Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin who covers labor organizing.
At Epic Systems, a Wisconsin-based software company, workers had complaints that will be familiar to many workers across the United States: an oppressive culture of surveillance and control, executives pushing to end their pandemic-induced working from home. Now, Epic’s workers are organizing.
In an interview with Jacobin, former Labour Party shadow chancellor John McDonnell discusses Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID crisis, recalls the radical atmosphere of the 1980s Labour Party, and draws the lessons from Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as party leader.
More than a century after the landmark Homestead strike against Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire, workers at four Pittsburgh museums — including three founded by Carnegie — are unionizing with the United Steelworkers. It’s the latest episode in a nationwide wave of museum organizing.
Seeking to maintain the momentum of the George Floyd protests, activists have launched an occupation outside City Hall in New York to demand a $1 billion cut in the NYPD budget. So far, there’s little sign that the city council or Mayor Bill de Blasio are prepared to give in.
In an interview, longtime socialist-feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham reflects on her decades on the Left, grappling with the reality of being a socialist from the middle class, and E. P. and Dorothy Thompson and the classic book The Making of the English Working Class.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos encouraged his white-collar workers to cancel meetings for Juneteenth and “reflect and support each other.” An Amazon warehouse worker fired after organizing for workplace protections thinks that’s “a bunch of bullshit.”
No Evil Foods markets itself as a left-wing, “revolutionary” food company. But its workers say the company recently busted their union drive and fired organizers.
During yesterday’s protests against the police murder of George Floyd, Amazon declared that it “stand[s] in solidarity with the Black community — our employees, customers, and partners — in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.” But the company is no racial justice ally — not least because it has resolutely attempted to smash its workers’ organizing efforts.
On Monday night, workers at a Chicago Amazon warehouse joined a nationwide wave of walkouts over what they say is management’s inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic. One of the action’s organizers spoke to Jacobin about it.
We didn’t know we were entering a new era until it arrived. We can never go back.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all nonessential workers to stay home. But construction workers are still being forced to build luxury condos — more evidence that for capital, high-priced real estate is more important than workers’ lives.
The San Francisco Bay Area’s Tartine Bakery is world-famous for its award-winning baked goods. But fame and awards don’t pay workers’ bills or give them a say on the job — which is why those workers say they want a union.
Recent data from the Center for Disease Control show an alarming spike in suicides across the United States. We can’t prevent every suicide by rebuilding our social safety net. But the uptick is a collective failure — one that requires political solutions.
In an often barren media landscape, Deadspin was an oasis of editorial independence and irreverence. So its ultra-rich owners killed it.
How Rory Fanning went from Army Ranger to war resister.
Comparing the treatment of Jeffrey Epstein to Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed Eric Garner’s murder, reveals the grotesque inequality at the heart of American society. There’s one set of rules for the rich, and an entirely different set for the poor.
When it comes to workplace organizing, there’s no such thing as a “privileged” worker. You’re either with your coworkers or you’re against them.
The residents of Squirrel Hill refuse to become debilitated in their grief. The world beyond them should do the same.
Let’s seize this opportunity to change how harassment is dealt with.
Workers at the Los Angeles Times are unionizing not just to improve their working conditions but to ensure the future of the paper.