constituent unions and other bodies have taken up. The author is forthright and appropriately humble when discussing Black liberation and struggles for civil rights and suggesting ways forward in these areas for labor.
The Vermont AFL-CIO made headlines in 2020 and 2021 when their state convention adopted both a revolutionary preamble and a resolution urging that a general strike be called “in the event that Donald Trump refuses to concede the office of President of the United States.” That resolution deepened and widened the chasm separating the Vermont AFL-CIO and the national AFL-CIO and led to a prolonged struggle that never quite made it to center stage in the labor movement but that nonetheless influenced labor’s national political options at the time. The effects of that resolution and the controversies that it brought to the surface are today influencing how labor supports a ceasefire in the fighting in Gaza and how United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain’s call for a national general strike in 2028 is being seen. Van Deusen spends a great deal of time explaining and defending the preamble and the resolution in the book and the fallout that they caused. Along the way he repeatedly denounces then-AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and the Democrats and lays out some of the tactics and the strategy needed to build a defensive and politicized general strike. I imagine that many people will buy and study Insurgent Labor to read and consider what the author has to say here. I found it notable while reading the book that Van Deusen does not give in to the typical anarchistic faith in spontaneity when discussing the strategy and tactics needed to build a general strike and see it through.
The preamble and the resolution gave the national AFL-CIO reason to investigate the decision-making processes and politics at work in the Vermont AFL-CIO under the collective leadership that Van Deusen and his caucus and electoral slate had helped build. I think that even had the state organization not adopted the revolutionary preamble and resolution there would have been a collision between the state and national bodies. Less clear is why and how national and international unions did not bring greater pressure to bear on their Vermont affiliates. In the end the Vermont AFL-CIO was more or less vindicated and left to go its own way. Van Deusen gives readers some details on how the state organization has centered organizing and decentered participation in electoral politics in the aftermath of the 2020-2021 fight with the national body. This emphasis on organizing has brought needed growth.
A recent Valley Labor Report on the Vermont AFL-CIO
Readers with backgrounds in labor and the left will get the most out of Insurgent Labor because the book is very much framed in the contexts of leftism and internal union politics. We see Van Deusen acting much as any other labor leader might act under certain circumstances in the book, justifying some of his difficult and controversial actions with pragmatic logic and sometimes taking what reads like a traditional leftist-vanguardist approach while hardly missing a beat. As almost any good anarchist will have it, he carries with him the legacy of the lost Spanish Revolution of 1936-1938 and updates that with support for Rojava’s revolution. He criticizes AFL-CIO President Trumka and the Democrats, but when it looked like push was coming to shove in the fight between the Vermont AFL-CIO and the national AFL-CIO he sought support from labor leaders who were no more or less militant and democratic than Trumka was, and for some unexplained reason he considered support from Australian and European Trotskyites (see here and here) more important than winning support from Democrats and center forces in the United States. Trumka's role as a union reformer and agent of change within the AFL-CIO is either forgotten or downplayed in the book. It says much to me that allies and potential allies from within the labor movement did not come forward when needed to stand with the Vermont AFL-CIO.
At one point in Insurgent Labor Van Deusen comments that had Trump refused to cede power and had a general strike occurred his caucus would have urged temporary unity with the Democrats and would have been prepared to pivot quickly and break that unity had the general strike gone forward. This may be something that came to Van Deusen through his readings about the Spanish Revolution, but it does not build trust between organizations and it could well lead to a disaster. Van Deusen rightfully decries outside interference in the affairs of the Vermont AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions but his movement outreaches to activists in those affiliates, in unaffiliated unions, and in labor bodies outside of Vermont. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) gets some well-deserved attention in Insurgent Labor, but there is no examination of how DSA's work and programs intersect with or run parallel to those of Van Deusen's caucus and slate.
It occured to me as I read the book that an opportunity to build solidarity may have been lost when Vermont's labor radicals opted to pursue third-party politics and not run coordinated campaigns through the Democrats and the state's two independent left political parties. For that matter, Van Deusen and many of those in his circles know how to work in hierarchical organizations and have the long-term perspective needed to do that effectively and so the questions of why they didn't dig into the Democratic Party or the state's left parties as they did into the AFL-CIO and what might have happened had they done so arises. The argument made for not working with the Democrats in Insurgent Labor is less about sharply-pointed polemics and more about real structural and institutional failures. But would Van Deusen still be so critical of the Democrats had these failures not occured or if they had been addressed? Van Deusen writes and works with two identities, outsider and insider, and it seems questionable which identity he prefers and which identity he is best at working with.
It is not my intent to argue that Van Deusen is a hypocrite---he isn’t---but it is to say that there are contradictions in the legacy of anarchism and in Van Deusen’s thinking that leave so-called “libertarian socialism” in a state of negation. Where others might see a push and pull and forward and backwards or sideways movement in a situation Van Deusen might characterize that situation as one of struggle between what is pure and what is reactionary. Instead of seeking to hold a particular united front line and move people in the center leftward from that position it seems that Van Deusen sees a need to move others ever to the left, using only temporary alliances and only rarely recognizing that change occurs in stages. He does not seem to be about building on the heritage of the progressive unions that were once at the helm of the U.S. labor movement so much as he is interested in going in another (uncharted) direction.
Vermont has a unique political landscape. The state's labor movement is relatively small, as Van Deusen points out. His reminder that union growth in the state in recent years and the revitalization of the labor movement under radical leadership in this period intersected with Vermont's exceptional political framework during the worst days of COVID and led to comparatively high union density while unions took steps backwards elsewhere should give us pause. Union leadership cannot argue that density matters and then dismiss Van Deusen when he makes his case based on union membership numbers. At some point we are entitled to ask if some in union leadership would rather rather risk further declines in union density rather than make some of the democratic and structural changes Van Deusen and his cohort are arguing for. On the other hand, their reliance upon building an alternative unionism within the mainstream of the labor movement and an alternative politics that doesn't unite the many against the few behind a common electoral program, and perhaps behind a labor party of some type, cedes space to our misleaders.
I noted at the beginning of this review that there is much in Insurgent Labor that will be of interest to activists seeking to create fundamental change in our labor movement. Van Deusen is not the only voice for such change, but Insurgent Labor is well-written and interesting and compelling enough that it may propel Van Deusen forward as a leading national voice for change. It is fascinating to me that anarchism can attract a following within or at the margins of the labor movement. That following doesn’t have to accept the dogma of anarchism in order to be effective or gain ground for a time. But does Van Deusen’s book forecast a moment when the many different programs for change present in our labor movement might find common ground or, on the other hand, come into greater conflict with one another? At what point does Van Deusen's constructive anarchism become something else?
Note: A review of Insurgent Labor by Gordon Simmons can be found here, an article about David Van Deusen and the Vermont AFL-CIO by Vermont union leader Katie Maurice that appeared in Jacobin can be found here, Steve Early also wrote an article for Jacobin on how Van Deusen and his caucus and slate took over the Vermont AFL-CIO and that can piece can be found here, and The Valley Labor Report has recently produced this important report:
Labor Video recently posted the following report arguing that conflicts betweeen the Vermont AFL-CIO and the national AFL-CIO are continuing:
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has called a strike covering their union-represented members who are employed by Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and WB Games Inc. The workers most directly affected by the strike do voice acting, stunts, motion-capture work, and other work that appear in video games. They are covered by the union's innovative Interactive Media Agreement.
The extraordinary nature of this strike is such that it is making headlines in industry publications, The New York Times, and the financial and business press. A strong union summary of what is at stake in the strike can be found here. A National Public Radio report on the strike can be found here. A key issue that makes this strike significant and is moving coverage of it into the mainstream press is the matter of A.I. and how it affects the work that the striking workers perform. Absent a national industrial policy on A.I., clear legal and legislative protections for workers whose livelihoods are impacted by A.I., and much-needed special efforts to protect workers and communities of color who are doubly impacted by A.I., unions are left to organize and take action protecting their member's interests.
In this case, then, SAG-AFTRA is leading a strong effort to gain ground at the bargaining table. A SAG-AFTRA press release quotes SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher as saying that “We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members. Enough is enough. When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live — and work — with, we will be here, ready to negotiate.”
Another union leader has been quoted as saying "The video game industry generates billions of dollars in profit annually. The driving force behind that success is the creative people who design and create those games. That includes the SAG-AFTRA members who bring memorable and beloved game characters to life, and they deserve and demand the same fundamental protections as performers in film, television, streaming, and music: fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the A.I. use of their faces, voices, and bodies. Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of last year - that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to A.I., and the public supports us in that.”
SAG-AFTRA Video Game Strike Press Conference
The video game industrydoes indeed generate billions of dollars in profits and I have not heard that the industry is facing a crisis, although A.I. is changing the rules of competition in the video game industry, and in other industries as well. If we look at the industry and those employed in it as a whole, we see widespread and growing interest in unionization there. Moreover, we see video game workers motivated to unionize by many key issues, including fighting harassment and discrimination, protection from encroachments by A.I., winning enforcement of civil rights on the job, and winning parity with workers in other countries. Many unions are involved in organizing and representing these workers. One of the more innovative efforts is Rights & Protections for Gameworkers (RPG-IATSE).
The last interactive contract, which expired November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from Sag-Aftra following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.
The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 “off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers”, according to the union.
Amid the tense interactive negotiations, Sag-Aftra created a separate contract in February that covered indie and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected.
Video game developers at World of Warcraft and Bethesda Game Studios joined CWA this month, forming the first wall-to-wall units under our neutrality agreement with Microsoft. Over 1,750 video game workers at Microsoft now have union representation with CWA. A group of 60 quality assurance workers at Blizzard Entertainment in Austin, Texas, also joined CWA, and their union has been recognized by Microsoft. Workers at Bethesda Game Studios in Montreal filed for union recognition with the Quebec Labor Relations Board in late June to be represented by CWA Canada.
“What we’ve accomplished at World of Warcraft is just the beginning. My colleagues and I are embarking on a quest to secure better pay, benefits, and job security through a strong union contract. We know that when workers have a protected voice, it’s a win-win for employee standards, the studio, and World of Warcraft fans looking for the best gaming experience,” said Eric Lanham, Test Analyst and member of the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild–CWA Local 9510.
“We are so excited to announce our union at Bethesda Game Studio and join the movement sweeping across the video game industry. It is clear that every worker can benefit from bringing democracy into the workplace and securing a protected voice on the job. We’re thrilled to get down to brass tacks and win a fair contract, proving that our unity is a source of real power to positively shape our working conditions, our lives, and the company as a whole,” said Mandi Parker, Senior System Designer and member of CWA Local 2108.
On July 9, 2024, Delta Air Lines’ official X account responded to an inflammatory and racist post of two pictures taken of Delta Flight Attendants wearing small Palestine flag pins, without their consent while at work. Delta’s response, initially stating, “I hear you as I’d be terrified as well” and “Nothing to worry, this is being investigated already” showed a blatant disregard for workers’ safety and dignity, and further inflamed bigotry. This incident reflects Delta’s repeated failure to stand up for Flight Attendants and is unacceptable.
Current work provisions that allow Flight Attendants to “request they not be recorded or photographed and/or identified on camera” fail to protect us from doxxing and harassment due to non-consensual recording. This leaves Flight Attendants vulnerable to harassment, which is unacceptable especially given the industry-wide increase in aggressive verbal and physical harassment from passengers since 2020.
In response to Delta’s affirmation of bigoted and false comments, the Delta AFA Steering Committee—the national representative body of Delta Flight Attendants organizing our union at Delta—sent an Open Letter to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, demanding a public apology, prohibition of non-consensual photography, and immediate action to address Delta’s corporate social media moderation.
In response to worker and community pressure, Delta’s initial responses were deleted and the social media moderator was reassigned. But to date, Delta has not issued a public apology to the targeted Flight Attendants or taken meaningful steps to protect Flight Attendants.
Instead, on July 12, Delta issued a new policy prohibiting Flight Attendants from wearing any flag pins other than the US flag. For decades, Flight Attendant flag pins have been a proud symbol of our aviation history and a bridge between cultures. This move creates a chilling effect on anyone deemed “not American enough,” sets a dangerous precedent, and violates Delta’s own commitment to inclusivity.
Delta AFA calls upon supporters and allies to sign our community petition demanding immediate action to end the widespread harassment of Flight Attendants and to protect our rights and safety on the job.
I posted a self-written piece on independent unions and union organizing this blog in early July that made passing mention of the New Seasons Labor Union and that dealt with some of the forward steps beings taken in independent union organizing and some of the difficult or sticking points that I believe inhibits independent unionism as well. This post continues that thread.
Something interesting and potentially quite powerful is beginning to stir when organizations of this type begin allying under a shared umbrella. I don't know if we can continue to speak of this as independent unionism or not, and I don't believe that that question is primary at this point. What is of more interest to me is that at least some of the old barriers to labor unity are breaking down and that self-interest and necessity are likely driving people to a common table who just a short time ago were siloed. This has an obvious economic side to it: shared advocacy and action for workers rights through our food chain has a clear benefit for all of the workers involved and demonstrates a kind of incipient industrial unionism, if only in spirit. Built into this is a place for consumers, advocacy for racial and immigrant justice, and food justice. And at that point politics and political action, regional and national and global, become almost inescapable. This is not the old syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World or the more cautious political action of mainstream labor, but will this find a place in the tradition of social justice unionism or find that that is also limiting?
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) and other farmworker organizations have attempted something of this nature in the past when they allied with environmental and food safety organizations and attempted to convince supermarkets to post labels or signs at their doors showing that the vegetables and fruit that they were selling was safe, safely and humanely grown and harvested, and that the workers who were engaged in growing and harvesting the food were fairly paid and taken care of. Those campaigns riffed on the use of union labels that used to be prominently displayed at store entrances and in produce sections.They also depended to some extent on the good will or cooperation of some growers who could be convinced or forced by economic or political necessity to break ranks with the more avaricious growers and on a widespread willingness to implement just immigration and labor policies. It's helpful to read Larry Kleinman's writings for needed context here. Those efforts have not been as successful as we have hoped, but the fights to win better conditions in the fields and in food processing and get union labels and food justice signs up at stores is not over. The Food Chain Workers Alliance and the keystone spot that unions have in the Alliance may help to create a new wave of worker and working-class consumer activism. Whatever happens next, a new terrain for education, agitation and unionization is being mapped out.
The Alliance's announcement of the New Seasons Labor Union affiliation reads as follows:
\
WELCOME NEW SEASONS LABOR UNION!
In June, FCWA members voted to welcome New Seasons Labor Union as the newest member of our alliance! New Seasons Market is a chain of grocery stores located in the Portland, OR and SW Washington areas. The NSLU began in the spring of 2022: "Workers at the Seven Corners store, inspired by the success of independent organizing around the country, decided to form a new union from the ground up. Since then, our union has grown to represent over a thousand workers at eleven stores. Our union is dedicated to the idea that all of us deserve fairness, respect, and dignity in our occupations, industry, and community. We fight to achieve this through collective action and collective bargaining."
The following post is a summary issued by the Metro Washington Council, AFL-CIO:
Following a vote of its Executive Council, the AFL-CIO on Tuesday unanimously endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in the 2024 election.
“From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “At every step in her distinguished career in public office, she’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on."
In addition, many of the international unions of Metropolitan Washington Council's Affiliates have also endorsed Harris, including AFGE, AFSCME, AFT, APWU, ATU, CWA, IATSE, IBEW, IFPTE, IUPAT, NNU, and SEIU.
The AFL-CIO press release reads as follows:
July 22, 2024
WASHINGTON—Following a vote of its Executive Council, which represents 60 unions and 12.5 million workers, today the AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in the 2024 election.
“From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “At every step in her distinguished career in public office, she’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on. From taking on Wall Street and corporate greed to leading efforts to expand affordable child care and support vulnerable workers, she’s shown time and again that she’s on our side. With Kamala Harris in the White House, together we’ll continue to build on the powerful legacy of the Biden-Harris administration to create good union jobs, grow the labor movement and make our economy work for all of us.”
As vice president, Harris: Played a critical role in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, investing in good-paying union jobs, bringing manufacturing back to America, lowering prescription drug costs and raising wages
Championed worker organizing and chaired the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, where she championed for new worker organizing and training to create pathways to good union jobs
Other highlights of Harris’ record in support of workers include the following:As a U.S. senator, she fought to expand labor protections and fair wages for agricultural and domestic workers and walked the picket line with International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) workers. She was a vigorous advocate for workers’ freedom to form or join a union, including strongly supporting the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to reform broken labor legislation that stacks the deck against workers.
As attorney general of California, she cracked down on corporate greed, took on the big banks after the 2008 financial crisis to deliver relief for struggling homeowners and protected the most vulnerable workers by tackling wage theft and other corporate crimes.
“The AFL-CIO is proud of our early and steadfast support for the Biden-Harris administration, and now we’ll ratchet up our mass mobilization of union workers to elect Vice President Harris as president,” Shuler continued. “Like Harris, the labor movement doesn’t back down—and we’ll never shy away from a tough fight when the future of workers and unions is on the line. Together, we will defeat Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and their devastating anti-worker Project 2025 agenda in November.”
Six national unions with a combined membership comprising nearly half of all union members in the US have made public a letter sent to President Biden calling for an embargo on delivery of all military aid to Israel because of its continued violation of international law in its repeated attacks on civilians, including civilians who moved to "safe zones" designated by Israel itself and who sheltered in UN schools, hospitals and other facilities that international law says may not be attacked in wartime.
The letter was cosigned by the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Electrical Workers (UE).
The text follows:
President Biden:
We write to publicly call upon your Administration to immediately halt all military aid to Israel as part of the work to secure an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza.
We all shared hope that the three-part ceasefire proposal you outlined in the final week of May would bear fruit, allowing for the immediate end of violence, the safe return of hostages, and the creation of space for a lasting peace.
As we write you today, however, neither Israel nor Hamas have accepted the agreement as proposed. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet members have publicly refused key elements of the deal, despite your characterizing it as an Israeli proposal.
As you said on May 31, the Israeli response has “devastated Hamas forces over the past eight months” and that “Hamas [is] no longer capable of carrying out another October 7th.” Yet it is clear that the Israeli government will continue to pursue its vicious response to the horrific attacks of October 7th until it is forced to stop.
We believe that immediately cutting US military aid to the Israeli government is necessary to bring about a peaceful resolution to this conflict.
Recent reports only underscore the urgency of our demands. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs. Rising tensions in the region threaten to ensnare even more innocent civilians in a wider war. And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and the destruction of basic infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heart-wrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza.
Furthermore, Israel’s refusal to minimize civilian harm and its demonstrated restriction of U.S. humanitarian aid call for a halt to U.S. military aid under the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Control Export Act.
Mr. President, the time to act decisively to end this war is now. Stopping US military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so, it is what U.S. law demands, and it will show your commitment to securing a lasting peace in the region.
A very large crowd of union members, their family members, and supporters gathered in Salem's Peace Plaza and rallied and marched to support AFSCME Locl 2067 in their fight for a fair contract today.
Industriall is running the following report from South Korea. The IndustriALL Global Union "represents 50 million workers in 140 countries in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors and is a force in global solidarity taking up the fight for better working conditions and trade union rights around the world."
Leading 6000 workers out on strike is difficult. First strikes are always especially difficult. Going out on an indefinite strike the first time out seems like an impossible undertaking. I hope that unions here in the United States will support the strike and that we will learn from it.
The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) in South Korea has mobilized 6,000 members to join the first strike in the 55-year history of Samsung Electronics at the company’s semiconductor facility in Hwaseong. The strike was called over failed collective bargaining negotiations and union busting.
The collective bargaining between NSEU and Samsung Electronics reached a deadlock earlier this month as the company refused to agree to the majority of the union’s demands. The demands include 3.5 per cent of base rate increase, paid leave for the date of union establishment, and compensation for loss of wages during the strike.
Ignoring all the union’s strike demands, Samsung Electronics unilaterally set a 3.0 per cent base rate increase with some workers. Plant managers have been intimidating striking workers, saying they would be disadvantaged.
NSEU, affiliated to the Federation of Korean Metalworkers' Trade Unions (FKMTU), has 30,000 members at Samsung Electronics, roughly 24 per cent of the total workforce and is recognized as the representative bargaining union. In response to the uncompromising attitude and union busting, NSEU announced an indefinite strike, urging all members to continue the struggle until its victory.
FKMTU president KIM Junyoung says:
"At Samsung, significant changes are stirring. Five years after the collapse of its no-union management policy, union members are beginning to make their presence felt. Although the struggle is still in its early stages, it signifies the practical collapse of Samsung's no-union management. Solidarity and support are essential at this moment. We will fight together until the end of this struggle."
IndustriALL ICT, electrical and electronics director Alexander Ivanou says :
“IndustriALL supports the NSEU members in their fight for decent working conditions at Samsung Electronics. The company’s operating profit was KRW 6.57 trillion (US$ 4.79 billion) in 2023; it has a moral obligation to share profits with their workers who create revenue and value for the company. We call on Samsung Electronics to return to the negotiation table and engage in genuine social dialogue with NSEU and FKMTU.”
This video from Al Jazeera English gives additional details and some great footage:
FIGHTING TIMES: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War
by Jon Melrod
PM Press. 320 pp. Paperback, epub and PDF editions.
The PM Press blurb describing writer-activist Jon Melroad reads as follows:
Born into the political and cultural quiescence of the 1950s, Jon Melrod grew up in apartheid-like Washington DC. Active in the student movement that opposed the Vietnam War and a supporter of black liberation, Jon embraced the ideology that the working class held the power to radically transform society. He left the campus for the factory in 1973. For thirteen years, he immersed himself in the day-to-day struggles of Milwaukee’s working class, both on the factory floor and in the political arena. Despite FBI surveillance and interference, Jon organized a militant rank-and-file caucus and rose through union ranks to a top leadership position in UAW Local 72. After a mass workforce cutback imposed by AMC’s joint venture partner Renault, he left to attend Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco in 1985. Graduating cum laude with a JD, he opened a law firm in San Francisco, successfully representing hundreds of political refugees.
This is a good introduction to the author of Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War and the book but much more needs to be said. Another introduction to Melrod and his work and a recent interview that he did with Valley Labor Report is here.
Jon Melrod was one of many campus activists who left academia to take work in factories, mills, and coal mines in the late 1960s and 1970s to assimilate into the blue-collar sections of the working-class and build a socialist movement from that base. Most of the people who took that path were quite dedicated to their politics and to their organizations, and taking the steps that they did and staying with it required a special level of self-discipline and a love for the working-class. Many of them failed, but many more had an overall positive impact on the lives and well-being of others and have much to teach today. A few memoirs from this generation of activists and those who followed immediately in their footsteps are available and are worth reading (see here, here, and here). In Melrod's case, his work around dangerous chemicals and work processes brought on a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer which he has managed to beat.
This book can be read as an interesting memoir and as a needed contribution to labor history. It tells us much about how auto workers lived and worked in the Midwest in 1970s and early 1980s and as the auto industry in the United States bottomed-out for a time and took part of the labor movement with us. It describes in good detail important aspects of union-management conflict in the Kenosha, Wisconsin AMC plant and intra-union conflicts as well. UAW Local 72, the union local representing the Kenosha plant, had a history of militant struggle behind it by the time that Melrod arrived there. Union stewards had real power in the plant of a kind that is hard to recall and explain to young workers today. The local was an example of social justice unionism working relatively well when corporate America and many in the labor movement found this type of unionism suspect or dangerous.
That proud history of the union pushing back against the company and winning many key battles over the years and developing a relatively democratic internal structure and culture was incomplete or unfinished, according to Melrod. Racial and gender-based segregation persisted, racist and sexist supervisors and workers presented special problems, and Local 72 was at times vulnerable to bad internal leadership and to pressure from UAW top leadership. The Local 72 union contract had many outstanding features that gave the union some needed advantages, but pay and benefits lagged behind the contracts covering the Big Three. AMC workers, like all auto workers, were employed in an industry that depended on consumer choices and, but the AMC workers had less job security than workers employed by the Big Three.
Melrod's book can also be read as a guide to organizing, mobilizing and action for young and radical workers, and it's here that the author does his best work. Readers who take up Fighting Times as a kind of training manual should read the book slowly and with some deliberation. Melrod became a successful local union activist and leader by taking strategic and deliberate steps and by working with others and by doing his best to fit in to his work groups while still maintaining his principles. There are real challenges to doing this day by day and every day and coming out ahead and the book goes into some detail when discussing the specific challenges that Melrod and his comrades faced. The author takes readers through many of the basics of workplace agitation and building a caucus within a union, becoming a vocal and radical anti-racist and anti-sexist union steward, resisting the inevitable attacks by conservative coworkers and bosses, movement building at work and in the community, negotiating, and even building international solidarity. Melrod was fired and won reinstatement, he and others who he cooperated with to print a radical bulletin were sued and won, he was threatened and had his car vandalized and survived, he ran for union office and took a couple of losses before he and a slate of radicals and progressives won, and he reached out to Black, Chicano and women workers in his plant and built principled unity with them. The FBI helped blacklist him, and he went through years of being redbaited, but he won many of his coworkers to his side. All of this took place under extraordinarily stressful conditions.
I want to underscore that I found Fighting Times to be a much better and more useful teaching tool than Jane McAlevey's popular No Shortcuts or Hamilton Nolan's The Hammer. Readers should keep in mind that Melrod remains a committed revolutionary and comes from a place that McAlevey and Nolan have not. Melrod describes describes class conflict and class war but doesn't use the too-popular rhetoric of "class struggle unionism." He takes up how to handle losing fights against the bosses and still maintain radical hopes and perspective. These political differences matter.
The book does have some shortcomings. Melrod doesn't mention it, but he was a part of a tendency known as the New Communist Movement (NCM), at least for a time. NCM activists were often hardcore and especially dedicated people who were just as often a bit ahead of the political curve and trends on the Left. The book doesn't give readers much insight into this side of Melrod's considerable political work or tell us much about how his political and union commitments dovetailed and what happened when they didn't. There are also moments in the book when Melrod loses needed objectivity and could have, or should have, shown more understanding. There are passing moments when he relies on stereotypes to describe people. He writes with a particular symmetry of the relationships between class, race, gender, and labor in mind but he doesn't explain this or provide context for this. None of these shortcomings are of such importance that you shouldn't buy this book and study it carefully.
I understand that the first PM Press book run has nearly sold out. I hope that the publisher will do a second run and that Jon Melrod can do a book tour.
