Successful union campaigns could raise wages, reduce poverty, and spread democracy in the former Confederacy.
by Tom Conway, Inequality.org
Workers at Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Georgia, launched a union drive to secure better wages, work-life balance, and a voice on the job.
The company resisted them. History defied them. Geography worked against them.
But they stood together, believed in themselves, and achieved a historic victory that’s reverberating throughout the South.
About 1,400 workers at the electric bus manufacturer voted overwhelmingly this spring to join the United Steelworkers (USW), reflecting the rise of collective power in a part of the country where bosses and right-wing politicians long contrived to foil it.
“It’s just time for a change,” explained Rinardo Cooper, a member of USW Local 572 and a paper machine operator at Graphic Packaging in Macon, Georgia.
Recent Posts
Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé: Despite Ceasefire, Palestinians Still Face “Elimination, Genocide”
Take Action Now “I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with…
Who Will Defend Ordinary Working People Against Trump And MAGA?
Take Action Now How powerful can this movement-based opposition be? That depends on what the ordinary Americans being harmed by the Trump regime…
Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis
Take Action Now In a filing in the Federal Register, the Labor Department argues there are “immediate dangers to the American food supply” due to a…
Federal Judge Sides With Journalists, Protesters in Chicago Over Violent Tactics of Trump’s Federal Agents
Take Action Now “Individuals are allowed to protest,” the judge said. “They are allowed to speak. That is guaranteed by the First Amendment to our…