Category: Labor Movement / Trade Unions

Union Ranks Initiate Strike at John Deere

United Auto Workers (UAW) members at John Deere, one of the giants of the agricultural machinery industry worldwide, struck the company on Thursday, October 14, for the first time in more than three decades. Over 10,000 workers are on strike at plants in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas. The Waterloo Courier reported the mood on the picket lines at entrances to the Deere plants there was “downright jovial.”

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Amazon Worker Fights Firing, Challenges Lack of Safety during Pandemic

DENVER, CO, June 7, 2021—On May 6, Amazon worker Linda Rodriguez filed a complaint with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment for Amazon’s “systematic failure to comply with even the most basic safety precautions necessary to protect her and her co-workers from exposure to the [Covid-19] virus” at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.  “Amazon just wanted to pressure people to keep coming to work during the pandemic, even though we were terrified, and they didn’t tell us whether we’d been exposed and didn’t even explain to my Spanish-speaking co-workers…that they shouldn’t come to work if they were sick.”

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After Setback in Alabama, Rank-and-file Workers Will Determine What’s Next

April 15, 2021—Pro-union workers suffered a setback in their effort to organize the giant Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. They lost the vote for union representation by a margin of 738 ballots cast in favor to 1798 against. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union (RWDSU), which was seeking to represent them, said it plans to challenge the result and will ask federal labor officials to investigate Amazon for creating an “atmosphere of confusion, coercion and/or fear of reprisals.”

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The Fight to Organize Amazon: Workers in Alabama Set Example for All Labor

Mar. 26, 2021— Workers in Bessemer, Alabama, are engaged in one of the most important union-organizing drives in recent years. Their goal is to win representation by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) at the giant Amazon warehouse there. Voting by mail by the 5,805 workers began in February. It closes March 29. The outcome can have far-reaching implications for the working class and the labor movement in the United States.

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