Notes on the USMCA: The Real Solution to Offshoring and Union-Busting is Cross-Border Solidarity
International solidarity more than just a chant. It’s how we will raise conditions for workers across borders without allowing the bosses to play us against each other.
Few things make that more explicit than the story of what auto workers in Mexico have been dealing with—from their employers, from some of their unions, and from U.S. trade policy.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), passed in 2020, was tasked with reviewing the implementation of Mexico’s labor reforms. But those reforms have proved challenging to implement, demonstrating the limits of legal solutions to problems that ultimately call for organizing.
Read the story by Labor Notes pod co-host and staff writer Natascha Elena Uhlmann: "We Can’t Bridge the U.S.-Mexico Wage Gap Without Supporting Organizing in Mexico."
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Starbucks Workers are on a Nationwide Strike for a First Contract (with Starbucks Workers United member Sabina Aguirre)
As of Thursday morning, members of Starbucks Workers United were on strike in 65 stores across the U.S., a massive escalation in their fight for a first contract. They are asking customers not to buy coffee at any Starbucks location during their strike.
Starbucks baristas have been in bargaining for over a year and half now, after striking regularly to get the company to the bargaining table in February 2024, as our editor Jenny Brown reported at the time.
Baristas have said that they are subjected to low pay (starting at $15 to $19 an hour) that leaves them dependent on SNAP and Medicaid, and that they are dealing with dire understaffing that's led to overwork for them and long wait times for customers.
Joining the pod this week are Jenny Brown, and Starbucks barista Sabina Aguirre, who works in Columbus, Ohio. Learn more about how members organized to get strike ready in Jenny’s recent piece, “Strike Captains and Practice Pickets: Starbucks Workers Aim to Bring a Contract Home.”
Starbucks Workers United members are asking customers to show solidarity by:
Not crossing the picket line — don’t buy Starbucks from any of its locations during the strike.
Joining a picket line near you by using the Starbucks Workers United picket line map.
Joining the allies call on Monday, November 17
Amplifying their posts on Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and Bluesky.
Learn more at nocontractnocoffee.org.
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How Do We Build Worker Power Under Trump 2.0? (with guest Eric Blanc)
The current moment in the U.S.—marked by billionaire assaults on the working class, the Trump administration’s authoritarian maneuvers, and widespread voter dissatisfaction with both major political parties—presents new challenges and opportunities for the labor movement.
Rank-and-file members can and are demanding more of their leaders, and unions are being challenged to think about how they should be mobilizing their roughly 14 million members right now.
If the goal is to lift up independent working-class leaders and organizations, what should unions be doing differently to rebuild union density and democracy?
Eric Blanc, one of the contributors to the Labor Notes Roundtable series, where we have invited organizers and scholars to address that question, joins the pod to discuss his piece, “After No Kings, How Can We Escalate?”
Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.
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All Horror Movies Are About Organizing, Actually: The Labor Notes Hallowepisode
What can horror movies and fiction teach us about fighting back against the real life horrors of our bad bosses? Tune in to our Hallowepisode to hear about the organizing lessons we saw in the 1988 cult classic from John Carpenter, They Live, and Shirley Jackson’s 1959 pillar in the horror genre, The Haunting of Hill House. Plus, a little Stewards Corner with… Nosferatu (2024) Gulp! But don’t worry, we don’t bite.
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Are the Democrats F*cking Up the Shutdown?
Federal Workers organizing with the Federal Unionists Network have been using the shutdown to organize within their unions, and to push the message that workers should collectively stand firm against cuts to vital programs and executive overreach.
Their actions are bringing clarity and organization to the fight at a time when leading Democrats are framing the shutdown as an inconvenience and Donald Trump as its perpetrator.
Labor Notes editor Jenny Brown joins the pod.
The Labor Notes Podcast is a new show from the folks who put on the Labor Notes conference every two years.
We’ll talk each week about the strikes, contract campaigns, shop floor actions, reform caucus organizing, and union elections that our staff and rank-and-file workers in the labor movement’s troublemaking wing write about and work on all year round.
New episodes on Fridays.
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