This is the second article in a series describing the first six years, from 2014 to 2020, in the transformation of one of the largest local unions in the United States, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). The transformation continues today under Cecily Myart-Cruz’s presidency.
The Los Angeles teachers’ union was profoundly influenced by Jane McAlevey, writes former president Alex Caputo-Pearl. If the loving and assertive push was her trademark, then thinking audaciously big was its complement.
Brad Hirn said, “The ordinance doesn’t automatically bestow upon tenants a victory: it provides a framework for tenants to think about how to organize a majority of their neighbors, and it imposes the obligation on the landlord to bargain in good faith.”
The same Supreme Court that revoked Roe v. Wade is engaged in a long-term effort to outlaw strikes: according to Jane McAlevey, building up mobilizational capacity for unions now is about preparing US workers for a future of illegal strikes.
The UAW’s use of social media to broadcast the current state of play on key bargaining issues might not conform exactly to McAlevey’s model, but it does stake out an approach that insists that bargaining will not take place solely in backrooms.
As a longtime labor organizer, scholar, and writer, Jane McAlevey has repeatedly articulated how mass numbers of workers can organize, negotiate, strike, and change the world. In an extended interview with Jacobin, McAlevey reflects on her life and work.
Jane McAlevey wants us to have a better understanding of Womack’s concept of power and how to wield it effectively. “From an organizer’s viewpoint, the question is, are the workers capable of creating a crisis big enough that it forces the employers to make concessions?”
Amazon has released a laughable statement denying what’s been obvious since the company’s founding: that it, like many other US companies, actively and systematically violates international labor standards prohibiting anti-union interference in workers’ business.
Labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey discusses the strike wave, the Great Resignation, and the union-busting efforts of the past year and looks at where the labor movement might go in 2022 and beyond.
A new report from the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, however, finds that (surprise, surprise) the majority of Massachusetts drivers are liable to earn as little as $4.82 an hour, while a smaller number who qualify for a health care stipend under the law could earn the princely wage of up to $6.74 hour.
As recently as February, union organizer Jane McAlevey warned that we not only needed to massively scale up our activist base, but stop wasting our energies on social media. We spent most of our time mobilizing the vote rather than organizing tenants in the concerned buildings for the long term.
Like most unions throughout the United States, New York’s labor unions operated under a blend of what Jane McAlevey calls an advocacy model and a mobilizing model.
Prop 22’s backers said drivers would be paid at least 120 percent of local minimums while actively driving. That “actively driving” is key: given how much of a driver’s shift consists of time in between rides or tasks, the pay is far lower than that. A UC Berkeley study estimates the effective average wage under Prop 22 is as low as $5.64.
A new report coauthored by labor analyst Jane McAlevey presents overwhelming evidence that democratic unionism that puts workers at the center of collective bargaining wins strong contracts. Just as important, such unionism also has a transformational effect on workers’ consciousness.
Union organizer Jane McAlevey on labor’s loss at Amazon in Alabama, what the future of labor organizing success depends on, and how organizers can win.
These “Fight for $15” fast-food actions have been rightly criticized by organizer and author Jane McAlevey, among others, for focusing more on media-friendly drama than on building lasting organization. After all, the walkouts have been going on for nearly a decade and fast-food workers still don’t have unions, though some companies have raised their entry-level wages.
The Green New Deal program has enormous potential to generate mass popular support. But absent real leverage from labor, it’s likely to be continually watered down into a toothless slogan for NGOs.
Labor strategist Jane McAlevey offers her take on why Amazon workers were defeated in their recent Bessemer, Alabama union drive.
McAlevey educated us about why we should strike and taught us not to do things like third-partying the union, meaning talking about it as a separate entity, which I definitely used to do.
“Whether it is FDR or Biden, the issue is what are unions and the organized working class doing to help create the possibility to achieve Biden’s stated goals of increasing unionization and decreasing misery and inequality?” asks McAlevey.
The reason Amazon workers lost in Alabama is simple: Employers in the US are allowed to engage in brazen anti-union tactics throughout union elections. The PRO Act would change all of that, finally freeing workers from employer intimidation.
The key point McAlevey makes is that once Amazon won the fight to enormously change the composition and size of the bargaining unit at the warehouse, the union had to either sharply revisit its strategy or simply withdraw to fight another day.
Sweeney also launched the Geographic Organizing Project. A successful effort in Stamford, Connecticut, under the leadership of Jane McAlevey was thwarted when affiliate organizing directors of the AFL-CIO disingenuously undermined the program, feeling threatened by these efforts.
The GAO’s conclusions add to an existing body of research showing the extent to which profitable companies paying low wages are effectively subsidized by the federal government to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.
These huge challenges call for a style of organizing that Jane McAlevey refers to as “whole worker organizing.” It’s about engaging people beyond their roles as employees, tapping into their roles as community members — members of community groups, sporting associations, political parties, congregations, whatever the case may be.
