Page 6 - Workers Struggles News Today

Amazon and other companies have cut the amount of time workers can receive sick pay due to COVID-19 infection.

The critical lesson of this year’s strikes and protests is that determination and militancy is not enough. The working class cannot defend its rights without independently mobilising on a socialist program.

Workers in India and around the world must take serious warning from the Indian government’s rapid deployment of military and para-military forces to suppress an anti-privatization strike by 20,000 power workers in Jammu and Kashmir.

Recent workers’ struggles in India prompt us to examine the concept of autonomy more closely. Movements in the Gurgaon-Manesar region have consciously or unconsciously addressed the reality of the social factory and have combined mobilizations from below and mass initiative with the need to formulate an appropriate strategy and effective set of tactics.

A rail strike by 2,000 workers in São Paulo paralyzed three railway lines on August 24. It came in the wake of hundreds of transit strikes and work stoppages in Brazil during the pandemic.

In the face of a corporate media intimidation campaign, the 1,100 striking workers at Olymel's hog slaughtering and processing plant in Vallée-Jonction, Quebec, rejected a sellout agreement endorsed by their union.

US retail and food service industry complains of lack of workers The US retail and food service industry is dealing with a severe labor shortage. According to Landed, a restaurant hiring app, the industry faces a deficit of 3.4 million jobs, a number which is expected to grow. One poll found more than 31 percent of restaurant company leaders have been forced to close stores because of a lack of workers. An additional 44 percent of respondents stated they were still considering whether to close....

UAW works overtime to end Columbia graduate strike before NYU graduate struggles begin The Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC), affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) are working overtime to bring the strike by 3,000 graduate workers at Columbia University to a close. The strike is currently on “pause,” a maneuver by the union to wind down the strike under the auspices of federal mediation. This action, carried out behind the backs of graduate students, has triggered overwhelming oppo...

Columbia graduate workers: Organize opposition to the UAW strike “pause”! Late Friday evening, the Bargaining Committee (BC) for the United Auto Worker (UAW)-affiliated Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC) announced that it had agreed to a “pause” in the strike at Columbia University behind the backs of graduate students. The BC agreed to this “pause” in exchange for contract mediation from a “neutral” third party. The call for third party arbitration is a hallmark of a UAW sello...

Fuel price hikes in Brazil provoke protests by truckers and oil workers Yesterday, Brazil’s state-run oil giant Petrobras announced it would increase gasoline prices by 8.8 percent, and diesel by 5.5 percent, in order to bring national prices into alignment with international rates. It was the sixth time in 2021 alone that the company has announced price hikes. Fuel price hikes of 50 percent for gasoline and 40 percent for diesel since the beginning of the year are fueling growing social unre...