Hello my friends,
Nearly 30 million American workers are on unemployment or waiting to get it, and we are looking ahead to what is sure to be a grim fall and winter that will bring more lockdowns and suffering. So go outside and enjoy the sun now! It’s free—much like a subscription to this labor newsletter, or sending labor news tips to me. We have to enjoy the small things, when all the big things seem bad.
This Week in Working
The Largest Private-Sector Strike of the Year Is Headed for Union Victory
By Jeremy Gantz
The walkout at Bath Iron Works—which represents the largest private-sector strike of the year—has lasted for nearly seven weeks. But late last week, both sides saw a breakthrough as a tentative agreement was reached that appears to hand the union a victory on its demands.
The Green New Deal Just Won a Major Union Endorsement. What's Stopping the AFL-CIO?
By Mindy Isser
Union support for the Green New Deal is growing. It’s time for America’s largest labor federation to get on board.
The Return of the Construction Industry Has Brought a Surge of Immigrant Worker Deaths
By Maurizio Guerrero
The rush to keep building through the pandemic has compounded the risks for construction workers.
Introducing “In The Gap,” a Podcast About the Gender Pay Gap and Black Women
By Chandra Whitfield
In These Times presents In The Gap, a 12-episode podcast series..
The Working People Podcast
Maggie Levantovskaya: Working People talks to writer, organizer, and adjunct lecturer Maggie Levantovskaya about immigrating from the Soviet Union, navigating class differences in the U.S., and about how so many higher education professionals have become gig workers. Listen here.
The Big Issue: Election Madness
Will Donald Trump try to steal the election? We, of course, have no way to know that, except by evaluating his past actions. So, definitely. Yes he will. If current polling holds up (and it may well not), and Biden wins the popular vote and the Electoral College (given a fair count, which we may well not get), I judge there to be two roughly equal possibilities: either Trump throws a tantrum and decides he doesn’t want to be president and petulantly gives up entirely, or he tries to pull every authoritarian shenanigan he possibly can in order to invalidate mail-in ballots, throw the legitimacy of votes into question, and push the ultimate decision of who won into Congress, so that he can steal it through dirty political means.
Which one of these occurs may depend entirely on how jazzed up on Diet Cokes he happens to be on election night.
If he does try to steal the election, we are in for a serious crisis. The process will drag on for weeks, through vote counting and legal challenges and a tidal wave of misinformation. It is vital that Americans not only take to the street in protest when it becomes clear this is happening, but that we stay in the streets the entire time that this is all playing out. We will need a democratic occupation of cities across the country to keep the pressure on and ensure that Republicans know that everyone is watching. If the public’s energy flags, that is when corruption will win.
And that is where the labor movement comes in. Unions—along with political parties and other well-organized political groups—are some of the institutions most capable of organizing and mobilizing members to take to the streets for an extended period of time. Union organizers are the best organizers you will find anywhere. So let them organize. We have more than two months until Election Day. Start organizing. Unions across the country should at least have emergency plans in place that will allow them to channel large numbers of their members into the streets in strategic places to protest, and to keep a rotation of members going constantly until the crisis is resolved. Public outrage will certainly fuel an initial burst of protest, but if we want to make sure that the protests don’t decline, it will take organizing talent. Unions have it. The time to use it is coming. Get ahead of the worst case scenario. Just in case.
If you think this is all far-fetched, I envy your innocent bliss.
Labor News This Week
The motivation for canceling the college football season is union busting--the NCAA would rather lose a season than an entire business model.
There have been many, many shocking stories of how workers have been treated during this pandemic, but cruise ship workers may have been subjected to the craziest treatment of all. They left them on the damn boats for months! What?
A deep dive on how the Writers Guild took on the Hollywood agencies, and won.
Uber is threatening to shut down in California if a court forces them to treat their employees as employees. Okay. You suck!
The Sports Illustrated union is fighting with its owners to maintain basic ethical editorial standards at the storied publication. This will be the norm in media rather than the exception in the near future, and non-union newsrooms will be completely at the mercy of management.
Periodic reminder that management-side anti-union attorneys are scum and should not be welcomed in respectable civil society.
Unemployed workers setting up soup kitchens in front of the offices of senators who won’t vote to extend unemployment benefits is a pretty good tactic.
The Dandelion Cafe in Orland, Florida locked out its workers after they decided to unionize. You can support the workers here.
Unionize tech!!!
Final Thought
“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this—with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need—this life is hell.” - W.E.B. DuBoi
In solidarity,
Hamilton Nolan
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