class struggle

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, et. al. - Valley Labor Report, November 6, 2023

By Kshama Sawant and Bia Lacombe - On Strike, November 6, 2023

By Cody Bloomfield - Truthout, November 5, 2023

In April, as the Atlanta Police Foundation erected high fences with razor wire around the site of the planned Public Safety Training Center dubbed “Cop City,” Atlanta organizer Jaye C. began photographing the construction, poking her camera through the chain link fence, documenting as 33 acres of forest became part of a barren expanse. In March, police chased, tasered and arrested activists on domestic terrorism charges until protesters were finally forced to cede the forest that they had occupied for the better part of two years. The fences went up, and Stop Cop City organizers pivoted. Protest continued at public buildings, neighboring parks, and the homes and businesses of contractors. Activists doubled down on legal challenges to the project and launched a campaign to put Cop City on the ballot. But the actual construction site became impenetrable.

A group of Stop Cop City activists aim to change that, to once again put their bodies on the line to block Cop City, to buy time before the Atlanta Police Foundation can destroy the remaining 50 or so acres of forest. A mere week after the RICO indictment of 61 activists, the newly christened Block Cop City wing of the movement issued a call to action to supporters around the country: Show up. Cause trouble (nonviolently, organizers clarify). We’ll see you in the forest.

The mass mobilization will take place in Atlanta from November 10-13. In the run-up to it, Block Cop City organizers embarked on a breakneck speaking tour, visiting over 70 cities in less than two months. They hope that at each place they visit, a few people will decide to come down to Atlanta, culminating in hundreds converging on November 13 to march on the construction site. Organizers have intentionally prioritized making plans for the protest public, and intend for the protest, described as mass nonviolent direct action, to challenge the legitimacy of the state through civil disobedience rather than sabotage. In the decentralized Stop Cop City movement, November’s action is but one tactic. But it’s an important one, particularly now, when Atlanta has ensnared dozens of activists in criminal proceedings while conspiring against democratic resistance.

By Carolyn Fortuna - Clean Technica, November 5, 2023

Tesla is facing its most serious labor dispute ever in Europe as dock workers in Sweden threaten to block deliveries of new Teslas entering the country. If the November 7 blockade is enacted, “no Teslas will be able to enter Sweden” in the 4 ports of Malmö, Gothenburg, Trelleborg, and Södertälje, says union chair Tommy Wreeth. It’s part of “sympathy measures” as labor unions reinforce the efforts of other workers who are currently on strike against Tesla, as reported by Wired.

The Swedish Transport Workers’ Union represents 57,000 workers. They are rallying to stand by metal workers at Tesla’s Swedish 7 repair shops who have been on strike since October 27. Their dispute rests with Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement with their union, IF Metall. Collective agreements in Sweden are quite common and outline terms of pay, pensions, and working conditions. Without a collective agreement, these repair shop workers earn less and lack the same benefit packages as the others in their field.

Around 90% of Swedish employees are covered by collective agreements. “We would like our members working at Tesla to have the same benefits as basically everybody else on the Swedish labor market,” says Jesper Pettersson, spokesperson for IF Metall. “We don’t see any reason why Tesla should play by different rules.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has consistently rejected calls to allow the company’s 127,000 employees worldwide to unionize.

“Shame on you, Tesla, shame on you!” Stefan Löfven, former Swedish Social Democrat Prime Minister and former IF Metall leader, exclaimed. Löfven’s message was posted on Facebook on Sunday, October 29. It revealed he would be boycotting Elon Musk’s cabs and encouraged others to postpone a purchase of a Tesla “until an agreement is signed.”

The first stage of the strike affected some 130 mechanics, but the strike was expanded on Friday to include some 470 more workers at 17 other facilities. These facilities service many brands of vehicles, but the work stoppage on repairing cars only applies to Teslas. What does that look like? The workers attend their usual shifts, and they work on other car models as assigned. The Teslas that have been brought in for repairs sit unattended.

By Olivia Rosane - Common Dreams, November 3, 2023

Days after the United Auto Workers announced tentative deals with the Big Three carmakers, Toyota confirmed this week that it would offer raises to its nonunion U.S. factory workers.

The Japanese automaker said Wednesday that hourly manufacturers at the top of the pay scale would see a 9% raise beginning January 1, Reuters reported. UAW president Shawn Fain, who is attempting to use the union's victory to bolster the wider labor movement, said that the timing of Toyota's announcement was no coincidence.

"Toyota isn't giving out raises out of the goodness of their heart," he said in a video statement shared by More Perfect Union on Friday. "Toyota is the largest and most profitable auto company in the world. They could have just as easily raised wages a month ago or a year ago. They did it now because the company knows we're coming for them."

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, November 2, 2023

By Béla Galgóczi - European Trade Union Institute, November 2023

Were national response measures to the energy crisis targeted, and were they social and climate friendly? 

These are the main questions addressed by this book, which examines whether and how short-term national responses to the cost of energy crisis applied social and ecological preferences. Europe has ‘survived’ two much-feared winters without energy shortages, power cuts and recession, showing a considerable level of resilience. Between September 2021 and August 2023, EU Member States allocated almost 700 billion euros to shield consumers and industry from rising energy costs. Were these resources properly targeted and is there a climate dividend? The national case studies included in this book reveal that the measures were mostly broad-based, including subsidies, tax cuts and price controls. The chapters also address questions on how such policies tackled the conflicting objectives and examine whether there are any good practices that can be identified in which short-term social protection can be aligned with longer term ecological objectives.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By staff - UNITE, November 2023

For further background, visit this site.

We are at the crossroads. There are two paths on offer, and it’s time to choose. On the one hand, there is a path of cuts: further decimating our steel industry and the town. On the other, a path of growth: an immediate gateway to rebuilding the industry.

The current plan from Tata is a hammer blow. It would severely shrink the plant: cutting production capacity by another 40%, with thousands of job losses. Another well-meaning proposal from the consultants Syndex also involves cutting capacity. It would also mean thousands of job losses: some immediately, and some in the longer term.

Why can’t we have another option? A path that would deliver profitability in the long term, and safeguard every job now. That’s the Unite plan. The cuts path wouldn’t just cost thousands of jobs on the site. It would also have massive knock-on effects on contractors, downstream sites, and the town and local economy of Port Talbot.

Our industry has suffered decades of decline. We don’t forget the impacts of the mine closures, or of the steel works at Ebbw Vale. We must not let Port Talbot be next. It is time to stop this vicious cycle.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By staff - Climate Justice Coalition and The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, November 2023

The role of climate change in both forced displacement and wider migration is increasingly apparent, with climate impacts on people in marginalised communities becoming more severe and more people being forced to leave their homes, the majority of whom are moving within or between countries in the Global South. At the same time, countries and corporations in the Global North profit from the increased militarisation and proliferation of racist border policies. A militarised response to a heating world, in the form of walls, camps and drones, will only increase suffering and prolong the climate emergency. Climate action must include justice for all people everywhere.

With COP28 taking place in the UAE, from 30 November until 12 December 2023, civil society will be talking about climate and migration. This briefing note aims to guide communicators and campaigners on how migrant justice intersects, and how to talk about climate-linked mobility in a way that is justice aligned and does not stoke fears and insecurities.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Nelson Lichtenstein - Jacobin, November 1, 2023

The UAW’s victory in its forty-five-day strike against the Big Three Detroit automakers is historic and transformative, ending a forty-three-year era of concession bargaining and labor movement defeat that began with Chrysler’s near bankruptcy in 1979 and Ronald Reagan’s destruction of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization two years later.

Not only did the union win substantial wage increases for all members in its tentative agreements (TAs) — at least 25 percent over the four-and-a-half-year contract — but the wage structure is radically progressive, eliminating the second- and third-class status endured by thousands of temps and second-tier workers. With the regularization of their employment status, these workers will enjoy extraordinary pay increases, in some cases upward of 150 percent.

And the union clawed back the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that had been eliminated during the 2008 financial crisis. COLA had been a standard feature of UAW contracts since 1948, when General Motors first proposed it to the union to blunt the effort, forcefully pushed by then UAW president Walter Reuther, to limit auto and steel industry price hikes either through collective bargaining or government regulation. The labor movement at the time was fighting to limit inflation but secure a healthy wage increase — benefitting working class and middle class alike, union and nonunion, by advancing a program that shifted income and wealth from capital to labor.

That ambition failed during the increasingly conservative postwar years, making COLA increasingly coveted, and not just among industrial workers. During the major 2022 strike of graduate students and other academic workers at the University of California, winning COLA became the key demand of the most radical and activist segment of the student workers. Among the unionized workers of the Big Three, the restoration of COLA will probably add a 7 or 8 percent wage boost to the nominal wages workers earn over the life of the contract. (UAW members still need to ratify the tentative agreements, which they’re expected to do so in the coming weeks given the strength of the deals.)

UAW president Shawn Fain and other progressives, in the unions and out, have correctly denounced the vast pay inequalities that have given corporate CEOs three or four hundred times more income than the bulk of those employed in the same firms. But that income gap has always had an abstract quality. Few workers ever meet a top executive. Far more important, and divisive, have been the petty inequalities within the working class itself. When the person doing the same work on the line or behind the counter is making two dollars more an hour, solidarity decays and resentment festers. That is why Shawn Fain’s campaign for the UAW presidency last year declared, “No corruption, no concessions, no tiers.”

Indeed, this strike victory, spearheaded by Fain and a new slate of union leaders, resembles the dynamic that launched onto the national stage other tribunes of the US working class, from Eugene V. Debs in 1894 and William Z. Foster in 1919 to Walter Reuther in 1946 and Cesar Chavez in the late 1960s, armed with a progressive message and a mobilized membership backing that up. The UAW strike flowed organically from the movement to democratize the union, a multigenerational effort that culminated in the successful push, led by an opposition caucus, United All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), to elect top union leaders by a referendum vote of the entire membership. This would curb the insularity, corruption, and self-perpetuating leadership of a UAW executive board long dominated by a machine known as the Administration Caucus.