May Day 2022 marked a year when worker organizing crested in historic resurgence in the U.S. Mass outrage against racism, embodied in earlier enormous Black Lives Matter protests, flowed into red-hot anger at the bosses’ exploitation of workers’ heroic frontline efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result? Workers walked off…
Education workers organize the South
By calvin deutschbein posted on April 5, 2021
Elon, N.C.
Two years after voting by a 2-to-1 margin to unionize, on March 4 the embattled Elon Faculty Union finally forced the greedy administrators of Elon University to the bargaining table. EFU is Local 32 of the Service Employees Union, Workers United Southern Region.
Students for an Equitable Elon stage a banner drop in March 2020, one of many direct actions in support of the Elon Faculty Union.
A victory for all of us
The faculty union represents hundreds of adjunct and contingent faculty, a powerful presence of organized educators on this rural campus near Greensboro, N.C. The university sits in one of the most reactionary locales in the U.S., home to unusually violent voter suppression and family-separation actions by local law enforcement. U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, one of the leading architects of the Trump campaign to disrupt the 2020 presidential election, is a trustee o
Portland, Ore.
The majority Black workforce in Bessemer is challenging the world’s richest human, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in their fight to be recognized by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Bezos is so desperate to bust the union drive, he is illegally offering workers $2,000 to $3,000 “resignation bonuses.”
Speaking in East New York, part of Brooklyn, N.Y., outside an Amazon fulfillment center, Omowale Clay from the D12 Movement said: “A yes vote for the union will be a mighty blow against Amazon. A win in Bessemer will be a shot in the arm to organized labor, which will be heard around the world!”