In the 1960s and 70s, conservative leaders of the AFL-CIO and many national unions viewed militant activists in the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, and women’s movements with alarm. When student radicals started migrating from campus and community organizing to unionized workplaces, labor officials did not welcome them.
Union members in many states and cities are pushing for a stronger voice in pension investments. And sometimes they’re actually winning: They’re holding pension boards accountable and advocating for investments that insure worker protections, climate resiliency, and decent retirement benefits.
Silicosis is a lethal workplace illness that killed thousands each year up through the 1960s. In recent decades, thanks to union workplace safety fights, it became much rarer. Annual deaths dropped to the hundreds. The disease affected mostly older workers with longer exposures. So it was hard for stonecutter Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, 35, to get a clear diagnosis in 2019 when he first developed a cough and shortness of breath. It wasn’t until two years later that he was told he had silicosis—and only had a year to live.
Last month, 3,800 meatpacking workers in UFCW Local 7 in Greeley, Colorado launched the industry’s first major strike in 40 years. The three-week unfair labor practice strike was the first time workers had ever struck the JBS Greeley beef packing plant, one of the company’s largest. ULP charges against JBS included the illegal termination of a member of the bargaining committee and surveillance and intimidation of workers for participation in union activity.
Last month, 3,800 meatpacking workers in UFCW Local 7 in Greeley, Colorado launched the industry’s first major strike in 40 years. The three-week unfair labor practice strike was the first time workers had ever struck the JBS Greeley beef packing plant, one of the company’s largest. ULP charges against JBS included the illegal termination of a member of the bargaining committee and surveillance and intimidation of workers for participation in union activity.
Over the last decade Rhode Island has been a hotbed of progressive, pro-worker legislation. But it wasn’t always this way. It took years of proactive organizing by the labor movement on legislative and electoral campaigns. This “blue” New England state was led by Republican Governor Donald Carcieri from 2003 to 2011. During his term he cut 1,000 public sector jobs, passed a regressive property tax law, and attacked pensions for teachers and other public workers—actions that were enabled by centrist Democrats in the state legislature who were lukewarm towards labor.
Union baristas are finally back to the negotiating table with Starbucks, but the workers charge that rather than progressing, the company is reopening already agreed-upon issues. “They're trying to move backwards on issues we've already settled instead of settling the few that we have left,” said Mina Leon, a barista in downtown Manhattan who struck for two months to get the company back to the table.
In response to Jane Slaughter's interview of Frank Bardacke, I think Bardacke is right in pointing to the lack of democracy in the United Farmworkers as one reason why Cesar Chavez went unchallenged for so many years after sexually abusing women in the farmworker movement.
El gobierno mexicano está fallando en procesar la violencia de represalia y amenaza contra trabajadores que se organizan, según un nuevo informe, lo que coloca a México en incumplimiento de su acuerdo comercial con Estados Unidos y Canadá. El informe enumera nueve campañas de organización distintas en las que se hicieron amenazas contra trabajadores: en cada caso, los autores encontraron “poca evidencia de investigación o enjuiciamiento por parte de las autoridades.”
After a years-long campaign by unions, Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to extend collective bargaining rights to nearly half a million state, county, and municipal government employees.
After a years-long campaign by unions, Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to extend collective bargaining rights to nearly half a million state, county, and municipal government employees.
In 2011 Frank Bardacke published an 800-page history of the Farm Workers union: Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. It opened many eyes to the reasons the UFW became a shadow of its former self. Bardacke starts the book with an epigraph, a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “O what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down...”
Six thousand San Francisco educators won fully funded health care, sanctuary schools, and an up to 8.5 percent raise over two years by walking out for the first time in nearly 50 years. After just four days on strike, February 9 to 12, they won their top demands—some of which the district had previously refused even to bargain over. “It was hard and it was joyful and we f-ing beat them,” said Ilan Desai-Geller, a high school teacher who served on the bargaining committee and as a regional strike captain. “They found the money all of a sudden.
For months, the country and the world have been watching Minnesota, where the Trump administration’s military occupation by ICE, Border Patrol, and Homeland Security has been met by a multi-faceted grassroots resistance. As rank-and-file electricians, we sought to involve our local unions in the campaign to push ICE out of the Twin Cities and to support our immigrant neighbors and fellow workers.
In less than a quarter-mile stretch of sidewalk, chatter in 57 languages overlaps with the sound of dancehall, bachata, Thai pop, Haitian kompa, and Micronesian hip-hop. At sunset, dozens gather for iftar, breaking their Ramadan fast; the music, pulsing from boomboxes and cell phones held up to megaphones, swells into one shared hum. In this sliver of land across from the sprawling JBS beef processing plant—among the largest in the country—workers from around the world have united in the largest U.S. meatpacking strike in 40 years.
Last year a network of unions and community organizations organized the largest May Day actions in U.S. history: 1,200 actions in all 50 states. This year, the stakes are even higher, and the examples inspiring us are even bolder.
When it comes to A.I., there’s a stark gap in ambition between business and labor. If A.I. ushers in a technological boom, corporations intend to use it to wage total war on labor. They will use efficiency gains to cut human jobs, surveil workers, and degrade work. Even if A.I. falls short of its lofty (perhaps inflated) valuations, the working class may still suffer severe consequences, since our economy and retirement increasingly depend on A.I. investments.
Desde que más de 4.000 agentes del ICE llegaron a la ciudad de Minneapolis, el barista de Starbucks Alex Rivers ha intentado a equilibrar la rigurosa concentración que exige el trabajo–se espera que los baristas escriban en cada vaso y completen cada pedido en cuatro minutos o menos, según él–con el miedo persistente de que los agentes puedan irrumpir en cualquier momento.
Labor Notes is delighted to welcome two terrific new staff writer-organizers and three great interns as we get ready for our big conference in Chicago in June. We’re also bidding a fond farewell to a retiring colleague. Paul Prescod, staff writer/organizer, started in January. He has been a public school teacher and rank-and-file activist in the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and a staff organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union. He covers transit workers, K-12 education, and the building trades in the clean energy economy.
The 24,000-member Oregon Nurses Association has elected a slate of reform candidates to statewide leadership positions. The Caucus for Powerful Reform (CPR) won 15 out of the 21 seats it ran for, including the presidency, vice-presidency, secretary, and a majority of board of director seats.
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Since more than 4,000 ICE agents descended on the city of Minneapolis, Starbucks barista Alex Rivers has tried to balance the exacting focus the job requires—baristas are expected to write on every cup and complete every order in four minutes or less, he said—with the gnawing fear that agents could burst in at any moment.
As federal agents laid siege to the city of Minneapolis, rank-and-file postal workers in the Twin Cities organized two anti-ICE rallies. The first, on December 15, was held in response to ICE agents using the employee parking lots at the Lake Street and Powderhorn Post Offices to stage their operations. The second demonstration was held on January 18, after the killing of Renee Good. This was a much larger affair with around 250 participants, and involved other local unions such as the teachers, communications workers, and bus drivers.
A corporate artificial intelligence frenzy is sowing fear for workers on a massive scale. Seventy-one percent of people in the U.S., according to a Reuters poll on A.I., are concerned “too many people will lose jobs.”
Members of the Letter Carriers (NALC) have kicked off their next contract fight. Negotiations began February 25, and their current agreement expires in May. On Sunday, February 22, letter carriers held rallies across the U.S. as part of their “Fight Like Hell” campaign.
En noviembre y diciembre de 2025 promovimos y coordinamos, desde la Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), una huelga en el centro logístico de Amazon RMU1, en Murcia. En ese momento trabajaban allí alrededor de 2.000 trabajadores y trabajadoras. La experiencia demuestra que, incluso en una multinacional diseñada para neutralizar la organización colectiva, una huelga bien diseñada —basada en el conocimiento real del proceso productivo y en la autoorganización— puede golpear donde más duele y arrancar conquistas materiales.
At an Amazon fulfillment center in Spain, we used a flurry of brief walkouts late last year to force the company to improve wages and time off. We struck for three days in November and in December in a series of “flexible strikes,” timed to hit production with intermittent walkouts during the holiday “peak” season. On December 22, the union committee announced a settlement, negotiated through government mediators.
There were six of us at the first meeting to form a union at Whole Foods in Philadelphia: too many to fit around the coffee shop table, a good sign, so we moved to a restaurant around the corner. We talked about disrespectful managers, low pay, and the loss of paid breaks and health care for part-timers. “I’ve seen many wonderful people come and go” in a decade at the store, said produce worker Ed Dupree. “So many of them worked hard and weren’t always treated well, especially after the Amazon acquisition.”
Federal workers and unions have proven to be a bulwark defending the rule of law and vital public services during President Trump’s second term. Our union at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a case in point. It has been a year since Chapter 335 of the National Treasury Employees Union started its campaign to stop the Trump administration from illegally dismantling the Bureau and firing its workers.
[This article is part of a Labor Notes roundtable series: How Can Unions Defend Worker Power Against Trump 2.0? We will be publishing more contributions here and in our magazine in the months ahead. Click here to read the rest of the series.—Editors]
For four decades, a federal count of union members has been the annual physical exam for the labor movement. Did we grow or shrink, and where? The tally just came out for 2025. At face value, the number looks better than expected, given a year of open warfare on us from CEOs who want to automate everything and a bloodthirsty federal government.
Can unions lead the push toward an environmentally sustainable future, and secure more good jobs in the process? With the Trump administration attacking federal investments in green industries from electrical vehicles to wind, the United Auto Workers is attempting this strategy at the state level in California.
Los trabajadores de la red de transporte público incluyendo al Trolebús, Cablebús y Tren Ligero podrían pronto frenar el sistema de transporte masivo de la Ciudad de México si no se llega a un acuerdo con su empleador, Servicio de Transportes Eléctricos.
Rail, trolleybus, and cable car workers could soon hit the brakes on Mexico City’s mass transit system if their demands are not met. Their union, the Tram Workers Alliance of Mexico (Alianza de Tranviarios de México, ATM) is one of Mexico’s oldest democratic unions. The 2,700 workers are fighting for raises, job security language, and more hires and training in order to expand and maintain Mexico City’s electric transport infrastructure. The union has set a strike deadline of March 3.
Editors’ note: As of today, 4,200 nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian are still on strike at hospitals in upper Manhattan. They first walked out more than a month ago, and they’ve kept strike lines open after voting down a tentative agreement 3,099 to 867 last week. Nurses say NYP still hasn't met their demands for adequate staffing, job security protections, and proper enforcement mechanisms even for agreed-upon staffing ratios.
North Carolina is one of six states that prohibit collective bargaining for public school staff. But unionized workers in two school districts have built enough bottom-up power to force their employers to “meet and confer,” a non-binding form of negotiation. Labor Notes’ Ellen David Friedman talked with Carlos Perez and Allison Swaim of the Durham Association of Educators, representing 5,000 teachers and classified staff.
Update, February 20: After staying out for an additional week, the 4,200 nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospitals have reached a new tentative agreement, recommended by the hospital bargaining committee. They will vote on it starting today. —Editors The largest and longest nurses strike in the city’s history will continue at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospitals after nurses there decisively rejected the hospital chain’s contract offer 3,099 to 867.
The tentacles of the global logistics juggernaut Amazon reach into every corner of the economy, gripping the planet and workers. Amazon dominates retail e-commerce with a 40 percent market share. It is making major inroads into health care (One Medical), grocery (Whole Foods), Hollywood (Amazon Studios MGM), information technology (Amazon Web Services), and artificial intelligence.
Volkswagen had dangled a treat: a ratification bonus of $4,000, sweetened by $1,500 if a first contract at its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was approved by Halloween 2025. But auto workers had a trick up their sleeves: collective action. One hundred and sixty workers on the second shift hampered that day’s production schedule by skipping work in a mass call-out. Workers used sick time or paid time off to secure the day off, leaving management in a bind.
On January 31 my husband and I stood shoulder to shoulder with thousands of union members and community allies in Portland’s South Waterfront. We gathered for a peaceful, permitted rally and march: “Labor Against ICE.” More than 30 labor organizations had united under one banner for the first time in my memory, not just for contract fights or strike support, but to say “ICE Out” and “Solidarity Now.” I’m president of the Longshore (ILWU) Auxiliary 11 and my husband Jamison is president of ILWU Local 4.
Starbucks has signed union contracts almost nowhere, but in Chile, workers have a national agreement covering 176 stores. They were the first in the world to unionize, in 2009.
More unions across the country are taking a stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement since the January 23 mass strike in Minneapolis and the January 24 killing of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse and union member. Pretti was a member of the Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3669, working in the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Hospital. His death at the hands of Border Patrol agents has shocked and outraged people across the country. Health care and V.A. workers have felt it even more keenly.
Fifteen thousand New York nurses are more than three weeks into their strike for a fairer contract. Yesterday members of the New York State Nurses Association braved below-freezing temperatures to march across the Brooklyn Bridge and deliver a message to City Hall. Hundreds of nurses joined together in Cadman Plaza Park, clad in cherry-red NYSNA beanies and holding aloft signs that read “Safe Staffing Saves Lives,” “Quality Healthcare for All,” and “Hospital Execs Literally Make Us Sick."
Workers in Malaysia who make screens like the one you are reading this article on are protesting after union leaders were fired following an organizing victory. The workers make LED screens for companies including Apple. The Electronics Industry Employees Union Northern Region (EIEUNR) won an election in November to represent workers at the Lumileds factory in Penang. Of the 1,200 eligible voters, 65 percent voted for the union, with 89 percent turnout.
Starbucks barista Christi Gomoljak has been on strike for 80 days. Managers at her Disney store in Anaheim, California had taken away the workers’ restroom without consultation. “There was a note on our break table that we were losing our employee restroom,” she said. Workers would have to go elsewhere in the busy theme park. Management also accused workers of not really being sick when they took their sick leave, said Gomoljak. On top of that, “We were told by our store managers not to talk to each other.
Anti-immigrant myths flood our airwaves. They dominate news cycles and our online feeds. And now they’re amplified from the highest halls of power. President Donald Trump has asserted, for example, that millions of immigrants came to the U.S. “from jails, from prisons, from insane asylums,” a claim one expert found “too ridiculous to dignify.”
In a hospital, there is always another patient waiting. As soon as one bed empties, another is filled. At UnityPoint in Des Moines, nurses were expected to keep that system running no matter the cost to our patients, to our licenses, or to ourselves. By 2024 our hospital systems were routinely over capacity, patient wait times were astronomical, and staffing was dangerously thin. Nurses were expected to do more with less, while executives continued to reward themselves.
On January 23, Minnesota unions and community organizations seized the public imagination with “a Day of Truth and Freedom,” an economic blackout that drew perhaps 100,000 marchers to downtown Minneapolis.
One hundred and fifty workers at a vehicle processing center in Tacoma, Washington, won their first contract last year, in a huge step for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union organizing down the supply chain. Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics had opened the VPC across the street from a major terminal in the Port of Tacoma, where longshore workers are represented by ILWU Local 23. This “roll-on, roll-off” (ro-ro) terminal handles vehicles and other cargo that is driven on and off ships.
Icicles hung from the beards of men in union beanies. The lobbies of large commercial buildings in downtown Minneapolis opened to the public for respite filled with people rubbing each other’s sore feet, peeling the sticky adhesive off foot warmers to place them under their socks, and jamming their feet into thickly insulated boots.