The role of the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union at Columbia and New York University wsws.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wsws.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Federal judge hands UAW ex-President Dennis Williams wrist-slap sentence of 21 months for corruption charges
On Tuesday, a federal judge for the Eastern District of Michigan sentenced former United Auto Workers International President Dennis Williams to 21 months in prison with one year of supervised release, three months less than originally recommended. In addition, he must pay $132,000 in restitution and a $10,000 fine. Williams is one of 15 individuals to have been charged in connection to the ongoing criminal investigation into corruption within the UAW.
US District Judge Paul Borman handed down the sentence after Williams’ conviction of conspiracy to embezzle UAW members’ dues payments between 2010 and September 2019 with former International President Gary Jones and other high-ranking UAW officials “for the benefit of himself and other senior UAW officials,” according to the Justice Department’s official release.
The US labour movement has an unfortunate practice of failing to publicly draw lessons from our setbacks. Yet it’s important that labour and the left learn from the Bessemer Amazon experience. After all, we’ve seen a series of defeats in the South from Volkswagen to Nissan and now Amazon. [On 29 March a government-mandated ballot on union recognition at the Amazon Bessemer distribution centre returned a clear anti-recognition majority].
In this article we want to focus a bit on problems with the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organisers; and especially what we need to do differently to win.
Amazonians United: A new trap for workers
Last month, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) lost its unionization vote at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama by a more than two-to-one margin. The RWDSU, which relied on the backing of the Biden administration, Democratic members of Congress and even right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio, was incapable of generating any significant support from workers.
As the
World Socialist Web Site has explained in a numberofarticles analyzing the RWDSU union drive, from the outset the effort was a top-down operation, an initiative of the Democratic Party and AFL-CIO, rather than an expression of workers’ opposition from below. The Democrats have made a calculated decision that the unions, having proven themselves reliable caretakers of corporate interests, must be provided further institutional support, so they may better serve as a brake on the class struggle and keep it from developing in a more radical, social
The BAmazon Loss and the Road Ahead labornotes.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from labornotes.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.