Make 'Em Pay!

Fight For Funding!

This Is A Working System!

"There’s this misguided myth that unions and management don’t get along. It’s a business bottom-line issue. Right-to-work is going to compromise my quality, my competitiveness. The unions are my partner. They’re almost like a screening agency. This is a working system. I have never understood this right-to-work agenda." -Bill Kennedy, Rock Road Companies

From Fate Of The Union (NY Times, June 2015)

Never Forget The 145

"On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 145 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable — most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers."

Quote excerpted from History.com

Freie Arbeiter Stimme

"The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists traces the history of a Yiddish anarchist newspaper publishing its final issue after 87 years. Narrated by anarchist historian Paul Avrich, the story is mostly told by the newspaper's now elderly, but decidedly unbowed staff. It's the story of one of the largest radical movements among Jewish immigrant workers in the 19th and 20th centuries, the conditions that led them to band together, their fight to build trade unions, their huge differences with the communists, their attitudes towards violence, Yiddish culture, and their loyalty to one another."

We Are All Ayotzinapa!

"On October 22nd, Mexico took to the streets to demand the return of the 43 missing normalistas, as well as answers about the identity of the bodies discovered in the mass graves, and how they ended up there. 'We are not all here — 43 are missing' and 'Alive they were taken, alive we want them back' were the main slogans that shook Mexico’s squares from North to South. Several universities went on a 48-hour strike and some of them — including the UNAM and the UAM — declared an indefinite strike until the government provides some answers regarding the fate of the 43 normalistas."

October 22nd march photograph by Yuri Cortez

Text excerpted from Reflections On A Revolution

Cradle Of Murders

"A political insurgency was repressed with violence... The massacre has shown just

how fragile Mexico's democratic institutions are." -Sergio Aguayo

"Pressure continues to mount on the Mexican authorities to find 43 student teachers who disappeared three weeks ago in the southern city of Iguala, many of them after being arrested by local police... Thousands marched through the resort city of Acapulco on Friday calling for the return of the students alive in the latest in a series of protests around the state of Guerrero, where the events happened, as well as in other parts of the country and abroad." -The Guardian

Photograph by Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Low Pay Is Not Okay!

Fight For 15!

"According to a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the CEOs of America's top 25 restaurant corporations, including McDonald's, Burger King, the Cheesecake Factory, Chipotle, and Jack in the Box, took home an average of 721 times the money minimum-wage workers did, and 194 times the take-home pay of the typical American worker in a production or nonsupervisory job. Restaurants and food services employ nearly half of all American workers who earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (or less)."

Quote from Mother Jones (July 14th, 2014)

Workers Unite For A Fair Workplace!

"We work at Guitar Center and we are organizing across the country to improve wages and working conditions for all Guitar Center employees.

We love our jobs and our passion is helping our customers achieve their musical dreams. But we often have trouble making ends meet, thanks to the low wages and fluctuating hours we receive. We are asked to do many non-selling tasks which hurt our commissions, sales workers do not receive sick days, health benefits are expensive and part timers are not even offered them.

It’s been an exciting year for the Guitar Center campaign: workers in New York, Chicago and Las Vegas have successfully organized a union at their workplaces, over 100 bands and artists have endorse the campaign, and tens of thousands of people have signed petitions supporting us.

However, the company has responded by refusing to give us a fair contract and has launched an aggressive campaign to bust the union. The company's last offer is even less than what non-union stores have and is meant to punish us for standing up for ourselves. Our union has been forced to file charges detailing the company’s bad faith negotiating and union busting.

We now say: enough is enough! We are asking the public to support us as we enter the final stages of negotiations! Sign the petition to help us get a fair contract."

I Hate The Capitalist System

"I hate the capitalist system,

And I'll tell you the reason why:

It has caused me so much suffering,

And my dearest friends to die."

Keep On Keepin' On!

"The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining — it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process."

Quote from a Canadian Federation Of Labour publication, 1979

The Persistent Commoner

Tony Benn

1925 - 2014

“It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.”

Beneficial Constraints

"[Harley Davidson] knew it had to keep employing members of the International Association of Machinists and United Steelworkers, who were paid far more than nonunion workers in the South and several multiples of the going rate in Mexico. The company could only compete by redesigning the production system so that each worker created more value than they cost … Harley’s very existence was in question in 2009. Today it is a manufacturing role model, and that has a lot to do with its workers. The average tenure of a line worker at the York plant is 18 years, and these workers are extremely devoted to the company … Costs have fallen by $100 million at the plant and quality has improved even more significantly." -Adam Davidson, Building A Harley Faster

The blog post's title — also referenced in the article quoted — refers to a concept developed by Wolfgang Streeck which encourages the development of a long-term cooperative relationship between employers and their employees.

"Where words leave off, music begins."

Pete Seeger

Rest In Paradise

"Decade after decade. Singing and agitating and inspiring the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of those who had heard him singing the songs of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1938, or serenading Eleanor Roosevelt in 1944, or accompanying Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign in 1948. The hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists who joined Seeger on a thirty-five-block march through Manhattan in Octover 2011 knew that he was seventy years older than they were, but he was one of them." -John Nichols, The Nation