* The nine-day strike of 33,000 West Virginia teachers and school employees in late February and March.
* A one-day strike on March 19 by teachers on the US territory of Puerto Rico
* A 12-day strike by 2,700 University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign graduate workers and teaching assistants in February and March.
* A three-week-long strike by 1,400 Frontier telecommunications workers in Virginia and West Virginia.
* A one-day strike by 4,000 teachers in Jersey City, New Jersey on March 17
* The nine-day walkout of 30,000 Oklahoma teachers in April
* A week-long strike by 3,000 teaching and research assistants at Columbia University in April and May.
* The April 26-May 3 strike by 60,000 Arizona teachers
* A three-day strike by 53,000 University of California food service, groundskeepers, janitorial staff and nurses at university campuses and medical centers.
* The ongoing strike of 1,800 Spectrum technicians in New York City
In a service economy education is the foundation of the lie that is "social mobility."
Jaxson Ward
That's not very dialectical, comrade.
Eli Richardson
Marxist university confirmed!
Colton Gonzalez
It´s on now, I hope the movement can grab more teachers and go national. It would be a nice joke Trump speaking with or against a real movement.
Asher Parker
...
Ayden Mitchell
I just can´t understand how solidarity within uinions is all gone in burgerland, like why they cannot tie this protest to the neglect of Puerto Rico too?
Aiden Fisher
Isn't that how it goes a lot of the time, though? It starts in specific industries or sectors of the economy and slowly spreads to other industries?
Jonathan Phillips
I mean I'm in Teamsters for UPS, and it's because the unions create insane divisions. None of the part-time guys even go to meetings because the union just shits on part-timers, who happen to be the most important and lowest paid employees
Thomas Lopez
I should add, part-timers actually have had their pay lowered from 14 to 8 dollars and now its just minimum wage. I'm in MA so 11
Bentley Campbell
Seems to me you are quite infiltrated. Like full of scabs. Of course the first thing bosses do to control a union is just buy the leaders, but lad, it´s really pitiful to see how the unions in the US just march for the most stupid demands
Bentley Baker
Uh no there's no scabs as my state is not right to work, everyone is in the union. But UPS hires people as part timers, and you have to work a certain amount of time (which is unspecified, its basically random) before you can become full time. In that time span, they beat the hell out of you for no money, and this makes most people quit, so then they just keep hiring new part timers. Part timers also have the worst jobs and the worst pay, so they end up not caring about participating in the union. Most people quit before they even finish paying their dues and are initiated. My area's branch of teamsters is run (like most unions) by people who have been around a while, so it's mostly boomers who are also full time, so they don't like young people and aren't invested at all in part time workers.
Luis James
but lad, aren´t the part-timers basically scabs? Also," they beat the hell out of you for no money" you say, now I really believe a third world is reaching you because you effectively lost any negotiation leverage you had.
Blake Howard
strong meme there, chieftain. you pull that from one of your microfiche slides?
Zachary Edwards
No, the part-timers are in the union, pay union dues, and vote in union elections. Every single employee starts as a part-timer, the union just works with UPS to exploit them
Christian Lewis
well as flimsy a protection, it´s still solid, but fuck, I know your union will still constantly be defending things unions used to take for granted. In the end it is David vs Goliath, and businesses are stripping rights from workers easily
Jeremiah Taylor
Bernie has played a blinder too by trying to push a union bill callled "The workplace democracy act", which actually make thw US' union laws almost on par with Germany. What will happen is it will fail: show that A) Trump hates union workers B) mainstream dems do too. Honestly at this rate the AFL-CIO will organise the labor party they talked about, the dialectic is progressing.
Owen Cox
About a century of concentrated anti-communist propaganda and assassinating communist and socialist activists will do that to you. It's also illegal for communists to preside over unions.
Dump a pile of bullshit American exceptionalism and bourgeois individualism over that and it's absolutely corrosive to solidarity.
Joseph Jones
No, you idiot.
Mason Myers
education is the automobile industry of the 21st century :^)
Gavin Rivera
Unions would be less corruptible if they were leaderless
Juan Fisher
The AFL-CIO has been anti-labor since its very creation. It's always been a yellow union.
Ian Nelson
agree
Sebastian Foster
Wildcat and solidarity strikes have been illegal for 70 years thanks to Taft-Hartley. Industrial unions are effectively dead thanks to de-industrialization or betrayal by union leadership, which destroyed the material and social base for their existence.
The only unions left with any power are trade unions for credentialed people like teachers and public sector employees. And it's nice to see them getting something from striking, but it'll be next to impossible to generalize their model across other labor sectors. Service, transport, etc. work has been de-skilled so much thanks to automation and the reserve army of labor is so large now that it'll be next to impossible to unionize a place like Amazon or Wal-Mart, to say nothing of the tremendous power of capital to break strikes and sabotage unionization efforts.
WSWS is, as always, discrediting trade unions as a viable vehicle for social change because of corrupt leadership. Even though there is NO other feasible mechanism for class struggle in contemporary America.
At this point, there is no difference between the SEP and armchairs other than the former idolizing rapists.
Lincoln Stewart
education is the biggest fucking meme on the planet.
Thomas Nelson
Considering americas rank in education these shitty teachers are asking for a lot for very little benefit to society.
Luke Powell
Falseflagger detected, and why do you think US education is suffering (hint, fucking underfunding).
Christopher Price
I quit my job at UPS after like 10 fucking years because they refused to give me a full-time job. After ten years. Started going to union meetings and was ignored in favor of the crusty old boomers who hate young people, brown people, jews, everyone.
Hudson Evans
I don't believe that's true.
Lincoln Rivera
Come again?
Brayden Carter
Anti-socialist and only marginally pro-labor, it's what happens when your union is anti-socialist.
Not even to defend wooswoos, but many american unions are
Colton White
AFL-CIO is legitimately anti-labor, not merely anti-socialist. The IBEW is legitimately the worst union in the US.
