Keith Brower Brown

New Caucus Powers Up In the Electrical Workers

On paper, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has power like few other unions in the country. The “sparkies” have over 700,000 members. Most of them have held onto pensions, family health plans, and some of the best pay in construction.

IBEW ranks have grown steadily for nearly a decade on building sites and power lines. A longtime union staffer took the presidency of the AFL-CIO four years ago. While millions of other workers face threats of layoff by automation, Electrical Workers are booking overtime building data centers.

Confront or Cave? Federal Pressure Splits the Building Trades

One of the last nationwide bastions of union jobs is getting jackhammered by the Trump administration. Members are languishing in ICE prisons without trial. Programs that protect members from racism and sexism are getting the axe.

In response, building trades officers are split: some are pleading, some are protesting, and others are surrendering without a fight.

UAW Reformers Close Caucus, Launch New Organization

Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus in the Auto Workers, voted to dissolve at its quarterly online membership meeting April 27.

“It was a heartbreaking decision to come to,” said UAWD founder and chair Scott Houldieson, a 36-year electrician at Ford. “UAWD had become a caucus that is ‘resolutionary,’ and focused more on caucus discipline than on actually organizing workers. Meetings had become dreadful. We can have differences as long as we make a decision and move on.”

Battery Workers Organize To Safeguard Their Health

Rural Kentucky factory workers in the heart of the Southern battery belt filed for election January 7 to join the Auto Workers. More than two-thirds of the 900 hourly workers signed the union petition at BlueOval, a joint venture of Ford and SK On.

Electric vehicle batteries are a booming sector. If these workers succeed in building a strong union, they can set the standard to make these jobs worth keeping, and potentially build a base to take a clean energy transition further.

Stewards Corner: Organizing to ‘Green’ Your Job: What Works?

Stewards often build fights around small issues, and they need to. But stewards also have a special charge to stay ahead of the boss—to think big about shifting power on the job, including by driving the move to green production.

The union can fight smarter when it’s not just reacting to the boss’s plans—when members have talked over their own goals for making work different.

The Big Union Contract Fights Coming in 2025

In some of the most exciting fights of 2024, strikers shut down ports on the East Coast and backed up plane orders on the West. The coming year is full of expiring contracts that could keep the strike wave rolling.

ALIGNED TO FIGHT

The list includes some big contracts lined up so unions can bargain and possibly strike together.

In Hurricane Ruins, North Carolina Food Workers Organize and Fight

Twenty-one days without running water. A week before any cell service or internet. Hospitals closed, and thousands of houses swept away.

Not long after developers started trumpeting the city of Asheville, North Carolina, as a “climate haven” from coastal storms, the area experienced catastrophic flooding. Upland Tennessee and North Carolina were the hardest hit by Hurricane Helene on September 27.

You're Already On Strike. How to Turn Up the Heat?

Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities.

UAW Reformers Muster Forces to Hold Bosses to Their Word

A year after the United Auto Workers’ Stand-Up Strike, the union caucus that helped make it possible is setting out to transform locals still stuck in the mud. Their first step is to fight a new onslaught of layoffs, broken promises, and retaliation from CEOs.

Marathon Petroleum Teamsters Strike

For the first time in 30 years, Teamsters at the Marathon oil refinery in Detroit are on strike. Close to 300 workers walked out September 4. Welders, firefighters, and heavy equipment operators in the union are demanding a raise that keeps up with cost of living, along with better hours. See a great video here.

Pages