Page 18 - Labor Notes News Today

On Thursday, Congress voted to impose a contract on 120,000 freight railroad workers and preempt the first national rail stoppage in 30 years. The move ends three years of negotiations, mediation, and federal intervention under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), the federal law that governs railroad workers. In the final months of the process, rail workers voted down several

If your union goes into negotiations right now and doesn’t win its biggest raise ever, you’re leaving money on the table. Soaring inflation means it takes a bigger raise just to break even. And with unemployment low, labor has extra leverage to win more. Dining hall workers at Northeastern University in Boston just approved a new contract that will raise them to $30 an hour by

Persistent supply chain worries, including a potential rail strike, continue to hang over the holidays. What you can do to keep it from upending plans

“This was the ‘which side are you on?’ moment, and the White House chose the railroad bosses,” one labor reporter wrote.

The UAW apparatus opposed a 30 day extension of the election deadline because it assumed, correctly, that it would result in a substantial increase in the opposition vote, and that many of those votes would be for the socialist candidate, Will Lehman.

The NLRB’s budget has remained stagnant for nine years, severely undermining its ability to enforce labor laws.

When I stepped down as Chicago Teachers Union president earlier this year (the union has a dynamic new officer team led by Stacy Davis Gates), I did it partly because I was ready for a change, partly to make room at the top, and partly because I think we need a reckoning about the direction of the labor movement. Stepping down gives me a chance to write and speak out without

Young people are tired of being treated unfairly at work, and unlike the generations before them, they are actually doing something about it.

UW Havens Wright Center lecture by Labor Notes founder Kim Moody, on Zoom. RSVP for link.

We’re excited to announce that the next Labor Notes Conference will be April 19-21, 2024, in Chicago. Our last one was the biggest ever, drawing 4,000 workers—and the youngest ever, with lots of newly organized workers. Who will be the surprising newcomers, the strike warriors, the newly elected reformers at the next conference in 2024? Stay tuned. But if you can’t wait that