How Grocery Workers in Indiana Said No to a Crappy Contract, and More from Our July Issue
Peek into the upcoming July issue of the Labor Notes magazine, featuring stories about grocery workers in Indiana fighting for a strong contract, and stories on the running theme of what it means to live under attempts at authoritarian rule and how working people are organizing right now.
Get the Labor Notes magazine! To start with the August issue, subscribe by July 22: labornotes.org/store/labor-notes-subscription
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12:28
Mexico’s independent auto union has bosses scared
Auto executives are well aware of what could be won should Mexico's independent auto union continue its winning streak: there hasn’t been a shared contract at 2 facilities in the Mexican auto industry’s 100-year history, a precedent SINTTIA is determined to break.
The union made headlines when 6,500 workers voted overwhelmingly to join at GM’s Silao, Guanajuato plant in 2022. On the eve of a union election at a second GM facility, the company is flagrantly favoring a competitor union, SINTTIA says—a union that some allege has ties to organized crime.
“It’s no use having a little plant with great working conditions and pay,” said Willebaldo Gómez Zuppa, a SINTTIA advisor. “Because ultimately, across the auto sector, all of the other plants are pushing conditions downward.” Improving standards for the long haul will depend on independent unions like SINTTIA building density in the sector as a whole, starting with key players like GM.
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13:01
77,000 California Educators Are Joining Forces
California educators across the state are joining forces in their fight for full staffing, safe and stable schools, and competitive compensation in their contract negotiations this year.
The “We Can’t Wait” campaign involves 32 locals covering 77,000 public school educators in California. That’s about a quarter of the California Teachers Association’s total membership, and those educators serve 1 million students. Educators spoke with Labor Notes organizer and pod co-host Danielle Smith about how they united around common issues, lined up their contracts and organized their coworkers to maximize their leverage.
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9:48
Grocery Workers at the UFCW are Organizing for a Fighting Union
What grocery workers are organizing for, and the way they’re doing it, can be a model for working class unionism.
In recent years, reform-minded members of the United Food and Commercial Workers—UFCW, one of the largest unions in the U.S.—have ramped up their campaigns to make their union more democratic and responsive to the needs of its 1.3 million members.
These members have organized toward resolutions at the 2023 convention, including to have direct elections of the international union’s top officers.
They sued the international in the spring of 2024 over other union democracy issues, pointing out how the UFCW allocates fewer delegates to larger locals.
And they’re leading more vigorous contract fights and campaigns than we've seen in these sectors in decades.
Their fight can tell us a lot about how vital a reform current can be in transforming a union to actually represent its members’ interests, and fight for the working class as whole.
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18:21
Stewards’ Corner: What if Union Meetings Were Actually Good?
Most union meetings are, frankly, pretty dry and ineffective.
To an outsider, the agenda looks more or less the same every month, and it seems like the usual suspects show up to either pat themselves on the back, or fight.
Labor Notes Organizer Joe DeManuelle-Hall joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann as they share ideas to make union meetings more engaging and useful.
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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