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Rutgers Labor Center To Celebrate Life And Legacy Of Tony Mazzocchi

In the 1960s and 70s, conservative leaders of the AFL-CIO and many national unions viewed militant activists in the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, and women’s movements with alarm. When student radicals started migrating from campus and community organizing to unionized workplaces, labor officials did not welcome them. But a World War II veteran from Brooklyn named Tony Mazzocchi did. Mazzocchi had risen through the ranks of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW), a CIO union which had a strong tradition of rank-and-file activism and internal democracy.

May Day 2026: Why Black Workers Must Mobilize

For most of Jay Ozier’s decades as a trade union activist in St. Louis, May Day came and went just like any other workday. A small fundraising breakfast for People’s World here, a few comrades and likeminded fellow workers gathered there—but nothing like the international working-class holiday celebrated in countries all over the world. But this year, that’s changing. Now, there are plans for over a thousand rallies in cities across the country—with many led by organized labor, including dozens of central labor councils, state labor federations, and now even the national AFL-CIO itself signing on.

Unite Escalates Strike Action Against Below-Inflation Pay For Workers

On 20 April, Unite the Union announced that more than 1,100 workers at five Scottish universities will stage a 24-hour strike. The industrial action is scheduled for 24 April to dispute an imposed real-terms pay cut. Unite members at Glasgow, Strathclyde, Glasgow School of Art, Edinburgh Napier and Heriot Watt universities will take part. At 12:30pm on the same day, 24 April, Unite will also hold a Pay and Fair Funding Rally. The assembly will take place at the top of Buchanan Street, next to the Concert Hall and Donald Dewar statue.

Last-Minute Tentative Agreements Avert Big L.A. School Strike

Los Angeles — Last-minute tentative agreements, reached at 3 a.m. on April 13—two days before a scheduled strike was to start—averted the walkout by the three unions representing 37,000 teachers and support staffers of the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD), one of the largest districts in the U.S. One key to the agreements, covering the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), a Teachers/AFT local, Teamsters Local 2010, and Service Employees Local 99, was widespread labor, community, and political support for the workers, who sought substantial raises that would enable them to continue to live and work in L.A.

Starbucks Is Bargaining Backwards, Baristas Say

Union baristas are finally back to the negotiating table with Starbucks, but the workers charge that rather than progressing, the company is reopening already agreed-upon issues. “They're trying to move backwards on issues we've already settled instead of settling the few that we have left,” said Mina Leon, a barista in downtown Manhattan who struck for two months to get the company back to the table. “These were not small details, these were things that we had already fought for and won after months in bargaining in 2024,” said Jasmine Leli, a Buffalo, New York, barista and member of the Starbucks Workers United bargaining team.

Indiana: Solidarity With Locked-Out Steelworkers

Whiting, IN – On Saturday April 11, members of Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Jobs with Justice Chicago (JwJ Chicago) traveled to Whiting, Indiana to stand in solidarity with the over 800 United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-1 members who have been facing an illegal lockout by British Petroleum (BP) since March 19. USW members warmly welcomed the supporters and were anxious to share their story about a fight with one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Despite the vast wealth of the bosses at BP, the locked-out USW members are confident that worker solidarity will prevail in the end.

Virginia Public Workers Make Headway On Bargaining Rights

After a years-long campaign by unions, Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to extend collective bargaining rights to nearly half a million state, county, and municipal government employees. Union recognition has been denied Virginia’s public employees since 1946 when the state legislature passed a joint resolution against public sector bargaining to defeat a Black hospital workers’ organizing drive at the University of Virginia. A 1977 state Supreme Court ruling affirmed the ban, which was later codified by legislation in 1993.

Greeley Meatpackers Win Contract After Three-Week Strike

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 released a statement on April 12 reporting that meatpackers at the JBS beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, voted to ratify a tentative agreement covering nearly 3,800 workers. The contract runs through April 2028. UFCW Local 7 members ratified the contract following JBS’s return to the bargaining table, ending a three-week unfair labor practice (ULP) strike that began March 16. The ULP strike shut down the facility as an 80% immigrant workforce exercised their protected right to strike, refusing to be intimidated by the bosses and their ICE partners.

Teamsters Health Care Workers To Picket Hospital For Fair Contract

Chicago, Illinois - University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) health care workers are “drastically underpaid” compared to other hospitals in Chicago, Debra Simmons-Peterson, president of Teamsters Local 743 told People’s World. Simmons-Peterson spoke at a rally Thursday in which hospital workers protested pay rates that don’t reflect the rising costs of living in the Chicago area. The health care workers’ collective bargaining agreement with the medical center expired on March 9. The rally included fellow Teamsters, SEIU Healthcare workers, as well as local pastors, alderpersons, and other elected officials, and the Chicago Federation of Labor.

New Festival Brings Workers’ Struggle And Solidarity To Cornwall Coast

Trade unionists, families, and campaigners will gather on the Cornwall coast this June for Unite on the Hill. It’s a new festival that aims to combine culture, community, and class politics. Branch SW008 of the Unite union is organising the event. It’ll take place from 19–21 June 2026 at Maker Heights (PL10 1LA) and bring together live music, food, and family activities. There’ll be a programme of political discussion addressing issues facing working people in Devon and Cornwall. The festival comes at a time when the region is facing rising levels of insecure, low-paid work and some of the highest rates of child poverty in the UK.

Bay Area Pediatricians File To Unionize

Palo Alto, Calif. – Nearly 110 pediatricians working for the Packard Children’s Health Alliance (PCHA), part of Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, have filed to unionize with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD). The pediatricians provide care to children across 27 clinic locations throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay region. “I’ve wanted to be a pediatrician since I was six years old. Now, as an early career physician, the delivery and structure of medical care is very different even from what I knew it to be while pursuing that goal,” said a pediatrician leading the organizing effort.

AI Used Against Associated Press And ProPublica Journalists

New York—AI has hit the AP: At least 120 U.S. newspeople, some of them longtime veterans of the Associated Press, the worldwide wire service, have received layoff notices as a result, with buyout offers—but with little notice to and no negotiations with their union. AI—artificial intelligence—can be used for good or ill, but corporate executives are using it to guillotine people’s jobs, thus increasing company profits. The cost, however, as critics on social media pointed out, is in reduced coverage at a time when news consumers need unbiased information more than ever before.

Migrant Workers Lead Three-Week Colorado Meatpackers’ Strike

Greeley, Colorado -The strike by 3,800 workers at the JBS Swift Beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, will pause as the company has agreed to negotiations starting April 9. Workers, the majority of them immigrants, bravely walked out on March 16, extended the strike to three weeks and almost stayed out for a fourth. They will now return to work in one of the largest meatpacking plants in the country.   Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7, which represents the JBS workers, said that the union is fighting for a fair contract that protects worker safety in an industry that has extensive worker injuries.

Sheridan Educators On Strike After Negotiations Fall Flat

Englewood, CO – On April 1, teachers and faculty across five schools of the Sheridan School District went on strike demanding union recognition and the reinstatement of their contract. Over 100 teachers, faculty and community members walked the picket lines demanding that the school district come back to the table for negotiations. Tensions rose earlier this year when the school district passed a policy that stated they would not recognize staff without licenses in the union. That means school custodians, paraprofessionals on staff, bus drivers – workers who all keep the district’s schools running and operational – were not able to join. When contract negotiations fell apart, 98% of members voted to strike.

May Day Call Grows For ‘No Work, No School, No Shopping’

A growing May Day movement is calling for “No Work, No School, No Shopping” on May 1. The call is driven by rising anger at war, attacks on immigrants, and a system that cuts what workers need while pouring billions into the military. Protests against ICE in Minnesota spread to 300 cities across the country on Jan. 23. Since then, No Kings protests have brought millions more into the streets. From big cities to small towns, many are protesting for the first time. Now organizers are moving forward under a May Day general strike banner: “No Work, No School, No Shopping.”
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