Saurav Sarkar

Fifty Years after Stonewall: LGBTQ Workers Seek Equality

This summer marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, where police raids on a New York bar led to six days of protests and clashes, sparking the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement. We decided to take a look around the country at some of the organizing by LGBTQ workers and allies in the labor movement today. Here’s a flavor of what’s happening in the post-marriage equality era. —Editors

LGBTQ workers continue to face discrimination and unemployment at higher rates than the population as a whole.

Bangladesh Accord Gets a Lifeline While Workers Organize Wildcat Strikes

On April 23, 2013, a local television crew shot footage of cracks in the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The building was evacuated, but the owner of the building declared it safe and told workers to come back the next day. One Walmart supplier housed in the building, Ether Tex, threatened to withhold a month’s wages from any workers who didn’t return.

The building collapsed on April 24, and when the rubble was finally cleared, 1,134 people were found dead, with another 2,500 injured. It was the worst industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry.

Erie Locomotive Workers Avert Strike with New Contract at Wabtec

Three months after the largest manufacturing strike of the Trump presidency so far, locomotive plant workers in Erie, Pennsylvania, have a deal. Electrical Workers (UE) Locals 506 and 618 ratified a four-year contract on June 12.

In a qualified victory, the 1,700 members conceded a two-tier wage structure with a 10-year progression for new hires to reach parity with current workers, but beat back the company’s demands for a harsher version of two-tier and numerous other concessions.

Tennessee Janitors Convince Target To Drop Dirty Cleaning Contractor

Retail janitors organizing with a Tennessee worker center got Target to drop a crooked cleaning contractor at all the state’s stores. Now they're pressing Target to stop using Diversified Maintenance nationally.

“Diversified is a contractor that specifically targets the immigrant community,” said Cruz (a janitor who prefers to use a single name) through an interpreter. “It offers us these jobs and then abuses us and does not pay us our fair wages.”

Amnesty For All

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Saurav Sarkar

In April the U.S. government carried out its largest workplace raid on immigrants in 10 years, detaining 280 people in Texas.

It’s the latest attack by a president who campaigned on the threat to build a wall along the Mexican border and has repeatedly tried to ban all migrants from several majority-Muslim countries.

The excuse for all this is an alleged crisis of immigration.

Erie Locomotive Plant Workers Strike against Two-Tier

This article has been updated since the original version, first published March 1.

At a sprawling locomotive manufacturing complex a mile long and a mile wide in Erie, Pennsylvania, 1,700 workers struck for nine days and fended off their new employer’s efforts to impose a raft of concessions, including two-tier wages.

Temperatures were below freezing. Strikers stood on a dozen picket lines ringing the plant, feeding wood into burn barrels and making life difficult for any non-union employees who tried to drive through the gates.

A Green New Deal for American Labor?

The simple yellow protest signs were stenciled “Green Jobs for All.” Speaker after speaker stepped into the middle of the office floor, marked with a U.S. House of Representatives seal. Representative-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fresh off her election win, gave the protesters high fives.

That was the scene in November when the youth climate justice organization Sunrise Movement held a sit-in at the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was soon to be the Speaker of the House.

Most Americans had never heard of the “Green New Deal” at the time.

Federal Workers: Shutdown and Out

What would you do if management could force you to work without pay, lock you out with no consequences, and fire you for going on strike?

That’s the situation facing 800,000 federal workers—and their unions—during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Forty percent of the government’s civilian workforce besides postal workers are being deprived of money to pay for rent, gas, groceries, and car and student loan payments.

They include 420,000 workers who are being forced to work without pay and 380,000 who are locked out.

Scenes from the L.A. Teachers Strike

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Saurav Sarkar

It’s day four of the Los Angeles teachers strike, and the big news is that the district and the union will meet today at noon to resume negotiations for the first time since the strike began. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has been urging the district to come back to the table, will mediate.

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