Troublemakers Blog
August 11, 2017 /
Some 1,800 members of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 have been on strike at Spectrum/Time Warner Cable in New York and New Jersey since March 28, more than four months ago. Since then, only a fraction of the workforce has crossed picket lines, but the company is working hard to keep up normal operations by using scabs and subcontractors to break the strike »
August 08, 2017 /
Mexican blueberry picker Honesto Silva Ibarra died in Washington state on Sunday after complaining of headaches but being forced by his supervisor to return to work in the blazing sun. He ended up in a coma. »
August 03, 2017 /
As right-to-work laws proliferate, it's worth remembering that they originated as a means to maintain Jim Crow labor relations in the South and to beat back what was seen as a Jewish conspiracy. »
August 01, 2017 / Alexandra Bradbury
After two passengers died in a horrific stabbing on a train in Portland, Oregon, the transit agency upped police presence. But the union is pushing for a different solution.
The May 26 incident began with a man yelling racist slurs at two young women of color. When three passengers defended the women, the man stabbed them. »
July 28, 2017 /
A beloved 53-year old miner named Larry Marek was killed on the job at the Lucky Friday mine in Mullan, Idaho just a few years back. Steelworkers Local 5114 had been warning the company about the stability of a certain area called a stope. Management had Marek mine out the last piece of earth supporting the cavern for the ore it contained and the roof collapsed. »
July 20, 2017 /
On the night of July 13 Katy Balaguer thought she was ready for what was coming next. She was no stranger to protests, to tear gas, to the cops’ batons and the sound they make when they hit the body of your co-workers. That day, from the roof of the PepsiCo factory in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she watched as her co-workers and their supporters were brutally »
July 06, 2017 /
The final two decades of the 19th century, beginning with the great strike wave of 1877, and the first two decades of the 20th century were a period of intense class combat in the United States. »
June 23, 2017 / Chris Brooks
At Labor Notes trainings I hear lots of reasons why union members think their co-workers aren’t involved: They don’t understand labor history. They don’t appreciate all the union has done for them. They watch Fox News. They’re scared or apathetic. »
June 16, 2017 /
Some unions are ready to jump on Trump's "Buy American" bandwagon. In an op-ed last week, Teamsters President James P. »
June 15, 2017 / Alexandra Bradbury
On June 12 Teresa Schloth, a Brooklyn dialysis nurse for 32 years, walked out on her first-ever strike. She and her co-workers are battling a billion-dollar corporation that’s trying to wring greater profits out of kidney patients by skimping on staffing and shifting jobs out of the unions. »