movements, unions, and organizations

By Michael Eisenscher, et. al. - US Labor Against the War, April 7, 2022

By Eric Dirnbach and Ksenia Fir - Labor Notes, March 24, 2022

This is part of an occasional series where we look back at the “labor episode” of a TV show. The Star Trek series Deep Space Nine has a great union episode with lessons about organizing in a customer service industry. Spoilers ahead for the fourth-season episode “Bar Association”!

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) is generally considered the most overtly political of the Star Trek franchise. Unlike other iterations of the show, it is set not on a Federation Starfleet ship, but a space station populated by individuals of diverse races whose cultures are often in stark contrast with the post-scarcity, post-capitalist Federation.

The fourth-season episode “Bar Association”—a must-watch for Trekkies interested in unions—depicts a labor struggle at the station’s prominent entertainment spot: Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House and Holosuite Arcade. Bar owner Quark (played by Armin Shimerman) is a Ferengi—a member of a non-human species whose culture is very capitalistic and misogynistic. Their behavior is strictly controlled by The Rules of Acquisition, a set of tenets like “Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success—don’t hesitate to step on them.”

The workers at Quark’s Bar fall into two categories: Ferengi male waiters (Ferengi women are forbidden to work) and “Dabo girls”—a diverse group of beautiful women from non-Federation planets who act as eye candy and encourage guests to spend more at a roulette-style game. Dabo girls experience frequent sexual harassment from patrons and Quark himself.

By Oleg Vernyk - International Socialist League, March 18, 2022

To the workers of the world: we need your help!

The Independent Trade Union of Ukraine “Zakhist Pratsi” is directly involved in the resistance to the invasion by Russian imperialism. We are fighting along side the working class and the Ukrainian people on various fronts of resistance. Some organizations of our union, such as the “Zakhista Pratsi” miners’ union at the “Selidov-ugol” firm, are protecting us and our future with weapons in their hands and in the most difficult conditions of the hostilities. Many activists of our union are now resisting the rocket and bomb attacks of the Russian troops, supporting the difficult conditions of the bomb shelters, saving their children and their families from certain death.

The war unleashed by Vladimir Putin united the trade union and labor movement in Ukraine. The invaders were counting on a quick lightning victory and on being accepted by Ukrainians as “liberators.” However, they met rejection and resistance everywhere. They failed to win the support of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine, who faced the Russian army as invaders and bravely resisted the armed aggression for more than 20 days.

We have never had any illusions about the intentions of the NATO bloc in Ukraine. And now we see all its cynicism, which convinced us of the correctness of our criticism of NATO even before the war and of our position against all the imperialist blocs.

Dear comrades of the labor and trade union movement: We know that anti-war mobilizations and actions against Russia’s military aggression are taking place all over the world. Thank you for this support! We are facing a very strong enemy who, desperate due to the popular resistance to its aggression, is willing to transgress the entire framework of international humanitarian law. Therefore, we now need increasingly active international solidarity with our anti-imperialist resistance movement.

We reiterate our labor appeal to the Russian working class and its trade union organizations to stop the aggression of the Russian government and the authoritarian-bureaucratic regime of Putin against Ukraine. And we call on all the workers and peoples of the world, on political, labor and social organizations to mobilize resolutely against the war!

We resolutely oppose the anti-social policy of our government, aimed at the adoption of anti-worker and anti-union laws to please Ukrainian and foreign oligarchs. The armed aggression of Russian imperialist capitalism complicated the direct struggle for workers’ rights, for the rights of trade unions and free workers’ associations. But it set the immediate agenda for the Ukrainian labor movement: stop the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine!

Our classist trade union “Zakhist Pratsi” defends the demands of the working class against the interests of national oligarchic capital and right-wing politicians.

Many of our union members have lost their jobs, are on the front lines, were forced to move to other cities or take shelter from bombs in shelters. Our families are doing their best to survive without surrendering to the Russian occupiers. For these reasons, we also urgently need your financial and other aid. Fighting, eating and healing wounds are daily tasks for which we need the support of the world’s frontline workers. Therefore, we appeal to strengthen active solidarity actions with the Ukrainian labor movement and, in particular, with our independent trade union.

Workers of the world, unite!

By Nick Engelfried - Waging Nonviolence, March 17, 2022

Instead of succumbing to the challenges of the past few years, young climate activists are learning to adapt and build on their past actions.

Three years ago this week — on March 15, 2019 — an estimated 1.4 million young people and supporters in 128 countries skipped school or work for what was then the largest youth-led day of climate protests in history. That record was soon eclipsed by even larger demonstrations later that year, with 1.8 million joining a May 24 day of action, and 7.6 million protesting for the climate over the course of Sept. 20 and the week that followed. The school strikes for climate movement, launched by 15-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden in late 2018, had reinvigorated the global climate movement and brought public participation to levels never seen before.

By early 2019, thousands of young people were already skipping school to protest for the climate each week in Europe, but the school strikes had only just begun to catch on in the United States. March 15 of that year was arguably when Thunberg’s campaign truly became a global phenomenon, with large demonstrations in cities all over the world. The youth-led strikes went on to revolutionize and grow the climate movement, helping to popularize concepts like the Green New Deal and grab the attention of policymakers and the media. Three years on, it’s a good time to assess what this flood of activism accomplished and how the youth climate movement has adapted to the challenges of the early 2020s.

By Paul Fleckenstein - Tempest, March 15, 2022

After the worst year yet of climate disruption, 2021 closed with another failure of international negotiations at COP26 and the slow death of President Biden’s meager legislative climate agenda.

North America faced heightened levels of drought, heat, fire, flooding, wind, climate-enhanced migration, and crop failures. Yet the climate movement’s support and campaigning for Biden and Democratic Party achieved little. Expectations are even lower for the next three years.

To respond to this impasse the climate movement, particularly the predominant organizations in the U.S., needs to reorient away from the over-emphasis on electoral politics, and toward protest and struggle as the priority strategy.

Fortunately, there are some glimpses at how to expand this potential, but the central question remains, what socialists and the Left, in general, can do now to best catalyze more disruptive, sustained, and mass-based climate action.

By Skye Pepier - London Left Green Blog, March 12, 2022

The COP26 Coalition has continued to meet since the Glasgow Summit in November last year, and on 19th February there was a whole day of discussion about the future of the movement. The framing for the discussion was that Glasgow last year was just the start of the network’s activity, and that the work needed to build an effective climate movement on these islands should be continued and enhanced. 

There was a tremendous enthusiasm about the action and work that is being undertaken by the Coalition, despite the recognition that the COP26 summit was a failure and did not bring the action on climate change needed from our so-called world leaders. People from all corners of Britain, and the world, including the Caribbean and Africa participated in the COP26 Coalition meetings. 

Despite similar attempts of network building by Green Left, however, including its involvement of the Ecosocialist Alliance, there was a noticeable absence in the COP26 Coalition meetings, of anyone involved in Green parties, of either Scotland, or England and Wales. This doesn't necessarily mean that there weren't Green Party members present - but it was difficult to discover the presence of fellow Green Party members. 

After a brief introduction to the COP26 Coalition, there were discussions around the difference between organising and mobilising a diversity of tactics, as well as regional exercises to build up COP26 local hubs and the wider climate justice movement. 

The day then closed with an online rally for the year ahead, titled 'Movement Building & Collective Strategies', with speakers from Fridays for Future Scotland, Campaign Against Climate Change, Landworkers Alliance, as well as youth activist Aoife Mercedes Rodriguez-Uruchurtu from YouthStrike4Climate Manchester and Breathe.

Each speaker was able to say something quite different to the others, but without disagreement of any kind, which was a sign of the diversity of the COP26 Coalition movement, and arguably, also its strength. 

So, what is next for the COP26 Coalition? As the UK holds the presidency of COP26 until the start of COP27, it is still important to keep climate change on the agenda, just as it always has, but especially if we want to see continued action while the UK is in its current global position on it. There is also the matter of building towards COP27, despite it being in Egypt, where post-Arab Spring oppression has been brutal. 

By various - ILR Worker Institute - March 4, 2022

On Friday, March 4, researchers from Cornell University joined with leaders of the Climate Jobs RI coalition, a group of labor, climate, and community groups in Rhode Island, and discussed a new report unveiled last month that outlined a comprehensive action plan to put RI on the path to becoming the first fully decarbonized state and building an equitable, pro-worker, clean energy economy.

Watch the panel here:

By Paul Prescod - Jacobin, March 1, 2022

Labor leader Tony Mazzocchi believed unions could inspire their members to engage in a broader political movement of working people. His Local 149 did just that in the 1950s — and in a suburban environment where no one thought it possible.

There’s no denying that strong labor movements often thrive in urban centers. The organization of capitalist production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while heavily exploitative of workers, also created the conditions for robust forms of worker organization. Being densely packed in cities that were relatively close to their workplaces allowed industrial workers to form deep bonds of solidarity with each other. Apart from the shop floor, these workers were likely to also interact with each other in other social spaces common to cities.

But how does the labor movement fare in the suburbs? Traditionally, the suburbs are thought of as bastions of conservatism, where workers go to become atomized consumers free from the common public spaces that feed solidaristic action.

Indeed, the business class has long believed this. While commentators often examine the offshoring of manufacturing jobs, not nearly as many focus on the relocation of urban jobs to the suburbs. This process was already well underway in the 1950s and ’60s.

Despite the very real challenges that suburbanization present, the labor movement cannot resign itself to the impossibility of maintaining strong unionism in the suburbs. History can serve as inspiration here.

In the early 1950s, the Helena Rubinstein women’s cosmetics plant was moved from Queens to the leafy suburbs of Long Island. Tony Mazzocchi was president of the union representing its workers: Local 149 of United Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers’ Union (Gas-Coke). While today Mazzocchi — whose life is chronicled in Les Leopold’s excellent book The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi — is known in labor circles for his pioneering work in the realm of workplace health and safety, he cut his teeth building in the heart of the suburbs one of the most well-organized, militant, and effective union locals in the country — “a vibrant ‘city-style’ union smack in the middle of all those boxy little houses,” Leopold writes.

In the fifth chapter of his book, Leopold tells the story of the new Rubinstein plant, located in Long Island’s North Shore, a beautiful setting that seemed to make worker discontent impossible — not just because of its geographic setting, which seemed to discourage aggressive trade unionism, but also the times. Red-baiting within the labor movement was at its peak in the early 1950s, and Gas-Coke had experienced purges of leftists already in the late 1940s. But the overwhelming anti-communism still could not eliminate all residues of good trade union culture.