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Workers & Unions blog
Captive Audience Meetings and the 2024 NLRB Decision Against Them What captive audience meetings are, how employers like Amazon in Bessemer used them, why the labor board banned mandatory ones in November 2024, and where that ruling stands now. Why Teacher Pay Has Fallen Behind Other College Graduates Teachers earn far less than other college graduates with similar schooling, and the gap has widened for decades. The argument that the pay penalty, not a lack of passion, drives shortages. Bostock v. Clayton County and What Title VII Now Protects at Work A Georgia child-welfare worker joined a gay softball league and lost his job. The 2020 ruling in his case reads the 1964 Civil Rights Act's ban on sex discrimination to cover gay and trans workers. Crystal Lee Sutton and the Union Sign at a North Carolina Textile Mill The real story behind the cardboard sign in a J.P. Stevens mill in 1973: the firing, the 1974 union vote in Roanoke Rapids, and the six years it took to win a first contract. Frances Perkins, the First Woman in the Cabinet, and the List She Handed FDR In 1933 Frances Perkins agreed to be labor secretary only if Roosevelt backed her list of demands. Here is the checklist, item by item: what she won and what she never did. How 146 Deaths at the Triangle Factory Rewrote New York's Labor Laws How a 1911 garment factory fire, two Tammany legislators and a young investigator named Frances Perkins turned grief into the laws the New Deal later copied. How to Testify at a City Council Meeting in Three Minutes How public comment works at city hall: finding the agenda, signing up, timing a three-minute statement, submitting written testimony, and turning one appearance into a lasting voice. How Workers at Amazon's Staten Island Warehouse Won Their Union Vote How an independent union with no national backing won the 2022 vote at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse, why a first contract never followed, and what later drives took from it. Janus v. AFSCME and Public-Sector Unions After Mandatory Fees The 2018 Supreme Court ruling that ended mandatory fees for government workers was expected to gut public unions. Here is what it held, what happened next and what it means for bargaining. John L. Lewis, a Punch at the 1935 AFL Convention and the Birth of the CIO How a mine workers' chief threw one punch in Atlantic City in 1935, walked out of the old craft federation and built the industrial unions that organized steel and autos. Michigan Repealed Right-to-Work, and What That Means What right-to-work laws do, why Michigan passed one in 2012 and repealed it in 2023, and the strongest arguments on each side, so you can follow the next state fight. Ocean Hill-Brownsville and the 1968 Teachers' Strikes Over Community Control In 1968 a Brooklyn school board tried to remove nineteen educators and set off strikes that shut New York's schools for weeks, splitting labor from the civil rights movement it had marched beside. Pelosi's First Hundred Hours and the 2007 Minimum Wage Increase How a new Democratic House turned a campaign promise into the 2007 raise from $5.15 to $7.25, and why the law that passed in May looked nothing like the bill passed in January. Seattle's $15 Vote and the Studies That Argued Over It Seattle voted for a $15 minimum wage in 2014, and two university teams reached opposite verdicts on it. What each study found, why they disagreed, and what economists now mostly agree on. Starbucks Workers in Buffalo and the Long Road to a First Contract How a 19-8 vote at one Buffalo cafe in December 2021 started a union campaign across hundreds of Starbucks stores, and why a first contract has proved so slow to arrive. Taft-Hartley Passed Over Truman's Veto and Still Shapes Every Drive In June 1947 Congress overrode Harry Truman to rewrite labor law. The bans and permissions it added, from secondary boycotts to right-to-work, still decide organizing fights. The 1963 March Was for Jobs and Freedom, and the Jobs Part Still Matters The 1963 March on Washington printed ten demands, including a two-dollar minimum wage and a jobs program. The argument: economic and civil rights were always one program. The 2024 Dockworkers' Strike and the Fight Over Automated Ports Why a three-day port strike in October 2024 turned into a national argument about robots, and why a union contract did more to shape automation than any technology policy did. The Elaine Massacre of 1919 and the Sharecroppers' Union Meeting in Arkansas How a meeting of Black cotton farmers who wanted an honest accounting became a massacre in Arkansas, and how their trials changed what due process means. The Federal Minimum Wage Has Been $7.25 Since July 2009 Why the federal wage floor has not moved since 2009, how much inflation has taken from it, how states and cities raised their own, and who is still paid the federal minimum. The Flint Sit-Down Strike and the Forty-Four Days That Built the UAW From December 1936 to February 1937, autoworkers occupied General Motors plants in Flint. Why staying inside won what years of walkouts had not, and what it cost. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, From Martinsburg to St. Louis How a wage cut on the Baltimore and Ohio in a small West Virginia town became the first national strike, why governors called for federal troops, and what it left behind. The Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Pinkerton Barges on the Monongahela In July 1892 barges of armed Pinkerton agents came up the Monongahela to break a steel union. The battle at Homestead kept American steel nonunion for forty-five years. The Luddites Were Not Against Machines. They Were Against Being Discarded The frame-breakers of 1811 targeted the bosses who used machines to cut wages, and Parliament answered with the gallows. Their real question, who shares the gains, is the AI question too. The New Jersey Fast Food Study That Rewrote the Minimum Wage Debate How two Princeton economists phoned hundreds of burger restaurants on both sides of the New Jersey-Pennsylvania line in 1992, found no job losses from a raise, and changed how economics is done. The Postal Wildcat Strike of 1970 and the Bargaining Rights It Won How New York letter carriers broke federal law in March 1970, why the walkout spread to cities across the country, and how it produced the Postal Reorganization Act and real bargaining. The Pullman Strike and the Courts' War on Labor in 1894 In 1894 a railroad boycott led by Eugene Debs was crushed by a federal injunction and Army troops. How the courts became labor's chief opponent, and what it took to change that. The Treaty of Detroit and the Bargain That Built the Blue-Collar Middle Class The 1950 five-year UAW-GM contract traded labor peace for pensions, health coverage and steady raises. How that bargain built a middle class, and why it came apart. The UAW's Stand Up Strike Against All Three Detroit Automakers In September 2023 the UAW struck GM, Ford and Stellantis at once, plant by plant. How the rolling strategy worked, what the contracts won and what other unions took from it. The Wagner Act of 1935 and the Right Most Workers Still Cannot Use The 1935 law that created the NLRB promised workers the right to organize. Here is who it left out, how its weak remedies work, and why winning a union is still so hard. Twenty-Five Cents an Hour: How the Fair Labor Standards Act Passed How Frances Perkins and Franklin Roosevelt won the first federal minimum wage and 40-hour week in 1938, the fight it took to pass, and the workers it left out by design. When Reagan Fired the Air Traffic Controllers in August 1981 The PATCO strike ended with more than 11,000 controllers fired and their union destroyed. How it happened, and how it taught private employers that replacing strikers was acceptable.