Some American Experiences with Sectoral Bargaining

In the United States, we have some experiences with private sector SBAs, or their tacit equivalent. In New York City, SEIU-32BJ, which represents residential and commercial building workers, negotiates contracts with the Realty Advisory Board. The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council negotiates with the Hotel Association of New York. When the Screen Actors Guild negotiates with the big Hollywood studios, that’s effectively an SBA. This summer, I moderated a panel at the Labor Notes conference where one panelist described how his Austin IBEW Local negotiated with an employer association.

For employers who want to (or are willing to) hire union labor, such an agreement “takes wages out of competition” – at least, among themselves. Of course, that also reveals the potential weakness of current private sector SBAs – they are entirely voluntary on the part of employers, who may break from them if there is too much non-union low wage competition. Think about how many hotels in NYC are not unionized. In the 1960s and 1970s, virtually all over-the-road truck drivers and employers were covered by the Teamsters’ “Master Freight Agreement.” Today, that Teamsters “master” agreement has dozens of regional “supplemental” agreements meant to encourage employers to stay union at the cost of divergence from the supposedly controlling wage and benefit structure – essentially a race toward (not yet “to”) the bottom that SBAs are supposed to prevent.

How to address that problem? And could SBAs be utilized to organize and unionize currently non-union workers? The answer is No - and YES: on the one hand, there’s nothing in the current National Labor Relations Act that prevents that race to the bottom or mandates sectoral bargaining – other than union power itself, currently pretty limited in all but a handful of sectors of the economy. And state labor laws are not allowed to “pre-empt” the NLRA, by mandating requirements that go beyond those promulgated by the National Labor Relations Board.

On the other hand, though, that pre-emption rule only applies to workers who are specifically covered by the NLRA. Already, for example, every state has its own labor rules for public employees (because the NLRA only addresses private sector workers). Here in New York, that’s the Taylor Law, which establishes recognition and bargaining procedures – and, of course, bans strikes and job actions - but allows public sector tenured faculty to form unions, while the NLRB does not. States can also establish labor rules for other workers not covered by the NLRA, including farm workers, domestic workers, workers who may lose their status as workers in the future, such as Graduate Student-Workers, and… workers who the federal government does not consider employees.

Gig Workers and Sectoral Bargaining

And that brings us to gig workers – workers that the federal government has decided are self-contractors – and specifically Uber/Lyft drivers. In three states so far – Massachusetts, California, and Illinois – sectoral bargaining rights have been established for this category of workers.

What does that mean? Here, I want to speak generally for a bit about the potential possibilities inherent in sectoral bargaining legislation before I return to these three states and the driver-for-hire sector. It means the workers in a specific sector – regardless, frankly, of whether they are considered “employees” of the companies – have the right to form a union and become members of that union. (in one piece of model legislation a sector is defined as, “a group of workers… who share one or more of the following criteria: industry, occupation, product line, service line, geography, key job characteristics like skills or certifications, or another clear and distinct common interest.”)

It means there is a government entity (like the NLRB) that will “recognize” the union once it reaches a percentage of the workforce specified in the state legislation and then – just like the NLRA – make sure the union has access to names and contact information of potential members. That entity can facilitate the creation of an appropriate employers’ association, supervise the subsequent bargaining process, and ensure that the employers’ association bargains in good faith.

So far, except for facilitating the employers’ association, this is pretty much what the NLRB does. But here are additional things that state SBA legislation can potentially do.

• It can set wage and benefit floors.

• It can set deadlines for the culmination of those negotiations – no more Starbucks bargaining “in good faith” until the end of time.

• It can mandate mediation and then even arbitration of contracts when bargaining proves fruitless. (Those abilities are specifically written into the Massachusetts legislation.)

• And it can mandate that employers who are not part of the employers’ association nevertheless be bound by the terms of any agreement.

Mind you – state legislation doesn’t have to include these features, but it can. It’s basically like saying, “let’s re-write the NLRA to make it better” for these sectors of the workforce.

Now, although no one that I’ve seen has written about this, I don’t know why such legislation couldn’t write back into law conduct (that is, actions) that the Taft-Hartley amendments to the NLRA, or the courts, interpreting the NLRA, have prohibited. Why couldn’t these SB laws allow secondary boycotts, for example, or sit-down strikes, or exempt unions from penalties when workers engage in job actions during the life of a contract to resolve some workplace issue?

And finally, we should understand these laws as sort of trial runs for what would happen if the Supreme Court decides that the NLRA is unconstitutional. Then, states will need to write their own labor laws covering all workers.

Conversely, the experiences of state sectoral bargaining laws could theoretically provide a model for the complete revamp of the NLRA that is vitally necessary.

The Progress of Driver Sectoral Bargaining in Three States

So, where are we at? In Massachusetts, sectoral bargaining for gig drivers was authorized in a state-wide ballot initiative in 2024. In May, the App Drivers Union, which is financially backed by the Machinists and SEIU-32BJ, having shown that more than 30% of all drivers had signed cards asking that it be designated as their bargaining representative, was legally certified as such. On August 13, they began bargaining with Uber and Lyft.

In California, SB legislation was passed in 2025, and on August 11, the California Gig Workers Union asked to be certified as the bargaining agent for 800,000 drivers. The California bill is weaker than the Massachusetts one. It requires Uber and Lyft to bargain in good faith (insert rolling eyes emoji here), but has no specific trigger that can force an agreement.

Finally, in Illinois, the process is just starting. The Transportation Network Driver Labor Relations Act became law earlier this month (August). Like the Massachusetts law, Illinois sets out a pretty quick timeline (see pp. 52-56) to bring any unresolved negotiations to an arbitrator to settle once either side (union or employers association) declares an impasse.

There’s a useful and short overview of all three states here. It concludes:

The implications may extend beyond these three states and the rideshare industry. Employers that rely on independent contractor workforces should monitor whether other states pursue similar alternatives to traditional NLRA collective bargaining.

Indeed – well, New York? And why not delivery workers too?

Some links, on Sectoral Bargaining, and other matters

WEBINAR: MODEL STATE SECTORAL BARGAINING LAW

Learn more about the Model State Sectoral Bargaining Law from a panel of labor law experts (including Jennifer Abruzzo) on Wednesday, September 23rd at 12pm ET.

Why States Are the Key to the Modern Labor Movement - more on sectoral bargaining

Serve NYC, Afford NYC is an effort by rank-and-file DC37 members to win a better contract. Their main demands are:

• $30 per Hour Minimum Wage: To ensure that all DC37 union members are paid enough to live in the city we serve.

• 6.5% yearly raises for 5 years: To ensure that our raises outpace rising rent, groceries, and cost-of-living.

• Save work flexibility: Telework and compressed-schedules should be a right for all! Telework and compressed-schedules should be rights that are codified in our contract, not privileges that can be revoked by a manager.

• Public Money for Public Service: Outsourcing work to private companies for huge sums takes money out of our own paychecks.

• Reform Civil Service: The civil service system should ensure fair pay, promotional opportunities, and job security.

Serve NYC, Afford NYC will be rallying just outside DC37 HQ (at 140 West St.) on Saturday, September 5 at 11AM. They write, “We are emphasizing that DC37 doesn't allow us to vote on our own unit contracts [which address specific agency and title working conditions], even though the constitution says we're supposed to have this right. We sent a letter stating this to Henry Garrido who has not replied.”

Hamilton Nolan interviews Florida Senate candidate and DSA member Angie Nixon on Sept. 1. Register at this link.

Astonishing Historical Fact of the Week:

“President Nixon backed Democratic Indiana Senator Birch Bayh’s constitutional amendment to abolish the College. The House voted an astounding 338 to 70 to send the immensely popular amendment to the Senate. Then, of course, it hit another obstacle to democracy: a classic Southern filibuster sponsored by South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond. One anti-democratic mechanism trumped the reform of another.”

From Jefferson Cowie, What Real Democracy Might Look Like

In each case, I’ll list the centrist candidate first. An asterisk designates the winner.

The punchline is that except for Michigan-13, labor unions, often overwhelmingly, lined up behind the centrist Democrat, even where that person was not an incumbent, and even in at least one case (Lander-Goldman) where it should have been obvious that they were backing the losing candidate.

I have my own theories about this. I’ll suggest one here – that unions want non-controversial candidates. They don’t want candidates with views about genocide (or Thanksgiving!) that might make some members angry.

But I hope some of you will provide your own ideas, in the Comments box!

Michigan Senate

Haley Stevens: Michigan LIUNA, Midwest Council of Carpenters, Michigan Firefighters, Michigan Machinists, Painters, United Steelworkers, and locals of UNITE HERE, Ironworkers, Plumbers, Operating Engineers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, Bricklayers, Sheet Metal Workers, Teamsters, and Boilermakers

* Abdul El-Sayed: AFT Michigan, National Nurses United, UAW, and locals of Plumbers, AAUP, AFGE, IATSE, UFCW

Wisconsin Governor – a somewhat odd race, because various candidates who had received endorsements then withdrew.

* David Crowley: Wisconsin IBEW, Wisconsin LIUNA, Wisconsin Firefighters, Midwest Carpenters Council, and Operating Engineers 139

Francesca Hong: AFT 223 and OPEIU Local 39

Kelda Roys: Wisconsin NEA

Mandela Barnes: Wisconsin UAW, AFT 212, and UFCW 1473

Joel Brennan: none

NY 7^th

Antonio Reynoso: NYS AFL-CIO, SEIU 32BJ, SEIU 1199, District Council 37, Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, NYSNA, Ironworkers, NYSUT (and UFT), RWDSU, CSEA, CSA, UNITE HERE Local 100, CWA District 1, Teamsters Local 237

* Claire Valdez: UAW 9A, CIR, and locals of AFGE, Bricklayers, and OPEIU

NY 10^th

Dan Goldman (Incumbant): NYS AFL-CIO, UFT, District Council 37, Carpenters, AFGE, CSEA, CSA, LIUNA, Painters DC9, NYS Building Trades Council, ATU, Machinists, IBEW, NALC, UFT, and locals of Bricklayers, Teamsters, and UFCW

* Brad Lander: UAW 9A, NYSNA, CWA, 32BJSEIU, UNITE HERE Local 100, PSC-CUNY, CIR

NY 13^th

Adriano Espaillat (Incumbent): New York State AFL-CIO, 1199SEIU, 32BJSEIU, Council of School Supervisors & Administrators, District Council 37, Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, RWDSU, Transport Workers Union Local 100, UFT, UNITE HERE Local 100

* Chevalier: UAW 9A

Colorado 1^st

Diana DeGette: Colorado AFL-CIO, SEIU Colorado, NALC, AFGE, AFSCME, Firefighters, Western States Carpenters, and locals of LIUNA, Sheet Metal Workers, and Plumbers

* Melat Kiros: Colorado CWA and UFCW Local 7

Pennsylvania 3^rd

Sharif Street: Philadelphia AFL-CIO, AFGE, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, AFSCME District Council 33, Philadelphia Building Trades Council, and locals of TWU, Teamsters, Fiirefighters, LIUNA, Steamfitters, Plumbers, Bricklayers, Operating Engineers, Painters, ILA, Ironworkers, Sheet Metal Workers, and IATSE

Ala Stanford: none

* Chris Rabb: Temple University (AAUP) and Community College of Philadelphia (AFT) faculty unions

Michigan 7^th

Matt Maasdam: Pipe Trades Association, IBEW, Sheet Metal Workers, Firefighters, and locals of Teamsters, Painters, and Bricklayers

Bridget Brink: Michigan NEA, LIUNA, Machinists, and locals of UNITE HERE and Ironworkers

* William Lawrence: National Nurses United, and locals of CWA and SEIU

Michigan 13^th

Shri Thanedar: Michigan Machinists, Roofers

* Donovan McKinney: Michigan AFL-CIO, UAW, Michigan SEIU, Sheet Metal Workers, Michigan AFSCME, IBEW, Michigan Carpenters, National Nurses United, and UNITE HERE Local 24

Missouri 1^st

* Wesley Bell: Missouri AFl-CIO, IBEW, UAW, Missouri NEA, Machinists, and various locals of ATU, Carpenters, Operating Engineers, LIUNA, Ironworkers, Firefighters, Sheet Metal Workers, Plumbers, and UFCW.

Cori Bush: None

Five additional races are worth noting.

In the Los Angeles mayoral race, running against the incumbent Karen Bass, democratic socialist Nithya Raman has almost no labor support. Raman came in second in the nonpartisan primary and advances to the general against Bass.

In the Washington DC mayoral race, running for an open seat, democratic socialist and Councilperson Janeese George defeated another Councilperson with overwhelming labor support. George won in a rout, so this may have just been getting on the victory train.

In the Florida Senate primary, Angie Nixon, who currently works as Political Director for the Florida Public Service Union – SEIU, had their endorsement, along with other SEIU unions in the state: 32BJ, 1199, and CIR. Alexander Vindman, recruited by Chuck Schumer, had the endorsement of AFGE, but most other unions stayed out of this race.

In Florida 25^th, where democratic socialist Oliver Larkin ran against right-wing incumbent Jared Moskowitz (he joined the DOGE caucus and voted for the Lakin Riley Act funding ICE), endorsements were about split, with Larkin getting backing from three of Nixon’s SEIU unions (not BJ), and Moskowitz supported by UAW, AFSCME and AFGE.

In Florida 20^th, democratic socialist Elijah Manley had no labor endorsements. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an incumbent who was drawn out of her district, had overwhelming labor endorsements.

Now, tell me what you think - WHY ARE UNIONS SO BEHIND THE CURVE OF TYPICAL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS?

which represents about 1,300 research scientists, criminalists, administrative public health nurses, architects, engineers and other titles working in the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. DC37 is the largest municipal union, representing almost 150,000 workers in 56 separate Locals across a wide range of occupations, wage scales, and education.

Read The Chief’s article about this attack on union democracy and member participation here.

Garrido is upset that the Local had the nerve temerity to develop its own bargaining demands – many about putting checks on unilateral management authority – insist that it be allowed to bargain with the city about them, and protest after Garrido’s staff refused to let them put forward those demands. The Local has also voted to urge DC37 to divest from Israeli investments, called for the abolition of ICE, and endorsed legislation to ban 24-hour shifts for home care employees. Garrido opposes all of those demands.

Some Local members are also part of a rank-and-file coalition, Serve NYC Afford NYC trying to develop demands around the DC37 contract, which expires in November. Their demands include a $30/hr minimum wage – some DC37 members are still making around $20/hr! – and the specific codification of remote work rights, so that they cannot be punitively revoked by a hostile manager. You can be sure that Garrido is absolutely opposed to the notion that members, or even Local officers who are not in his pocket, have any say in that bargaining!

Garrido’s intention is not just to remove the Local’s president but to intimidate activists from other Locals who are part of the Serve NYC Afford NYC effort.

Garrido, Peterson, and Local 3005

Meghan Peterson was elected last fall as part of the insurgent Rank and File Voices slate. I’ve talked to folks from that slate a few times since then and they seem genuinely interested in developing rank-and-file participation in the Local. For example, here’s the list of committees they’ve established (including the Bad Bosses working group!), and here’s their solicitation for members to join the Contracts and Negotiations Committee.

Now, if you read the Chief article, you will see that, officially, the charges against Peterson – that she interfered in internal affairs of Local 375, the Civil Service Technical Guild – were brought by the president of that Local and the president of Local 3778, the NYPD Technical Professional Employees. But there is simply no way that these presidents took this step on their own. They are the puppets; Garrido is the puppet-master.

Ironically, 3005 (whose awkward official name is NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene/Office of Chief Medical Examiner Technical Employees) is a relatively new Local. It was actually spun off from Local 375 about ten years ago when the leadership of that Local was feuding with the Executive Director about their own autonomy. At that time, Local 375 was put into trusteeship, its leadership was removed, and a third of its membership was split off into five new Locals to weaken its voting power. But both of these Locals – 3005 and 375 – are full of the kinds of workers who were most active in the Mamdani campaign, and believe that their views should be heard. Local 375 activists are preparing to challenge their current leadership in union elections next year.

DC37’s Executive Director usually has firm top-down control of the Locals because he determines which (cooperative) Local presidents get “union release time” from their municipal duties to handle union business, which Locals get staff support, which Locals get their grievances moved. Local 3005 and Serve NYC Afford NYC have been challenging DC37 autocracy, and Garrido wants to stop their efforts before members in other Locals have similar ideas.

What Can Be Done?

First of all, Garrido’s suppression attempt needs to have maximum exposure. Please circulate this substack and especially the Chief article. Let’s expose all of Garrido’s dirty laundry to public discussion - and call it for what it is.

Second, DSA’s Labor Working Group meets this coming Thursday evening. If you are a DSA member, you have the right to attend this meeting, ask for discussion on this issues, and what steps DSA can take to thwart Garrido’s efforts.

If you have other suggestions, please place them in the comments below.

You can’t make this stuff up

Who is Amazon’s chief lobbyist in their (so far) $5 million effort to prevent the passage of the Delivery Protection Act, which would force Amazon to be the employer of record for all their delivery worker, thereby facilitating unionization? Jessica Schumer, Chuck Schumer’s daughter. Ugh.

Hamilton Nolan writes about the implications of the failed effort in Sweden (Sweden!) to get Tesla to sign a collective bargaining agreement with workers at Tesla repair shops.

A few weeks ago, I work about the federal indictment of anti-iCE activists in Minneapolis. Now Labor Notes has more, about federal efforts, “to infiltrate and surveil meetings and obtain the financial records of nonprofit groups and two of the country’s largest unions, the Communications Workers (CWA) and the Service Employees (SEIU).”

Democrats simulate election threats as Trump continues assault on voting details some of the threats potentially coming down the pike, including “realistic deepfake videos, created with artificial intelligence, showing “evidence” of widespread election fraud… a threat to withhold Office of Management and Budget (OMB) funding for states that don’t submit their voter rolls for federal oversight… armed vigilantes in tactical gear at ballot drop boxes… a midnight firebombing of an early voting site and a last-minute unilateral deployment of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and the national guard to polling stations.”

Sunday’s NYT’s Op-ed, Blue and Red America Have Become the Bitter Couple That Can’t Quite Face Divorce, argues that while, “it’s not yet a divorce, it’s more like a bitter, loveless marriage in which the parties stay technically but less and less enthusiastically united because splitting up is too complicated or dreadful or expensive.”

That reminded me of my own op-ed written three days after Biden’s election, The Great American Crack-up: Maybe It’s Time to Part Ways, which proposed what that break-up should look like – actually look like, geographically. I think it holds up pretty well. If you can’t get past the Daily News paywall, here’s the introduction and then the two key paragraphs:

The anthropologist Benedict Anderson once explained that nations are first “imagined” by self-appointed intellectuals and what we now call the media, who create a national myth of history and culture. Only afterward can they come into being. Americans are now stuck together, yet we do not even share a common understanding of our past, let alone our future…

I then point out some of those divergent views of past, present, and future, how we blame each other for American decline, before continuing:

Some of the new regional nations are obvious: the West Coast and Hawaii; the Plains Tier, stretching from Idaho east to Iowa and south to Oklahoma; the Northeast, down through Virginia. Texas can raise its own seventh flag; Alaska, its second. Adding Indiana and Ohio to the solid-red New South leaves us with a four-state Great Lakes nation [Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois] …

The Civil War South, with its vast enslaved Black population and Appalachian Unionists, was actually less unified than it seemed. Like it, the two remaining new nations will be less coherent politically although not necessarily economically: the five states of the now loosely-defined Southwest [Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Utah]; and the four of the Atlantic Southeast [the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida]. Still, by virtue of their smaller size — and this goes for Texas too — the inevitable political battles can be fought out closer to home. It won’t be Washington deciding what’s good for the people of blue Salt Lake or red Pensacola. And, as Ronald Reagan once said, the disaffected in each new nation can “vote with their feet.”

What qualifications would I make six years later? Maybe that Southwestern grouping – where Arizona is now more purplish-blue – would instead want to adhere to Calorewa; Utah might join the Plains states grouping. Washington DC would, of course, be its own state in the Northeast grouping. Puerto Rico could decide between independence or statehood as part of the northeast.

As to border control, I guess it’s conceivable that some of these groupings would literally set up thousands of checkpoints. Much more likely is that borders would be like those that now exist between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: entirely permeable, for both passenger and freight traffic. The “undocumented” would generally drift toward the nations that welcomed them, and presumably gave them paths to legal status and then citizenship. An undocumented resident of New York, “caught” visiting relatives in Ohio would simply be deported back to New York - not to the Congo.

The Problems of Assembling an Anti-Trump Coalition

Based on my trip to Chicago last weekend to join a commemoration of MLK’s 1966 Chicago Freedom Campaign, here’s a link to my Chief article from last week, Can We ‘Sing Down the Walls’ of Anti-Trump Disunity? It argues that by the time of Selma in 1965, King’s movement had assembled a true “cadre of allies [including] labor unions, white liberals, diverse religious and ethnic organizations.” That later coalition splintered as King broadened his goals, advocating a more expansive and inclusive moral vision – fighting de facto segregation of housing, education, and well-paying union jobs, opposing the Vietnam War and generally American militarism (“the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”), and launching the Poor People’s Campaign.

(While you are at the link, check out The Chief’s front page, which also has articles on the city’s efforts to enforce its sick leave regulations and its delivery tip crackdown, netting workers $104 million from the app companies, reportage on home healthcare workers efforts to ban 24 hour shifts, and the Writers Guild East’s efforts to block the Warner-Paramount merger.)

Although we saw a similar coalition assemble this winter in Minneapolis, that’s the exception, not the rule. What prevents us from building such am anti-Trump coalition? Here are the two key paragraphs which suggest both a solution and the cultural and language barriers which make it difficult:

One of the Minneapolis organizers said it relies on identifying points of common ground rather than requiring unified agreement on a particular set of demands. (Think about busing then, or abortion today, as disunifying issues.) It means accepting cultural dissimilarities as acceptable and natural, not an obstacle that must be overcome.

[In Chicago, a faith] leader reached the same conclusion on building the movement as those Minneapolis labor organizers but used markedly faith-based language to explain it. “Concentrating on what we have in common is more powerful than concentrating on what’s different,” the leader said. “We are not here in spite of our differences; we are here because our different traditions. All walk us to the very same conclusion: that all human beings are sacred; that when any human being is degraded, God himself is degraded; and we, who are amongst the human beings, are going to do something about it.”

Citing the chorus of a song that faith-based activists sung all weekend, “I sing from here, and you sing from there / Together we’ll sing down the walls everywhere,” here’s part of my Kumbaya-ish conclusion:

Where we have fundamentally similar visions of what is wrong, we need to learn to sing from here AND sing from there. If we can learn to listen to the songs of potential allies – whatever our different traditions and languages – with respect, perhaps we will be able to both stop Trumpism and set about initiating that “radical revolution of values” that King dreamed of so many years ago.

But now let me be more pessimistic. When I suggested this “solution” to a leader of a union that has actually done good work in fighting organizing its members against Trump, they pooh-poohed the whole idea: “Perhaps we can agree on what we’re fighting against, but I can’t imagine we can agree on a vision for the future. Insert sad emoji here.

Cost of Deportations Calculator

The Economic Policy Institute has developed a very clever “Cost of Deportations” Calculator. Nation-wide, the cost of mass deportations throughout the second Trump administration is $268.9 billion, which is $2358 per taxpayer. On its front page it then shows what that could buy over the next 2.5 years nationally in additional teachers, RNs, firefighters, or additional people receiving Medicaid, Veterans Benefits, Head Start, SNAP (food stamps – 118 million!), low-cost public housing or 12 weeks paid parental leave. Their methodology and technical documentation is here.

The really clever part of the calculator is that you can look at your own state, county, city, or Congressional district and see the same breakdowns, based on the cumulative taxes paid in that locality and the wage/benefit or program costs in that locality. Here’s what New York County (which is the wealthiest of the five NYC counties) could buy instead, for example:

I was going to write this week about the (cynical; anti-left) NYT article whose subheading reads “Longtime leaders and advocates in minority districts fear that victories by the Democratic Socialists of America in gentrifying neighborhoods could mean political erasure.” You – the reader – are meant to believe that DSA victories mean black and brown (working-class peoples) political erasure, as in this quote just four paragraphs in: “The D.S.A…. seemed to be papering over ‘the opinions and the self-governance of the citizens in the areas that they are sweeping over.’”

Two articles I read in the last few days really frame the politics of the article well, so I’ll just frame their arguments, then link to them.

If you read the article clearly with open eyes what you can see is that it is actually those “longtime leaders” whose opinions are being papered over, who themselves fear political erasure. Who is quoted in the article? The leader of a political club. An MTA board member and head of an anti-poverty nonprofit. A lobbyist and former aide to Assembly speaker Carl Heastie. The majority leader of the City Council. The head of the New York State NAACP. A founder of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College. The Brooklyn Borough President.

Now, this may simply indicate the laziness of the reporter. They called one of these “leaders” and got the phone numbers of handful more. But, in the editorial decision to assign such a piece, we can also the Times’ continued obsession with promoting fear of Mamdani and, more generally, the left-wing of the Democratic Party.

The Left Is Rising, So Centrist Dems Are Cynically Woke Again, makes the point that centrist Democrats have spent years blaming their defeats on the “woke” left, but now deploy wokeness to defend themselves against the left surge. (Of course, when it served their purposes, they also complained that Bernie Sanders only talked about class oppression and not race and gender – the “Bernie Bros” obsession.)

The really excellent article by Ari Paul (full disclosure: also the editor of my union’s newspaper) The New York Times’ Embarrassing Anti-DSA Meltdown, shows that DSA candidates votes from Black and Latino voters have actually been quite healthy and argues that since most of the victorious candidates in New York are actually people of color, the Times’ suggestion is that they are just tools of white people. The article quotes DSA State Senator Jabari Brisport, “It’s racist to say a Black leader like myself is secretly operating on the whims of white people… It implies Black socialist politicians don’t have agency.”

King’s 1966 Chicago Campaign

I’ll have much more to say about this in my upcoming Chief article, to which I’ll link next week. Here, I’ll just say a few things.

1. King’s Chicago campaign marked a turn in his work, away from the explicit “legal” segregation of the South and toward the de facto housing, education, and employment segregation of the North, and to problems of economic impoverishment in general, leading to his Poor People’s Campaign. It’s during this period too that he broke “the betrayal of my own silences” and became the first major political leader to call for an end to the American war on Vietnam.

2. The Chicago campaign was explicitly about the housing segregation which confined Black people – whether poor or middle-class – to their own respective ghettoes. King’s march to Marquette Park, in an exclusively white area, was met not only with jeering crowds but rocks and bricks. There’s a famous picture of King on one knee, having just been partially felled by a brick. This weekend was the (more or less) 60^th anniversary of that march.

3. I traveled to Chicago this weekend on a bus of primarily faith-based activists. Whose activist culture was/is quite different from my own left-labor culture. And the march and rally at the Marquette Park site were both dominated by a very ecumenical group of faith-based organizations, with some left presence but no official labor union presence. That Chief article will develop a bit my reflections on the general inability to build the left-labor-community-faith coalitions we desperately need to fight Trumpism and incipient fascism.

Follow-up on last week’s substack on the politics of the bonus that the City Council voted for Paraprofessionals

When Mulgrew and Menin’s Politics Become the Members’ Politics and ALL-OUT-WAR elaborate on that post. These are more insider accounts, meant specifically for teachers, with more specific information than I provided. Their particular significance is that both argue that UFT president Michael Mulgrew is, essentially, picking a political side for the union in the existing Mamdani-Menin feud without any consultation with either members or the union’s Delegate Assembly. And this decision may have unanticipated political consequences for union members both in the union’s day-to-day interaction with DOE and the Chancellor, and in its next round of contract bargaining.

Parks Unions Sound Alarm About City Hall-Backed Outsourcing. Last week’s substack also gave Mayor Mamdani a “D” for his interactions, so far, with “his” public workers. This article notes the Parks Department’s reliance on private contractors to clear recent storm detritus. The most important question is whether this was simply a temporary necessity (based on understaffing at Parks, which will be remedied) or a continuation of the Adams administration’s policies of effective policies of public employee union-busting. Just in case my substack was not clear enough on this point, this choice, and the grade I gave Mamdani, is entirely within his control, unlike, say, matters on which he is partially reliant on funding from Albany.

While we are talking about public employee union-busting – but, in this case, also union apathy – I don’t understand why TWU Local 100 is not challenging the use of a private security firm to “guard” toll booths and turnstiles. Local 100 already has a work title (they’re called Transit Property Protection Agents) which guards Transit Authority facilities, and the union should be fighting for workers in that title to be deployed for this purpose as well. It would be entirely feasible for Transit to hire workers into this title “provisionally” and temporarily, but with union wages and benefits in the interim.

Other Links

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It’s Working is about flooding the Internet with “articles” about peaceful Israelis and hateful Palestinians. The “trick” is that those “articles” are then picked up by the various AI engines (which indiscriminately search the internet to collect information) and treated as real knowledge, then spat out to people asking either Google search or their own particular AI large language models for information on Gaza.

The War on the UAW. Several years back, as part of an agreement with the Biden Justice Department about the corruption of former UAW leaders, the union agreed to an external monitor. Whether external monitors, inherently, are a good or bad thing I leave to you. (There are valid arguments each way.) However, the particular UAW external monitor, Neil Barofsky, is, personally, a Zionist, and, as the article details, has decided it is part of his job to oppose the UAW’s and President Shawn Fain’s turn toward sympathy with Palestinians and opposition to genocide. As you’ll read, Barofsky has now, functionally, taken a side in the upcoming UAW elections. What effect his reports will have on UAW members is unclear, but, of course, those reports also go to the Trump Justice Department which might try to step in and remove Fain from office or prevent him from running for re-election.

Judge Blocks Bill Banning Abrupt Driver Deactivations. One of the efforts of the city government to address the wages and working conditions of non-unionized workers in NYC is a piece of legislation which slows driver deactivations by Uber and Lyft and makes their ultimate disposition subject to third party arbitration. There are obviously legitimate deactivations based on safety or misconduct toward passengers – and illegitimate ones where the companies are trying to rid themselves or worker-activists or passengers lodge false complaints to get out of a fare. Now, a judge has halted the immediate application of this law, based on his claim that there are not enough deactivations – “only” 12,000 over six years – to constitute immediate harm to drivers if the law is “stayed” while Uber and Lyft’s opposition to it is litigated.

Workers at Bronx Defenders strike as labor unrest spreads through public defender offices. The third different strike this month.

While a union should prioritize the needs of its most victimized members, traditionally, the UFT leadership has ignored the particular issues of its smaller titles – Paras, Occupational and Physical Therapists, School Nurses, School Secretaries, etc. – when it negotiates contracts. Not that Teachers have done so well in the last twenty or thirty years themselves, but the leadership’s attention is focused on getting re-elected, and that means Teachers first. Paras’ scandalously low salary has never been a must-have item for the UFT leadership and president Michael Mulgrew.

However, all of a sudden last year – I’ll explain why below – the UFT launched a campaign to get the NY City Council to increase salaries by $10,000. That went nowhere, but this year, the UFT succeeded in getting the support of City Council Speaker Julie Menin for a one-time $10,000 payment to Paras, and last week, a bill to that effect was passed unanimously.

But Mayor Mamdani has argued that it is illegal for the Council to allocate money to improve public workers’ wages (or benefits) – that all money issues must be collectively bargained. “The Council’s passage of this legislation is in direct violation of the Taylor Law,” he says. There is some discussion that the City’s lawyers will challenge this legislation in court.

So, What is Behind the Motivations of…

Mulgrew

As explained and itemized in this article by Educators of New York City, in the most recent contract round, Mulgrew made various concessions that gave him $450 million to allocate as he saw fit, above and beyond the “pattern” raise that all city workers received. Mulgrew could have allocated it to increase Para salaries. Instead, he used most of that money to give an additional $1000 to each member. I think this EoNYC image really sums up the UFT’s “Teacher’s first” decision:

So, what has changed? After basically unchallenged control of the UFT for 65 years, recently Mulgrew’s Unity Caucus has been uneasy on the throne. In the most recent round of Retiree and Paraprofessional Chapter elections, opposition slates beat the Unity Caucus candidates easily. Then, last spring, UFT president Michael Mulgrew, running for re-election, only received 53% of the vote. (In my view, if the two opposing slates had united and run a single slate, the synergy of that unity would have been enough to topple Mulgrew.)

So, all of a sudden, Mulgrew needed to urgently appease and conciliate embittered members. Going around collective bargaining allowed UFT to get money outside the “pattern” and preserves his ability to continue to put Teachers first in the next contract round. And fortunately for him, he found an ally…

Menin

This is actually quite simple. Although the next Mayoral election is not until 2029, Menin has effectively launched her campaign. Institutionally, she is a centrist Democrat, (and a personally wealthy one at that, with a $22 million Hamptons mansion among other assets). She opposed Mamdani’s “tax the rich” advocacy, and will certainly receive the support of the powerful finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) interests, alongside those who claim Mamdani is an anti-semite. But she will also want to posture as the “caring” candidate as against Mamdani the grinch. So, this year, besides this bill (which puts UFT in her camp), she also demanded Mamdani allocate more money for housing vouchers for the homeless.

This is not wholly unusual. For example, the Mayor and the City Council traditionally do a dance at budget time, where the Council adds incremental money to the City’s budget, allowing individual Councilpeople to take credit, for example, for keeping libraries open on the weekends. What is unusual is how early in the election cycle Menin is clearing the way for 2029 by establishing herself as the main antagonist to…

Mamdani

This is the interesting piece – what this power struggle reveals about our socialist Mayor’s view on the part of the city’s working class that works for him.

Let’s give Mamdani some six-month grades.

• On communications, clearly an A+. The way he teased out the ‘why Netanyahu should be arrested (although I can’t do it),’ with its 81 million views was just a typical masterstroke.

• On supporting democratic socialist efforts, an A. Note that he didn’t do endorsements on state legislative races, where (for example) he might have helped Conrad Blackburn beat Jordan Wright in Harlem. But his support for Darializa Chevalier was probably decisive. And I bet her volunteers used his lists, and so already knew exactly which doors to knock on.

• On affordability, an A-, combining what he’s been able to achieve (like freeze the rent), with effort on the where he’s constrained. I’m ambivalent about the promoting the deal he reached with Hochul on childcare – which gives us full 2-K, but nothing for younger children, by 2029 – as meriting a victory lap.

• On ‘tax the rich,’ a B- (not his fault, but no real progress), with the proviso that some people believe that he can raise this grade next year, after the Gubernatorial election.

• On improving “efficiency,” let’s say B+/Incomplete – so far, so good on intentions, but the proof will be in the pudding. I’ll be a true believer when I see all those private contractors responsible for so much of the infrastructure work in parks and on roadways held to their completion dates - or a concerted effort to move much of this work to public employees.

• On support for private sector labor, A-/Incomplete. This should be easy, because a lot of this is moral support. The harder part is actual legislation and rule-making. Mamdani told the New York Times he wanted ‘to spend his political capital,’ so let’s see how hard he pushes for the Delivery Protection Act, which will make all those Amazon delivery drivers actual Amazon employees, thus facilitating union organizing. Amazon has already spent millions lobbying against its passage. Let’s see what Lina Khan does for workers, as opposed to consumers (affordability).

On public sector workforce, a D.

Now, let’s be fair to Mamdani. He has to live within his budget. If he chose to shower public workers with money, then that’s money that can’t be spent on reducing class sizes, or building playgrounds, or subsidizing affordable housing. Even after we have real socialism, those tensions will continue to exist.

But what I hoped Mamdani would do is to quickly fix outstanding inequities. The gross underpay of Paras. The gross underpay of Emergency Medical Techs. I want him to put his thumb on the scale for job security for CUNY Adjuncts.

I wanted – and want – him to tell the Office of Labor Relations (OLR) – where he reappointed the same commissioner who’s been in that office since Bloomberg (ugh) – that her job is to fix problems, not stonewall. I want him to tell agency commissioners that part of “efficiency” is mandatory discussions with workplace-level union reps. That they will be graded and assessed on their ability to reach mutually agreeable solutions to problems – worker problems as well as agency ones.

Instead, the City’s labor relations seem like business as usual. I was not wholly dismayed when he answered my question in April about collaborative bargaining by saying ‘I need to talk to my people about that.’ That’s was not an illegitimate answer, although a socialist should have labor questions at the top of their list of issues to address. But who did he talk to - the same OLR that is the problem? Three months later, while we don’t have enough Health Department Water Ecologists to address Legionnaire’s disease, DC37 Local 3005, which represents these workers, has been unable to bring its proposals to speed recruitment and hiring to the bargaining table. There’s plenty of blame to go around; DC37 head Henry Garrido’s at fault too. But even if Local 3005 gets to the bargaining table, it will be talking to OLR’s nickel-and-dimers, not the agency which (presumably) has an interest in solving the problem. That’s wrong, and it’s symbolic of a larger problem.

One of the great victories of neoliberalism is that it made Americans think of themselves as consumers, not workers. And so we value those low Amazon and Walmart prices, rather than stand in solidarity with oppressed workers. I want more from my socialist Mayor, especially on an issue where he has no constraints. Yes, help the working class by fixing affordability (consumers). And help it too by creating, and showcasing, a different type of “labor-management” relationship, in which workers’ views matter.

Links:

To join a reading group discussing Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, and beginning on August 5, click on this link. “McAlevy argues that there is no substitute for on the ground, one-on-one style organizing deployed by (mostly) communist organizers in the CIO in the 1930s and used to great effect by 1199 SEIU NE in this century. She provides several case studies to illustrate this form of organizing. As we move through the book we will discuss McAlevey’s thesis as it pertains to her examples, current organizing and political efforts by reading group participants, and how to apply McAlevey’s to organizing in and outside of DSA.”

For $25, you can get on a bus to Chicago (and back) next weekend, Thu, Jul 30, 6:00 PM EDT - Sun, Aug 2, 9:30 PM to join the National March into Marquette Park, commemorating the 60^th anniversary of Dr. King’s Chicago campaign for economic justice, and raising demands for “freedom from mass criminalization and detention, full protection of voting rights, and a future rooted in dignity, justice, and shared humanity.”

This is Not What Democracy Looks Like: The AFT Convention and the Future of the US Labor Movement

The Mummification of the AFL-CIO. I wrote about the AFL-CIO Convention before it happened. Here’s a report from the convention floor.

Last week, I wrote about dangers to a fair election in November, but I forgot to mention the SAVE Act.

On resistance to fascism, When Norwegian Teachers Defied Hitler.

In the meantime, I want to note some of the implications of the re-intensification of Trump’s war on Iran. This new phase of the war seems likely to include more attacks on civilian infrastructure, like bridges and de-salination plants. Why? First, because Trump will feel the need to do something different, more horrific. But there’s another reason too.

Internationally, Fewer “Allies” Means Fewer Restraints

Iran, unable to respond in kind by blowing up, say, the George Washington Bridge, has adopted a strategy of attacking US bases in the Middle East and, crucially, energy and de-salinization plants of US allies. As a result, the New York Times reports that, Jordan, which is economically reliant on US subsidies, and thus “not in a strong position to deny Washington’s wishes… grew in importance in the run-up to and the early days of the war, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and Israel. The country’s role in U.S. operations has only increased as” – and here is the key thing:

“other American allies in the region have restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said.”

We know, of course that an ego-driven madman like Trump has no compunctions about committing war crimes, and that generals who might oppose this are being systematically weeded out by Hegseth. But one constraint on the United States in the earlier part of the war, (after the initial assassinations of Iranian leaders) was concerns by its local allies of the kind of tit-for-tat actions described above.

Now, insofar, as these “allies” are backing away from Trump, and restricting the use of their facilities, I think we can expect more “bomb them back to the stone age” – because what other “choice” does Trump have? For those too young to remember, that phrase was seemingly first used by Air Force General Curtis LeMay during the Vietnam War, where triple the tonnage of bombs was dropped than during all of World War II. Earlier, LeMay had masterminded the destruction and fire-bombing of Japanese cities during that war.

So perversely, US weakness (loss of allies, access to military bases) will increase risks.

Domestically, Deepening Economic and Political Difficulties Also Means Fewer Restraints

And that’s true at home too.

With the war re-starting, and ship traffic through the Straits of Hormuz now back down to near zero, and with much of the world’s oil stockpiles now exhausted, we should expect gas prices to return to (or supersede) earlier levels. That’s obviously bad news for Republican candidates, and we are now much closer to the elections – just three months (or less) until early voting starts.

As Republican desperation grows, I think this means we can expect a step-up in dirty tricks and truly “risky” behavior – even beyond the redistricting of most of the South and whatever money can buy. There is, for example, the threat that the Post Office will refuse to handle certain mail-in ballots in “uncooperative” states.

“The proposed rule is vague on whether voters who aren’t on the federal list would be allowed to cast their ballots by mail, but it’s premised on President Donald Trump’s executive order in March that explicitly states, ‘the USPS shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled on a State-specific list.’”

I think we should absolutely expect to see ICE and other military disruption at the polls in “swing” Congressional districts. I think if matters look really grim for the Republicans, Trump will look for some basis on which to cancel the elections. And this brings us full circle back to a stepped-up level of warfare against Iran and the Iranian people. Would some truly heinous action prompt him to claim the need for such a cancellation? Or perhaps he will trot out the communist bogeyman…

House Speaker Mike Johnson said last Tuesday that some of the request for an addition $350 billion in funding for the Pentagon – over and above the already budgeted $1100 billion – were needed for “fighting communism on our own shores.”

“Look, we live in dangerous times,” Johnson said. “We’re fighting communism on our own shores, and we’re fighting evil terrorists and tyrants around the world, and we have to be able to protect our national security.”

“THE BARBARIANS ARE INSIDE THE GATE!” Johnson posted to social media alongside a video of himself promoting the bill.

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Perhaps this is what Johnson is talking about?

Even in conservative North Dakota, some socialist institutions thrive

“I think it’s fair to say that North Dakota has a long history of maintaining policies and running companies and other institutions that could be considered socialist. And that can hold true no matter how you define socialism or whether you think it’s a good thing.

“Consider the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, the only financial institution of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1919, it offers numerous education, business, agriculture and infrastructure loan programs to support the economic development of the state and its citizens.

“Rather than send wheat to Minneapolis to be processed, incurring high transportation costs, farmers and the state banded together to form the North Dakota Mill, the only state-owned mill in the United States. Notably, no public funds support the mill. Instead, the mill supports the state, with 50% of its profits going to the public coffers.”

Helen Benedict on “Teaching at Donald Trump’s Version of Columbia University.”

Students are afraid. Just a couple of weeks ago, I spoke on a campus panel to a group of young women undergraduates of color, several of whom are international students. They told us that (with reason) they’re afraid to protest, post anything political, or speak out at all. They’re afraid that their visas will be revoked, their degrees and futures whisked away. They’re afraid of being kidnapped from campus and disappeared by ICE. This makes me worry that my students, too, will censor themselves out of fear, a dangerous scenario indeed. A journalist who is afraid to publish the truth or question power can’t be a journalist at all.

Claire Valdez has high hopes for labor

“What I’ve been thinking about lately is just that the power of organizations to transform everyday people is so strong and really beautiful. I got really involved in my union, it was the first time in my life I felt politically powerful and capable of taking on bosses that had made my life hard for a long time.

“Working at Trader Joe’s and Taco Bell, I encountered bad managers, long hours, bad working conditions, but I never really thought there was anything I could do about it. I just thought that that was something that you endure for as long as you can and eventually you get a better job, but that there wasn’t a kind of way to fight back, and my union showed me that there is and we can organize together and win and stand solidarity with people who come from different backgrounds and work in different jobs.”

Two Graphs Which Need No Explanation

Labor Share of Total Income, Over Time.

The other “shares” are corporate profits and interest and dividends and appreciation on capital (wealth).

Quote of the Week:

“As a geopolitical actor, the United States has become a kind of lumbering zombie — a beast that can be startled into reflexive actions but lacks higher functions.”

And finally…

It turns out that volunteering to work for Zohran was not a one-off. In the Darializa Congressional race, DSA members knocked on 150,000 doors. What this makes me think of is how those old “ward heelers” of city political machines came to know everyone on their block.

You should read that article, but what I’d like to do here is unwrap some of the dynamics of Local 100 bargaining over the years, and put it in the context of the municipal (NYC) unions and their bargaining.

Although its members all work in the city, Local 100 is not a “municipal” union – it bargains with the MTA Board, a quasi-state agency, most of whose members are appointed by the Governor. (PSC-CUNY, representing faculty and staff in the City University of New York system, shares this odd distinction.) Nevertheless, since the normalization of “pattern bargaining” in the mid-1970s, the wage increases (or sometimes wage freezes) of workers at Local 100, PSC, AFSCME District Council 37 (most white-collar city workers), Teamsters Local 237 (most blue-collar city workers), the United Federation of Teachers, the uniformed unions, and a bunch of smaller craft unions have been largely similar. So, Local 100’s contract may well set a pattern for all public employees.

Four Examples Demonstrate the Stickiness of the “Pattern”

• In 1976, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis, Local 100 was included in the state legislation requiring negotiated contracts to be approved (or disapproved, in many cases) by the Emergency Financial Control Board, even though the MTA faced no particular fiscal emergency, and state workers received wage increases that year. Why? Because Local 100’s contract expired three months before that of the municipals, and the state wanted to make sure it would set the pattern of a wage freeze.

• Later, in the 1980s and 1990s – the Koch-Dinkins-Giuliani years – a particular type of pattern emerged. DC 37 would negotiate first and set the low range of the pattern. UFT and TWU would get .5% more, annually. The uniformed unions – police, fire, and sanitation – would get 1% more annually.

• Those increases weren’t very popular with the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. They kept on pointing at the quite enormous disparity between police wages in NYC and those in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Yet in defeat after defeat in binding arbitration, arbitrators shrugged their shoulders and said, the pattern is the pattern.

• In 2008, Michael Bloomberg was running for re-election to a third term. He had to change the law mandating a two-term limit. That was very unpopular. So, in wage bargaining, Bloomberg was unusually generous (to keep unions from supporting his opponent, who only lost by 2% - he could have won) even though the Great Recession was beginning to unfold. Most unions secured their 4% annual increases. Local 100 had a more difficult time, but got its money in 2009 in an arbitration award that specifically cited the pattern as justification despite the now-dire economic circumstances. UFT, though, missed the boat, and after Bloomberg was reelected his purse strings snapped tight. It went years and years without a contract. According to the pattern, though, it was still “owed” its 4%s, and when Bill de Blasio was elected in 2013, it eventually got those raises, albeit stretched out over eight years and with all sorts of strings attached.

Gary Dellaverson: An Enemy of the Working Class

Now, I said there was a wage pattern, but as I wrote in my Chief article, since 1982 the MTA has always played more hardball than the City. It may honor the wage pattern, but as I detail in Chapters Four of my book (available for free download here), it has historically demanded work-rule concessions of various kinds before it would ink a contract. And central to those concessionary demands from the early 1990s through 2009 was its head of Labor Relations, Gary Dellaverson.

Since this laundry list was produced, the MTA has pioneered demands for cost-sharing of health benefit costs, far before City efforts in the same vein. TWU retirees have been forced into a Medicare Advantage plan, although municipal employees have been able to fight this off. Dellaverson’s demand that new workers be put into a worse pension tier precipitated the 2005 transit strike.

(Full disclosure: I bargained across the table from Dellaverson in 2002. Wielding the threat of a strike, that was probably TWU’s best contract since 1980. Later, though, his refusal to properly implement that contract’s terms weakened the union and encouraged him to make those pension demands. See Chapters Eight and Nine of my book.)

More recently, Dellaverson left official government employ and opened his own anti-labor shop. Like a bad penny, in 2023-24 he was the lead negotiator for CUNY when it bargained a contract with my current union, the PSC. Here’s some of what I wrote at the time, warning my union’s bargaining committee about Dellaverson’s strategic approach.

Management is management, but CUNY’s decision to bring in an outside gunslinger, Gary Dellaverson… portends a new turn in our contract bargaining. Most immediately, and ominously, CUNY spent the session complaining that the PSC had too many demands; it was “time to stop with the wish list and realize that what we want and what we can have are two different things.”…

Dellaverson’s specific “contribution” was two-fold and mimicked how he negotiated against the transit workers’ union in the early 2002s. (For those who want to read more about this, see here.) First, he pushed the PSC to abandon open bargaining and do much of the rest of the negotiating in small and closed “subcommittees.” In transit, that was a recipe for deal-making in which the interests of some sections of the membership were sacrificed out of sight of workers and even the officers representing those members. That’s a recipe for creating internal divisions within the union. Moreover, once those subcommittee deals are struck, it’s hard for a larger group to unwind them – they’re not “team players.”

That was underscored by Dellaverson’s talk of “flexibility… to meet certain needs of certain job titles”… i.e., more for some, less for others. In transit, Dellaverson was notorious for helping the union leadership solve immediate (internal) political problems in return for long-term gains for the MTA – more control of work product by management, more low-paid and part-time workers, and less job security.

Members who attend bargaining sessions need to insist that all bargaining remain out in the open. We need to see pie as it’s being assembled and baked, not just once it’s sliced and on the table. And we need to make sure that we don’t make dangerous concessions to Dellaverson and CUNY in exchange for a few crumbs.

In fact, Dellaverson largely got the closed door bargaining he wanted and then the concession CUNY wanted: a drastic loss of job security for Adjunct faculty.

Dellaverson showed up again earlier this year as the MTA’s lead negotiator with the Long Island Rail Road unions, who had been without a contract for two years. There, he was demanding that those unions accept contracts with smaller wage increases than those recommended by Trump’s Presidential Emergency Board, and work rule concessions too. As I wrote then, Dellaverson (and Governor Kathy Hochul) seemed to have been caught off guard by the issuance of that report, which also allowed the LIRR unions to legally strike after a final 60-day cooling off period. After two days on strike, Hochul told Dellaverson to settle the contract.

So, Dellaverson can be beaten, but it requires a union that can put a gun on the table.

Now… Local 100

And that brings us to Local 100, where, once again, Dellaverson is leading the MTA negotiating team and demanding concessions in return for… wage increases lower than those won by the LIRR unions. Yet Local 100 will set the pattern for the other New York public employee unions - unless one is willing to take the militant stands necessary to break the pattern.

If you haven’t yet done it, now would be a good time to read my Chief article on the state of Local 100, which is poor, and the MTA’s quite vicious efforts to intimidate workers. And, while you are at it, poke around The Chief website and think about whether it might be worth $40 or so a year to read about NYC labor news (and some national and international news as well).

Now, bear in mind that Local 100 is the only NYC-based union which has struck in the last half-century. In 1980, with the union leadership capitulating to fiscal crisis austerity, transit worker anger led to a strike launched in defiance of the wishes of those leaders. Twelve years later, a contract that the leadership had negotiated was resoundingly rejected. In between there were at least three wildcat job actions (that is, not authorized or even supported by the union leadership) that had major effects on service. In 2000, incumbents were ousted amid demands from dissidents to Rebuild Our Union, End Plantation Discipline, and Take Back the Power. That didn’t wholly take place, and as a result, the strike in 2005 had a mixed outcome. Still, no other major public employee union in the state has such a history of resistance to neoliberalism.

Or rather, had. It’s not unusual that the problematic end to the 2005 strike led to demoralization. What is unusual is that it has lasted to this day. And that has to be laid at the feet of Local 100 leaders who seem disinclined to rouse their members. If you haven’t yet, now would be a good time to watch the remarkable recent video of Local 100 president John Chiarello, the only statement the Local has issued about contract negotiations. “We’re at war,” he starts out, and but rather than explain how the Local is now going to set about arming itself for battle, he lamely tells his members, watch your backs, don’t get written up (disciplined).

It gives me no joy to write these words. 23 years after I left Transit, I still think of Local 100 as “my” union. I still bleed when transit workers bleed. I’m frustrated when a union that has, and could again lead New York City’s working class disavows that role. I’m frustrated that no other public employee union seems interested in picking up that baton and organizing its members to fight for transformative contracts. It could be done here in New York, as the Rutgers faculty unions have shown.

On the one hand, we seem to be in the midst of a quite seismic shift in the politics of New York. And I could point to recent strikes by NYSNA (nurses), NewsGuild and Writers Guild, many of the cultural worker locals of UAW, as welcome signs of worker unrest. But where, or where are the big guns of the so-called labor “movement”? The ones with the potential to utterly change labor relations in the city? Once, long ago, in 1966, Local 100 did just that. How long until these unions - or their members, by ousting lethargic leaders - wake up?

Over the next few months I’ll come back to this theme and discuss some of those other “big guns.”

I was busy this week writing an article for The Chief on my old union, TWU Local 100, which represents nearly all NYC transit workers, and whose contract expired on almost two months ago. Last week, it’s president posted an odd video, which you can watch here. I’ll provide a link to that Chief article next week.

I also was revising a longer article for n+1 on the importance of empowered shop stewards, and other workplace reps, if the labor movement is going to be revitalized. Constant readers of this substack know this is a big obsession of mine, which I’ve written about here and here and here and here and here. But when the n+1 article comes out, I guess it will be sort of a summation of those pieces.

I really like this article from Jacobin, “Nurses are at the Heart of the US Labor Movement.” That’s obviously true when you think about the volume of successful nursing strikes. But the article also argues, I think correctly, that insofar as leftists want to get a job in a “strategic industry,” nursing is a good choice. Strategic in two ways: first, nurses tend to have structural power – their jobs can’t be shipped overseas, and although there is a whole industry of strikebreaker nurses, they get paid exorbitant salaries, so are expensive for hospitals to employ. Unless they get special help from Kathy Hochul. Second, nurses are just about the best example of a private sector union that can employ a “bargaining for the common good” strategy when they make demands for better nurse-to-patient ratios. That allows them to build public support in a way that is more difficult for, say, auto workers or airline mechanics.

Finally, A Long-ish Walk to a Brief Report on the United Auto Workers Convention

Speaking of auto workers, I’ve been debating whether I know enough to write a full article about the split in the United Auto Workers caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy, UAW(D) – get it? The very short answer is No. But I can give some background relevant to happenings at last month’s UAW convention.

UAWD was the main dissident caucus among auto workers. Its work was crucial in the fight to elect UAW officers by membership vote rather than the votes of delegates at UAW conventions. That, in turn, led to the election of Shawn Fein in 2023 on a UAWD slate, and then the UAW “Stand-Up Strike” victories against the Big 3 auto companies a few months later. Success, right?

But in early 2025, UAWD itself split after increasing tensions between those who wanted the caucus to basically support the Fein administration and those who felt the caucus should be independent of Fein and be free to critique his administration (such as its support for Trump’s tariffs). The latter group also was pushing both the caucus and the union to take more political stands, such as on Palestine. (The former group said in response that the caucus was spending too much time on these issues, perhaps discouraging newcomers from joining the caucus.) And although this was by no means a hard-and-fast rule, the pro-Fein folks tended to be based in the auto industry; their opponents among the cultural workers UAW has exceled at organizing in recent years.

The pro-Fein folks may have had a slight majority in the caucus when they voted to disband UAWD and begin a new caucus, UAW Member Action. Or maybe not, and they only won that vote by excluding some voters. Complicated, right? Too complicated for me to feel like I definitely knew enough to weigh in on who was right and wrong, or even know what was going on behind the scenes. Especially since after the soon-to-be Member Action folks voted to disband the organization (and start their own new one), the rest kept the UAWD name and have continued to meet and act.

Anyway, the punch line to all this is that the UAW convention took place last month and something very interesting happened. Historically, the top officers of the UAW have decided which resolutions get reported out of committee and voted on by the delegates and that was that. Except this time, the UAWD delegates were able to win a majority vote at the convention – that is, even from some pro-Fein/Member Action delegates – to report out, and then pass, a resolution requiring the UAW to divest itself from Israeli bonds. Hurray!

Rethinking the Minneapolis 15 in Light of the Sentencing of the Texas 9

Last week’s post on the Minneapolis 15 had at least a slight tone of mockery about it – that these people had either done nothing (wearing antifa-branded clothes; participating in a Signal group), or (in just a few cases) virtually nothing, reminiscent of a crime – and that

when these cases get in front of judges and juries, they have tended to fall apart. This very much looks like more of the same; yet the actual process is meant to intimidate and deter.

Certainly, “intimidate and deter” remains accurate, but intimidation now seems very much more real in light of the incredibly harsh sentences imposed on ICE protesters in Texas. (Three defendants in a separate ICE-related case in Spokane, Washington have also been found guilty and are awaiting sentencing. They had sought to block transport of two immigrants arrested at a routine immigration hearing.) “Tended to fall apart” may still be true – at least, we can hope, in Minnesota or New York or D.C. – but now the potential consequences if the charges stick has become frighteningly apparent.

The sentences of the nine convicted protesters range from 30 to 100 years in length. But we should start by noting that the original arrests – which were brought after a protest at an ICE facility located in the exurbs of Dallas-Ft. Worth – swept up at least twenty-four individuals, even though only twelve were at the actual protest. Seven of those twenty-four pled guilty “to providing material support to terrorists” and may be sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison, three more are still awaiting charges, and at least five became witnesses for the prosecution to avoid charges.

Using “Conspiracy” Charges to Substitute for Real Evidence

The following account is based primarily on three reports:

They Say They’re Protesters. The DOJ Says They’re Terrorists.

The ‘Antifa Scare’ Goes on Trial in North Texas

How the Prairieland ‘Antifa’ Verdict Threatens the Anti-Trump Resistance

In the early morning of July 5, 2025, twelve protestors arrived at the Prairieland ICE Detention facility. Two spray-painted an unattended guard both and a car and damaged a surveillance camera. Others set off fireworks. (The intent, apparently, was to hearten detainees.) Only one was armed, carrying an AR-15, although other guns were later found in cars. (Texas is an open-carry state; no one was later charged with illegal possession of a firearm). Some fifteen minutes after the protest began, the local Alvarado, TX police were called, and a police car some arrived. Three of the convicted protesters left the scene at this point. The armed protester, who was standing apart from the others, then fired shots (eleven bullet casings were found), wounding one of the officers in the shoulder/neck area.

At the sound of gunfire, all the protesters fled. While the shooter evaded capture for a few days, nine of the remaining eleven were arrested almost immediately. There was no particular evidence introduced at the trial that they knew in advance of the shooter’s intent. At least three had not been part of the planning of the protest; they were just organized to attend, as so often happens. Eight were convicted at trial of “providing material support to terrorists, rioting, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and use and carry of an explosive” (the fireworks). The ninth, the shooter, of those charges and also attempted murder.

The other three at the scene either pled guilty or turned state’s evidence to gain leniency. Ultimately, those arrested included many who were not at the protest. Two were charged with helping the shooter evade arrest; one for removing a person from a Signal chat (“destroying evidence). It is unclear to me from the reports I have been able to find whether they were aware of the protest’s outcome when they took these actions.

Others were swept up by the conspiracy charge. One had driven protesters to the scene, then left. Some were part of gun clubs, or an anarchist book club, in which protestors were also involved. One of those arrested – he received a sentence of thirty years – carried out his wife’s request to remove anarchist zines from their house (“concealing a document or record and conspiracy to conceal documents”). Some belonged to a common Signal chat in which the protest was discussed.

Now, stop to think about that. You’re part of a Signal group, or a WhatsApp group. There may be many people in the group you do not know. A protest is discussed; you don’t attend. Then it turns bad.

A Very Problematic Trial

The trial judge, Mark Pittman, is a Trump appointee. On the first day of jury selection, he declared a mistrial because one of the defense lawyers was wearing a shirt with pictures of civil rights leaders on it, and because, according to a report from KERA News, “a vocal portion of the pool of 75 prospective jurors expressed anti-ICE and anti-President Trump sentiments when questioned by the judge and Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Smith… ‘The shirt didn’t become a problem until the jurors started talking about their bias and prejudices against and for ICE and against and for guns,’ [defense attorney George] Lobb said.”

Subsequently, Pittman exercised his powers to make the unusual move to take control over jury selection for the second trial attempt. That is, he decided what questions to ask of each juror, and how to frame those questions. Each defendant’s lawyer was given only eight minutes for their opening statement. The prosecution was given additional preemptory challenges to remove potential jurors.

Once the trial was over, for reasons I don’t understand, a second federal judge, Reed O’Connor, a Bush appointee, was brought in from Wichita Falls to help with sentencing. That judge, Reed O’Connor, “said what happened wasn’t a protest but ‘an assault on democracy,’” and these sentences “will send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.” O’Connor had a busy month. Although located in Texas, just a few weeks earlier, he ordered the medical records of transgender children in Rhode Island to be turned over to him. Apparently, he is one of Texas’s prime “forum-shopping” judges.

The sentencing was unusual in a second way. “Most often, judges will sentence defendants for separate counts concurrently,” to be served at the same time, Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor, told The Guardian. “Here, it appears that the judge stacked the sentences for each count consecutively. I would have expected lengthy sentences here, more in the ballpark at 15 to 25 years, but nothing like 50 to 100 years.” Maricela Rueda, for example, was sentenced to seventy years – twenty years more than most of her defendants – for conviction on the additional charge of conspiring to move the zines from her house.

What Should Protestors Take Away From These Two Cases?

There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws…

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law… Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust… Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong...

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail

When protestors commit civil disobedience of various kinds, they understand that there may be legal consequences. In general, in New York, at least in recent decades, those consequences have been far from severe. This has perhaps lulled us into complacency.

King, on the one hand, affirms our moral responsibility not only to disobey unjust laws, but to act against them – thus, his example of the Boston Tea Party. On the other, he reminds us of the potentially severe consequences – hungry lions and chopping blocks. Now, Pittman and O’Connor reinforce this reminder.

I think this is what we will now need to be aware of. I don’t mean this to discourage action. But it means that when we plan and act, we need to think about costs and benefits, and the distinction between individual actions on the one hand and mass actions on the other. Nineteenth century anarchists, famously, talked about “propaganda of the deed,” assassinations and other individual or small group acts of terror which they believed would spark revolutionary uprisings. Communists and socialists, on the other hand, saw the organization of disruption on a mass scale – the great eight-hour day protests, strikes and general strikes, the Paris Commune – as the way toward social change.

Many protests straddle these two poles. As I point out in the linked New Labor Forum piece, one of the great disruptive acts of 20^th century American history, the 1937 Flint sit-down strike that led to the union organization of auto and much of heavy industry, was carried out by only a few hundred men out of tens of thousands of Detroit auto workers.

Others protest movements encompass all forms of action. What we saw in Minneapolis this winter was this type of mix. From the mass marches and general strike, to the neighborhood watch committees turning out a few dozen or a few score to impede arrests, and then to the many individual actors, of whom we only know the names of those who were murdered, or now, through their indictment.

So, I don’t have some type of magic formula. I don’t think there is a principled answer to the question, “what type of action is best?” although I do believe that we – the American people – will need to be massively disruptive to preserve democracy against fascism. I think we will need something that looks like general strikes and tens of millions of people in the streets. But the way to this, the appropriate disruptions and the appropriate organizing that precede and build truly the necessary mass actions, is less clear to me.

The sentences against the Texas 9 (and the others who took a plea) are an outrage and some future president will need to commute their sentences. Yet we can demand justice for them without necessarily valorizing why they now need that justice.

Open up your Word thesaurus to the word “carefully” and look at some of its suggestions. Should we proceed “circumspectly” or even “cautiously”? No, for if we are afraid of Pittman and O’Connor we won’t act; then, the fascists will win. But as we plan, we need to do so “wisely,” and “with judgment” - and also bravely.

The No-Brainer

Brad Lander was almost the perfect candidate to unseat the AIPAC Levi’s-heir incumbent. Dan Goldman had actually won in 2024 only because two candidates to his left split the majority of the votes. And this was Lander’s district when he was a Councilperson.

A Larger Margin of Victory Than Anyone Anticipated

The polls seemed to show a close race among three candidates. The current retiring Congressperson, Nydia Velázquez, seemed to think it was her right to anoint her successor, the current Brooklyn Borough President. All the mainstream Dems backed Reynoso too. (Governor Kathy Hochul had to run up to wealthy East Side/West Side Manhattan district to find a winning candidate that she had endorsed.) Instead, Claire Valdez beat Antonio Reynoso by more than 20 percentage points. What happened? DSA members (and Zohran Mamdani) worked their ass off in a district that was generally favorable to those efforts.

It’s a pleasure to note that Claire Valdez is a former elected unit chair of UAW Local 2110 at Columbia (where she worked as a Program Assistant) after an earlier period working at Trader Joe’s. Sort of a slice of typical Gen Z life. “When I was bagging groceries, I could never have imagined running for office.” The final words of her victory speech? “Free Palestine, organize your union, and join DSA.”

The Stunner

Free Palestine mattered in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx too - although here, in my district, a slice of the population decidedly hates that idea and has embraced another unapologetic AIPAC incumbent, Adriano Espaillat. Espaillat has thought he more or less owned this district, and so could do whatever he wanted. Except for Mamdani (and local hero State Senator Robert Jackson) virtually every Democratic politician endorsed Espaillat. It was, after all, the safe thing to do. Leticia James? What was she doing endorsing AIPAC Espaillat? Why did she let him put her picture next to his on flyers that read, “An Attack On One of Us Is An Attack on All of Us.” We need to remember that.

I was at the Bronx-Upper Manhattan DSA branch meeting last fall when Darializa Avila Chevalier presented her credentials and asked for its endorsement. There was vigorous debate at the meeting – could DSA sustain an additional Congressional campaign? Because it was understood that if the campaign gained momentum, there would be millions of dollars flowing to Espaillat. (DSA endorsements are voted on first by the membership of the branch, then by the membership of the whole chapter; direct democracy.)

Last week I turned on the TV and it was wall-to-wall Espaillat ads. (My wife reported that’s been her Facebook feed for weeks.) And brutal stuff too: racial slurs; misogyny; death threats. And, frankly, DAC had tweeted some problematic stuff just a few years back that gave them some fodder to work with. Out leafleting today, at my polling place, literally standing on my own corner, under my own windows, there was such venom, such hatred, flowing from the Espaillat workers, in my face, screaming at me. Calling me a kapo – look it up if you don’t know what that means. These were and are the Trump tactics of spreading fear, deemed acceptable by a supposedly “progressive,” but actually mainstream, Schumer-Jefferies Democrat. (Espaillat endorsed Andrew Cuomo in last year’s Democratic primary for Mayor, before belatedly jumping on Mamdani’s victory train.)

Why didn’t this matter? First of all, because of all that DSA and Indivisible work. Espaillat was paying kids $25/hr, but that was more than matched by all the volunteer door-knockers. But second, because enough of the people of NY-13 decided it was unacceptable that a Democratic Congressman from New York should support and even embrace Israeli genocide, and vote for ICE funding. And third, because that community – and especially, it was obvious today, younger people, in their twenties and thirties, with all their thumbs up to me and excitement – decided to reject fear and wallowing in the mud, and recapitulating the past, and instead embrace optimism, and look to a better future.

Here is the actual indictment. Here are some of my transcribed notes – the pdf I was working from was neither copy-able or searchable.)

What can we divine from the indictment’s litany of “Overt Acts”?

First, in its most general sense, it describes what is common knowledge. People tailed federal agents. They cataloged license plates. There were “Raid Response Networks.” There were Signal chat groups. There were both “soft” (also occasionally called “green,” for no danger of arrest) and “hard” (“red,” for danger of arrest, such as Civil Disobedience) actions. There was a lot of anger on January 24^th, the day that Alex Pretti was killed (Renee Good was killed before the events described in the indictments). There were two attempts, largely unsuccessful and in any event quite temporary, to blockade the “Whipple Building,” the site that ICE worked out of. All this is described as “knowingly conspir[ing]… to prevent by force, intimidation, and threats, officers and employees of the US Department of homeland security… from discharging the duties of their offices.”

Second, all, or virtually all, of those indicted were participants in an organization variously called Twin Cities Direct Action and Direct Action Minnesota. These were people more inclined to speak about the necessity of “hard” action. Even so (with the partial exception of the additional counts), the actual scope of those hard actions (beyond civil disobedience) was quite limited. On one occasion, a trailer was tipped over to block a road leading from Whipple, while a second attempt seems to have been preempted by the local police. On that same occasion, “debris” was scattered on a road. By the defendants’ own account, “Ice was totally boxed in for half an hour and inconvenienced all morning,” read one Signal chat. These people at times used, and also distributed, “homemade shields” of metal, wood, and plastic, although according to their own quoted Signal chats, these shields, “98% [of the time] protected against projectiles,” used by police, “and maybe 2% fend[ed] off snitch squads.” Some identified themselves as “antifa,” and even “wore antifa branded sweatshirts.” (!!!) They raised money through a Go Fund Me account. They designated marshals. They tried to acquire 5-10 traffic cones. This is the petty and banal stuff of which these conspiracy charges are made.

Third, it’s pretty clear that, with the exception of events leading up to actions on January 23 (the day of the general strike), January 24 (Pretti’s murder) and March 1 (a rally/blockade at Whipple), the defendants were pretty open about what they were doing. A couple dozen of those 261 paragraphs cite Facebook posts! Many more cite Instagram posts. Eight pages (eleven long paragraphs) are drawn from comments made in Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Seattle on an April “Anarchist Speaking Tour.” Whether or not some of this was perhaps ill-advised to speak about publicly, it was clearly “speech.”

Fourth, the detailing of this speech is just one example of an extraordinary level of surveillance against the people identified as participating in Twin Cities. Just as Minnesotans were tailing ICE, federal agents were physically tailing and monitoring Minnesotans. “On or about February 27, 2026, at approximately 2:21 PM, Doyle drove his Dodge Ram to Sands residence in Saint Paul…. At 2:30 PM… drove in or around PV Plaza in Minneapolis… At 3:07PM… removed signs from Dodge Ram… At 6:44PM… loaded shields into the back of Dodge Ram… At 7:10PM… drove his Dodge Ram to the area at or around Hamline Park in Saint Paul… unloaded shields… and handed them out to the group.”

Federal agents either broke Signal chats, or infiltrated those chats so they could read messaging. They attended physical and virtual meetings. They were familiar with the Twin Cities “vetting” process, and at least one “unindicted co-conspirator” inquired about introducing people into the organization.

What about the additional indictments?

Although the charges are listed on pp. 91-94, the incidents themselves are detailed earlier, and I will give you a page number from the indictment, so you can see how trivial they are.

Two are for “solicitation to commit a crime of violence” and “interstate threats.” These refer solely to an Instagram video posted on the day of Pretti’s murder, in which the person said, “if you’re seeing this video, we’re done with peaceful protests now. The gloves come off and ICE needs to get out. Run for the hills, boys… If you are [antifa], it’s time to suit up. Boots on the ground. Nicolette and fucking 26^th…. Show up ready to go. OK, no, not talking about peaceful protests anymore…. Welcome to America 2026, the Second Amendment is the only thing that’s going to keep you fucking protected…. Get your fucking guns and stop these fucking people.” (pp. 25-26)

Two are for “interstate stalking.” These refer to two incidents where a federal officer was trailed 27 miles from Minneapolis to Hudson, WI. (pp. 81, 86)

Two are for “assault on a federal officer” and one for “destruction of government property.” We should just stop and note that for all the frenzy about “Conspiracy to Injure” these are the only three alleged acts of violence. In one, the defendant, “knocked the agent’s notes out of his hand.” In a second, it is alleged that there was a “side-swiping incident.” In the third, a vehicle was kicked twice causing dents. (pp. 87-88)

Now, imagine if these last three were local arrests. Misdemeanors at best, right? In the cases of the alleged stalking, in both cases, the defendant was stopped by local police, questioned, and released to go on their way!

Who is the Minnesota US Attorney?

As David French reminds us just yesterday, US Attorney’s offices have routinely bent and twisted judicial rules to provide the results that their boss, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and his boss, Donald Trump, demand.

It’s worth noting that the Minnesota US Attorney’s office has been rocked by controversy. In January after the murder of Renee Good, six top attorneys resigned from the office. That followed an instruction from US Attorney Daniel Rosen to his staff to “say nothing” about the killing to local prosecutors.

Rosen himself had no prosecutorial experience before he was appointed to the post by Trump last spring. However, he had been chairman of the Minnesota Council of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and is currently a member of its national council. (Ironically, Rosen came under fire from Greg Bovino for being unavailable during the Jewish Sabbath.) Earlier in his career, Rosen attacked Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (previously, the first Muslim Congressperson) as antisemitic.

As French notes, when these cases get in front of judges and juries, they have tended to fall apart. This very much looks like more of the same; yet the actual process is meant to intimidate and deter.

My article on the Rutgers University faculty unions, What Strong Public Employee Unions Look Like: Militancy; Transparency; Solidarity was posted by The Chief, fast becoming a genuine labor newspaper centered in NYC but with coverage from around the nation and world.

The Real Labor Movement Could Be Found in Chicago This Weekend

TL:DR – The 4500 attendees were among those trying to build a real labor movement and trying to think about how to do it.

Last week I wrote about the “unfortunate irrelevancy” of the AFL-CIO. This weekend, at the Labor Notes convention, by comparison, I saw the real labor movement – 4500 people, the vast majority under the age of 40, intent on making their unions more militant against the employer and more internally democratic. A significant number also spent the weekend talking about how to pull their unions into the anti-fascist anti-Trump movement.

Over the course of 3 days, over 300 workshops were held on topics ranging from… well, consider the list from just one 1 hour 45-minute time slot:

Melting ICE: Lessons from the Twin Cities

The Soul in the Machine: Resisting A.I. Pressure on the Character and Quality of Our Jobs

Amazon Workers of the World

Austerity and Authoritarianism in Puerto Rico: Working-Class Resistance and the Fight Ahead (Spanish)

Bargaining Fundamentals for a Strong Contract

¡Basta ya! Nos fuimos a huelga (Spanish)

Black Workers and the Public Sector

Building a Member-to-Member Network

Burnout: What We Can Do About It Together

Case Study: Reflections from the UCORE Network of Teachers Union Reformers

Caucuses and Contract Campaigns

Climate Change Is a Workplace Safety Fight

Creative Tactics and Strategic Mischief

Data Centers and Union Power

Dealing with Difficult Supervisors

Doing Politics Differently

Engaging New Members

Fighting Against Abusive Guestworker Programs (Spanish)

For Elected Leaders: Staying Steady Despite the Noise

How (and When) to Start a Reform Caucus

How to Have a Good Meeting

How to Keep Going: A Workshop on Organizing When It’s Hard

How to Lose Your Next Local Election

Industrial Policy: Union Visions for Our Jobs

Inoculation

Investigating Grievances

Just Cause

Maintaining Unity in a Right-to-Work Shop

Pensions: An Organizing Tool

Power in the NYC Mayor’s Office: What Can Labor Win?

Public Sector Fightback

Queers Against Authoritarianism

Secrets of a Successful Organizer: Beating Apathy

Secrets of a Successful Organizer: Turning an Issue into a Campaign

Strategies to Get a Solid First Contract

Talking Politics with Your Co-Workers

What the Boss Doesn’t Want Us to Know:

Building Rank-and-File Corporate Research Teams

You Can’t Do It All Yourself: Learn It, Do It, Teach It

Myself, I’m thinking about writing a book with the decidedly unsexy title Best Practices of American Labor Unions, so I spent my time going to workshops where I might meet some of those best-practice folks:

Between the One-on-One and the General Meeting, discussing building workplace groups

Can Political Strikes Restore Labor’s Power? featuring luminaries from some of our most active Locals in Minneapolis, Chicago and Massachusetts

From Contract Struggle to Shop Floor Power at UPS with three militant Locals

I’ve Been Elected, Now What? with unions representing teachers, warehouse workers, and letter carriers who had just recently been elected

Your Caucus Won, Now What? exploring the ongoing dynamics between union leaders and the caucus (and caucus members) responsible for their election; how to avoid turning the caucus into just a re-election vehicle

Higher Education Group, which discussed effective strategies and tactics to win good contracts and preserve academic freedom

That meant that I spent most of my time with folks who both recognize the difficulty of holding onto militancy after election to union office, yet are striving their best to continue to take risks and avoid cautious incrementalism.

I facilitated a workshop called “Caucuses and Contract Campaigns,” where four union dissidents discussed efforts to mobilize members and fight employers in their otherwise moribund unions.

I also went to a May Day Strong lunch-time forum beginning to assess which cities can mount significant disruptive efforts in the case of a stolen election.

What’s the punchline here? Militant union leaders, militant union dissidents, and wannabe union militants came to Chicago to learn and to spread what they have learned. At every session I attended, at the breakfast tables, in the hallways, at the literature stalls, there were healthy debates and real inquiry (along, of course, inevitably, with some people who know “the truth”). These are folks – comrades – genuinely trying to build a better, stronger labor movement in a time of acute crisis. Imagine if this conference did not exist, and every one of these trade unionists was left to figure out on their own how to act.

The only thing frustrating aspect of the whole weekend, is that, at a moment of crisis, most of these trade unionists do not have their hands on the levers of power. Contrast that with…

The Person Who Called Last Week’s Column on the AFL-CIO Convention “Uncharitable” – or Was it “Mean-spirited”?

Maybe in normal times, we would just shrug and say “same old, same old, what can you expect when you are trying to get 55 unions to agree on anything?” But these are not normal times. Whether we lose all democratic rights in this country or preserve them by the skin of our teeth, we will look back on these years and assess which organizations stepped up and acted heroically, which were willing to cautiously follow in their footsteps, which prevaricated, CYAing at every opportunity, and which utterly failed to meet the moment.

I think my point about 1935 is key. Which unions then violently opposed the changes necessary to organize the industrial working class, which just didn’t want to rock the boat, and which were willing to row against the tide?

There are no national unions which today fall into the first (heroic) category, and precious few in the second. I’ll end where I began. The people trying to fill those two categories were to be found in Chicago this weekend, not at the AFL convention the week before.

A Union Victory That Nonetheless Tells Us How Much Ground Labor Must Recover

The good news for auto parts workers at Michigan’s American Axle plant, whose “pay topped out at $22 an hour, max,” is that after a 10-day strike, “$22 becomes a new hire’s starting pay [and] by 2030 all 1,000 workers in the plant will be making $30 an hour.”

What makes this victory bittersweet to an outsider is that in 2008, top pay at American Axle was $29/hr, but was cut to &14.50/hr. By 2030, workers will have spent 22 years regaining the same wages they were making in 2008. :(

Steal the Election? In Case You Missed This…

Postal Service Seeks to Block Mail Ballots in States Resisting Trump Demands

“The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a new rule that would allow it to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that don’t turn over voter rolls to the federal government… It calls on states to compile lists of mail voters that Postal Service employees would use to screen ballots for eligibility. If states refuse to comply, the agency could refuse to send their mail ballots.”

“The Postal Service plans to use a “Mail-in and Absentee Participation List” to “facilitate law enforcement efforts,” and plans to verify ballot mail against that list before it enters the Postal Service’s mail stream. If there isn’t a match, or if the envelope does not meet the new standards, the ballot will be rejected.”

Proposed, but not yet promulgated, in my opinion, because they want to leave as little time as possible for court challenges to play out.

Irrelevant… here’s a good quiz for those of you with some knowledge of the labor movement. Name some of prior heads of the AFL, in chronological order. Well, Samuel Gompers, of course. He was president forever, right? Then, there was a guy you probably don’t know, William Green. Then George Meany – he was also president forever. He famously boasted that he had never been on strike, and presided over the Cold War-ification of the AFL and supported the Vietnam War to the bitter end.

Then, a little more obscure, when Meany died his lieutenant Lane Kirkland took over. Like Nero, he played the fiddle while Rome burned while Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. After a while, his sheer ineptitude allowed John Sweeney to organize a coup against him. Sweeney… Sweeney… wasn’t that when the AFL was going to finally take new organizing seriously? And then there was that coal guy, Trumpka. Sort of ironic, right, turning to the head of a dying union in a dying industry?

And now? Who’s the president now? Bizarre, right, that you know Gompers and Meany, and maybe Sweeney and Trumpka, but not the AFL’s current leader?

Liz Shuler – not exactly a household name. Never herself a unionized worker (Sweeney wasn’t either), she went to college, very briefly worked as an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, spent most of her career there as a lobbyist for the union, moved up the ranks, always in the parts of the union that didn’t directly interact with workers or employers, and became a top assistant to the IBEW president. Did she ever negotiate a contract? Did she ever run a union meeting?

When Trumpka ran for AFL president in 2009, he needed a woman who was a good functionary and didn’t make waves to be his #2, and she fit the bill. Twelve years later, when Trumpka died, she inherited the job. A longshot for the job – Flight Attendant president Sara Nelson (too outspoken) – was sick at the time and never mounted a challenge.

Shuler is an obscure leader for an irrelevant institution. Half of whose affiliated member unions won’t say the word “Trump,” while most of the rest make no attempt even to turn out members for protest marches.

The AFL and the Arc of Stephen Lerner’s Thinking

But don’t just take my word for it.

Stephen Lerner spent most of his career inside the labor movement. He’s best known for running the successful Justice for Janitors campaign the early ‘90s, where the SEIU compensated for the general powerlessness of janitorial staff to unionize by developing campaigns to shame building owners and tenants and setting city-wide wage scales to “take wages out of competition.” More recently, though, he’s been a sort of outsider theoretician, most notably developing and promoting the idea of bargaining for the common good with Marilyn Sneiderman.

As late as 2022, in their article Making Hope and History Rhyme: A New Worker Movement from the Shell of the Old, Lerner and Sneiderman still held out some hope that the institutional labor movement would adopt a host of new strategies they felt could lead to revitalization. While acknowledging a string of earlier “moments [when] a rebirth of unions and a powerful labor movement seemed at hand,” this time, they insisted, “we believe the window of opportunity for which we have long awaited is here.” Why? While it was true that unions were still, “risk-averse and more focused on institutional survival than on challenging powerful corporations,” they argued that,

“external realities are moving in a more favorable direction for our movement.… Activism born in the struggles against institutional racism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and homophobia is deepening the intensity and vitality of labor struggles… A new generation [has been] radicalized and learned how fundamentally the system is broken. The pandemic… triggered protests, organizing, and swelling public support for workers and unions.”

By 2025, of course, with the election of Trump, those “external realities” had turned decidedly negative. In an article that spring, Lerner urged unions to take on more risk; in the face of “potential annihilation… caution is fatal,” he warned. “As it becomes increasingly difficult for unions to hold on to what they have… they must move aggressively to meet the present challenge or… be weakened to the point where they cannot even contemplate future resistance.”

Still, Lerner was a realist. He doubted that “most national unions” and “few elected leaders” would be willing to follow the course he advised. You’ve heard this from me before: most of those leaders climbed the hierarchical ladder of success not be being bold, but rather, risk averse. That’s what the Darwinian process of natural selection has looked like in unions for 75 years. At best, he wrote, “some who hesitate to lead themselves might be prepared to follow those who lead boldly… fund litigation, organize for state and national elections, perfect a narrative that can educate and mobilize public opinion.”

Now, more than a year later, Lerner has teamed up with Joseph McCartin, a labor academic, to explain, “How Resisting Trumpism Could Revive the U.S. Labor Movement.” That’s of course true – noting the conditional “could” – and Lerner and McCartin provide examples, both from the United States and abroad, of how, “when unions fight to defend democracy and win, they position themselves for periods of explosive growth and increased worker power.”

What nonetheless strikes me about this article is a certain ruefulness, even sorrow. While it uses the word “opportunity” nine times, it often feels like the authors expect it to be lost or squandered, rather than seized. Look at its language about the national labor movement: “deep-seated institutional inertia… defensive crouch… decades-long slide toward irrelevancy… lack[ing] institutional will or unity of purpose.”

A Second Quiz

Perhaps most powerfully, Lerner and McCartin condemn, “the magical thinking that if unions can just survive the Trump era then they can help restore a kind of pre-Trump normalcy afterward.”

That’s pretty much what I expect from an AFL convention riven by hesitancy, indecision, and risk aversion: a few very cautiously worded resolutions, and for most unions a very, very careful calculation of what seems to be in their most immediate self-interest, even as the state of the country cries out for so much more. In other words, political and organizational paralysis.

So here’s a second quiz question: What’s the most famous moment at any prior AFL convention?

Certainly, it has to be the 1935 fistfight between the Mine Workers’ John Lewis and the Carpenters’ William Hutcheson. It was precipitated by an underlying and increasingly bitter dispute over whether the AFL should continue its feeble and timid efforts to parcel out auto, steel, rubber, electrical (etc.) workers among its existing craft unions, or seize the moment and organize industrial unions potentially capable of standing up to industrial; employers.

In other words, the actual fistfight was symbolic of an internal political fight that was boiling over and soon afterwards came to a head with the organization of the Committee for Industrial Organization. In fact, for almost two years thereafter, this CIO was basically a caucus within the AFL rather than the Congress of Industrial Organizations it eventually became. There was no immediate organizational split. Nevertheless, its founding marked an open declaration that the existing policies of the “House of Labor” were unsuited to the tasks of the day, and that a new path was needed. The actions of a handful of unions unleashed a torrent that gave birth to the largest and most powerful unions of the era - and members who believed that their fights against the class enemy mattered.

Can we possibly imagine a similar declaration – a condemnation of magical thinking – and a true plan of action from the handful of national unions hoping for some kind of real fight against Trump today?

Reading for the plane trip to next weekend’s Labor Notes conference

Courtesy of Portside, the Guardian reports on the publication of the Global Justice Project, whose full report can be downloaded here. Authored by Thomas Piketty and others, it argues that

a future in which everyone enjoys high levels of wellbeing; where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world in which the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from just 2% today to 30%; a world where we consume enough, but nobody over-consumes… on a planet that can comfortably sustain human life without its climate breaking down

IS POSSIBLE…

as long as three conditions are simultaneously met. Fast decarbonisation of energy systems is necessary. But we also need a major shift away from overconsumption towards “sufficiency”. This would involve a sharp reduction in labour hours and the use of raw materials, along with big changes in consumption patterns, food habits, land use and forest cover. Financing and politically sustaining decarbonisation and sufficiency will require a drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth and power, between countries and within them. This reduction of global inequality is compatible with deep decarbonisation; indeed, it is a necessary condition for shared prosperity on a finite planet.

A bill moving rapidly through the New York Legislature—Senate Bill S.9577-A, sponsored by Senator Jessica Ramos, and Assembly Bill A.10835-A, sponsored by Assemblymember Judy Griffin—is being promoted as a measure to stop fraudulent communications that falsely claim to represent labor unions and their representatives.

On its face, that sounds reasonable. Fraud should be stopped.

But the bill needs to explicitly protect criticism, parody, reform caucuses, election campaigns, independent member publications, and internal union dissent.

Reform caucuses and member advocacy groups routinely use union names to identify the members they represent. Independent newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and election campaigns frequently discuss union leadership, governance, elections, and policy decisions.

Those activities are not fraud. They are part of union democracy.

Yet the legislation currently contains no explicit protections making clear that criticism, reform advocacy, parody, election-related communications, and internal organizing remain protected.

Educators of NYC is calling for a straightforward amendment that would protect free speech while preserving the bill’s stated anti-fraud purpose.

The proposed amendment would make clear that:

• Criticism of union leadership remains protected.
• Reform caucuses can continue organizing and communicating with members.
• Independent member publications can continue reporting and advocating.
• Election campaigns and internal union debates remain protected.
• Parody and satire cannot be treated as fraudulent impersonation.
• Actual fraud and intentional deception remain prohibited.

Strong unions require robust debate. Members must be free to support leadership, oppose leadership, organize reform movements, publish independent viewpoints, participate in elections, and advocate for change without fear that legitimate communications could become the subject of legal complaints or government investigations.

If lawmakers truly intend to target fraud rather than dissent, they should have no objection to explicitly protecting protected speech.

Take Action Today

✅ Sign the petition.

✅ Email Senator Ramos, Assemblymember Griffin, and your legislators.

✅ Call your State Senator and Assembly Member.

✅ Share this campaign with fellow union members, educators, retirees, labor activists, and advocates for free speech.

Sign the petition and contact legislators here. This link includes the proposed amendment language.

Read the full investigation here.

Share this campaign with fellow union members, educators, retirees, labor activists, and advocates for free speech.

In the past five months, New Labor Forum has been just that – a forum – for a debate on what lessons can be learned from the United Auto Workers’ 2024 organizing victory at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee and its subsequent defeat just a few weeks later at a Mercedes plant in Birmingham, Alabama. If we hope for new organizing to succeed – and since the election of new president Shawn Fain in 2023, the UAW is one of the few unions making that effort – it’s worth exploring that debate.

Chris Brooks, who was Fain’s Chief of Staff during both elections, argued in January that the substantial vote for the union at Volkswagen and the fairly close defeat at Mercedes both came out of what he calls a “momentum moment” – a triumph of worker enthusiasm born out of 2023’s successful strikes at the Big Three automakers. The difference in the results, he argues – and the difference from often overwhelming UAW higher education victories – was the higher level of management opposition to unionization at Mercedes.

On the other hand, Michael Belt and Carla Villanueva, who were lead on-the ground UAW staff organizers at both auto sites, assert that the victory at Volkswagen was a result of a model of cultivating leader-activists used successfully in their previous higher ed organizing. The loss at Mercedes sprang from an over-reliance on the “momentum” theory in lieu of this nascent systematic organizing. And they deny that management opposition in higher education was as minimal as Brooks asserts.

The “Lesson” of 1937?

Interestingly, both articles point to the touchstone year of 1937 to “prove” their argument. How could that be? It’s because both pick and choose selectively from the events of the year (and also mostly disregard the years immediately before and after), to make their case.

Brooks is right that 1937 was when the unionization campaigns of the Congress of Industrial Organizations really took off. After the victory of the sit-down strike at GM’s Flint auto body shop – that is, after the agreement that ended it, that gave the UAW exclusive bargaining rights at GM plants for six months – previously hesitant workers flooded into the UAW. That year’s upsurge is encapsulated in an anecdote about a phone call to a CIO office: Hello? Hello? We’re sitting down! Send an organizer over!

Belt and Villanueva, however, point to what made success at Flint – and a handful of prior auto, rubber, and longshore victories – possible: the long period of communist and socialist organizing in workplaces that preceded the upsurge, stretching back to the 1920s in some cases. Then, (although they don’t say this) those activists led shop floor fights about establishing greater control of the workplace that spelled out what the new unions meant in practice. That too encouraged workers to sign union cards.

An Even Slightly Fuller History Tells a More Complex Story

Yet these snapshots don’t tell the whole story. As early as 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act’s declaration that, “employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference restraint, or coercion of employers…” set off a wave of momentum organizing. Auto workers were typical. Encouraged by the idea that “the president wants you to join a union,” they poured into an American Federation of Labor auto union. Then, when it became apparent that the AFL had no plan for confronting and defeating hostile automakers, and the NIRA provided no enforcement mechanism, they poured back out.

There were exceptions. The ranks of the United Mine Workers were revitalized. In 1934, left-led efforts in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Akron, and Toledo were crucial in overcoming AFL timidity and winning victories (in those cities) in, respectively, the trucking industry, the docks, tire manufacture, and a major auto parts supplier through general strikes, mass (illegal) picketing, and battles in the streets. We need to recognize that today, when unions talk about community support, they mean something different, and far less effective, than putting thousands of people in the streets to confront the police or National Guard, and to prevent scabs from driving trucks or crossing a picket line.

But mostly, industrial workers remained unorganized; and in 1935, new organizing ebbed.

Yet two events that year proved crucial to later union victories. In Washington, the Roosevelt administration, now concerned with labor support in the following year’s election – and also eager to lessen the prospects of a new round of left-led take-the-law-into-their-own-hands militancy! – acceded to the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, which regularized union recognition through government-supervised elections. However, most employers simply ignored the act’s provisions until the Supreme Court ruled it legal in April 1937 – that year again.

Meanwhile, a handful of unions, disgusted with the AFL’s hesitancy, formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (later, the Congress of Industrial Organizations – the CIO). Funded primarily by coal miners’ dues, they began to pour money into the hiring of (mostly leftist) union organizers and the creation of organizing structures that might overcome worker reticence to join unions.

Those structures paid off at Flint, but it’s worth noting that the number of sit-down strikers (Belt and Villanueva’s “leader-activists”) was actually quite small. There was certainly no widespread momentum yet and, in fact, the sentiments of the tens of thousands of auto workers simply laid off as the rest of GM shut down, was unclear. And, brave as this militant minority was, their efforts might have been in vain if not for the tacit neutrality of the Roosevelt administration, the refusal of Michigan governor Frank Murphy to mobilize National Guard troops to oust the trespassers strikers from the plant, and the ability of the UAW and CIO to rouse mass community support of the strike.

So, momentum can be a factor, and so can leader-activists, but politics matters too, and community support, and union determination and support for organizing efforts. (Nelson Lichtenstein notes that the organizing structures that the new UAW administration had inherited from the old regime were quite feeble and had to be built out on the fly.)

After Flint

Even after Flint, and the almost simultaneous Supreme Court NLRB decision, success was hardly assured. Workers who joined the UAW, and organized Locals after Flint did so knowing – or at least believing – that General Motors and Chrysler were more or less ready to accept, and bargain with, the union. In most plants, official NLRB elections came after what we would today call “card check” recognition. That was the story at US Steel too, which agreed to recognize the United Steel Workers. It was frequently after “recognition” that the role of leader-activists became crucial; these were the new shop stewards who led contests against unilateral management control of production, demonstrating to workers what precisely the power of the union meant – about all the manifold issues on which these new, minimalist, contracts were often silent.

Elsewhere, though, there were reverses – the Flint “momentum” ebbed quickly in steel, when the “Little Steel” companies – all the other big steel manufacturers – provoked, and then broke, a USW strike just a few months later. (The USW apparently was uncertain whether it could win an NLRB election.) Referring to the battling adversaries, Roosevelt’s “a pox on both their houses” statement (due to the economic disruption of the strike) indicated that perhaps the president didn’t really care if workers joined a union or not. A combination of employer terror and African-American worker loyalty to the one auto manufacturer that hired them in numbers, allowed Ford to fend off the UAW. Then, the 1938 “Roosevelt recession” and subsequent widespread layoffs left many unions unable to defend the earlier year’s gains. Many workers in these and other industries simply stopped paying dues. For a year or two, the fate of these new unions was unclear.

Maybe they would have regained their footing anyway, but what actually saved them was the danger, and then outbreak, of war in Europe. The economy picked back up due to orders from Britain and France, and the beginnings of American rearmament. Then, by 1940, the Roosevelt administration became increasingly insistent to both employers and unions that those rearmament efforts not be disrupted. Infamously, at North American Aviation, a key military supplier, the Roosevelt administration mobilized troops to break a UAW strike led by the mastermind of Flint; UAW and CIO leadership, eager to maintain good relations with Roosevelt, supported his action and repudiated their own leader-activists.

To make a long and complicated story much shorter, the unions could best enforce labor discipline where, in fact, employers recognized them and, moreover, agreed to detailed contracts spelling out management, union, and worker rights. This was the government putting its thumb on the scale for union organizing - of a certain kind. The early war years were thus both a peak period of union growth and an early stage of the unions acting as contract policeman – telling workers what they were not allowed to do. Ironically, they tried to demobilize those leader-activists. That pattern - of derailing shop floor activism as soon as recognition was won - is still common in organizing drives.

What does all this tell us about organizing today?

In their articles, both Brooks and Belt/Villanueva effectively embrace a one-principle approach to new organizing. Of course, both know better, and they should say so.

New organizing is an art, not a science. Nevertheless, art isn’t random; it is a conscious activity which proceeds from general principles which you then decide how and when to apply. Mercedes was different from Volkswagen; both are different from Starbucks, which is different from Amazon, which is different from Uber drivers.

• Can you find ways to negate employer opposition? What happens if that involves making sweetheart deals with the employer?

• Can you find ways to build community support? What kind of community support?

• Can you find ways to get the government on your side? What are the costs that may be tied to government support?

• Can you bring other outside economic pressures to bear?

• Can you find a worker in every department that will speak up for the union – and then, can you train them to speak and act effectively?

• Do you listen to those workers and their experiences and concerns and adjust your tactics accordingly?

• How do you organize outside the workplace?

• Can you spot an opportunity when it presents itself?

• Can you find ways to build momentum and ride it? Are you prepared if and when it flags?

• Are you willing to weigh whether it is worth it to break the law?

And then, remembering that union recognition is only the first step, what are you willing to do to quickly win a good first contract?

The LIRR Unions have a right to strike - sort of

Unlike NYC transit workers, who are prohibited to strike under the NYS Taylor Law, LIRR workers are covered by the Railway Labor Act, which allows strikes after lengthy mandated mediation and “cooling off” periods. As a result, these workers have not had a raise since their previous contracts expired in 2023. Between August 2025 and early May, the MTA and the five unions had ONLY ONE bargaining session.

The MTA negotiators are headed by Gary Dellaverson, one of my least favorite people, who handled NYC Transit – TWU Local 100 negotiations from 1991-2008 (and precipitated the 2005 strike with demands for pension concessions) and (as a private labor consultant) CUNY – Professional Staff Congress negotiations in 2023-24, where he won concessions from the union on Adjunct faculty job security.

Competing offers

Dellaverson, the MTA, and Governor Hochul seem to have caught off guard by that March PEB report, which triggered a final 60-day period before a strike could begin. The Board (and the unions themselves) recognized a previous “pattern” for three years of raises set by the MTA’s 2023 contract with TWU Local 100 contract, which represents subway and bus workers: 3, 3, and 3.5%, and a $3000 one-time signing bonus. The dispute that triggered the strike centers on the (final) fourth year of the contract. The MTA proposed a 3% raise for a 13.5 month “year” to the Board, with an additional 1.5% contingent on a host of work rule “productivity” concessions, eliminations of penalty payments, and contracting-out provisions that would, for example, have resulted in a loss of 4% in wages for engineers. (see PEB, pp. 4-5; 14-16; 36-41) Later (after the Board’s report), it demanded health benefit cost concessions similar to those it won from Local 100 back in 2023.

(I discussed penalty payments in my articles on the nurses strike. The idea behind them is not so much to win those payments as to limit or prevent hurtful management behavior.)

The unions originally asked for a 6.5% raise in the fourth year, and pointed to comparable raises at other railroads. (PEB, pp. 25-26) Later it modified its fourth-year demand.

Ultimately, the Board recommended a 4.5% raise, and no changes in work rules: “the Carrier’s insistence on all of its work rule changes, in our view, makes its Final Offer the less reasonable of the two,” (PEB, p. 31) it wrote, and “It is not reasonable for the Carrier to expect [engineers] to accept such a decrease in exchange for a 1.5% wage increase.” (PEB, p. 42)

Will the strike set a “pattern”?

What particularly worries the MTA and Hochul, and has prevented them from striking a deal, is that a 4.5% raise for 2026-27 might set the “pattern” for Local 100, whose contract expired this weekend, and then for DC37, whose contract expires in November (and other unions after that). “The Carrier expressed its concern that the upcoming negotiations with the organizations that historically have set the pattern for economic bargaining within the MTA family—TWU Local 100 and SMART-TD—would be influenced by the fourth-year increase agreed to by these Parties.” (PEB, p. 20)

This weekend, Hochul and Trump engaged in a little tit-for-tat, with Hochul writing that the strike was a “direct result of reckless actions by the Trump Administration to cut mediation short and push these negotiations toward a strike,” and Trump responding, “Kathy, it’s your fault… if you can’t solve it, let me know, and I’ll show you how to properly get things done,” and promoting her Republican opponent (conveniently from Long Island) in this year’s gubernatorial race.

Even “sort of” is so important!

While it’s unclear whether Trump meddled in the Board’s findings in order to make trouble for Hochul, what is clear is the value of being able to strike even when, as with these unions, they had to jump through hoops (and forego raises) for years to gain that right.

Even before that, the MTA and Dellaverson had to testify before the Board about the cost value of the concessions they sought (PEB, pp. 31-44) in order to claim that its demands were “reasonable.” That created a specific record the unions were able to rebut – to show that the value of the concessions demanded was far more than the “productivity raise” offered. Compare that with traditional municipal bargaining where no such official record exists. In PSC bargaining, Dellaverson never had to quantify the value to CUNY of limiting Adjunct job security rights - let alone “pay” for it.

Then, rather than management simply being able to wait out the unions – take our proposal or tick, tick, tick, we’ll see you next year – these unions had a recourse. That’s why, as the great labor academic Stanley Aronowitz said at the first PSC union meeting I ever attended in 2015, a union that surrenders its right to strike does not deserve to call itself a union.

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Virginia’s Democratic Governor Vetoes Bill Allowing Collective Bargaining by State and Local Public Employees

For decades - since a group of Black workers tried to organize a union at the University of Virginia hospital in 1948 – public employees in Virginia have been barred from engaging in collective bargaining. In 2021, that law was amended to allow localities to bargain with unions - but only over subjects of their (the locality’s) own choosing. This spring the Virginia legislature, now controlled by Democrats, approved a bill allowing collective bargaining for half a million workers.

That bill was hardly perfect, as are most public worker labor laws. While it mandated bargaining over “wages and hours,” it left the determination of what constituted, “other terms and conditions of employment,” to a new Public Employee Relations Board. It excluded higher education workers. It prohibited strikes and required the firing of strikers. Nevertheless, for public workers and their unions, it constituted a vast improvement over what had come before. And, unlike many public employee labor laws (such as New York’s, except for uniformed workers) it allowed for bargaining disputes to be brought to binding arbitration – thus, to a conclusion. Like in the run-up to the LIRR strike, management might have to quantify the value and costs of its proposals.

Virginia’s legislative system allows the Governor to propose amendments to approved bills. Virginia’s new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger proposed amendments that

• Would have made bargaining over wages and hours “permissive,” based on whether they were deemed “appropriate” by the Board, not mandatory. Note that the Board’s composition could be changed by future Governors.

• Excluded localities from any requirement to bargain until 2030.

• Would have replaced binding arbitration with “advisory” arbitration.

When the legislature rejected these changes, Spanberger vetoed the bill. The legislature was unable to override.

I know I’m just beating a drum when I say that it’s just sooooo mystifying to centrist Democrats why many workers either don’t vote or vote for Republicans. Which side are you on, Abigail Spanberger?

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Coming Next Week: Debates on New Organizing, and Internal Disputes, in the United Automobile Workers.

Following the 2023 “Stand-Up Strike,” where the UAW struck strategic plants at all three American automakers, and its successful organizing campaign at Volkswagen in Tennessee, the UAW seemed to be on a roll. Despite the continued discussion about its May 1. 2028 general strike call, it has hit some speed bumps lately.

Here’s three articles I’m going to write about next week, if you want to read them rather than wait for my summary and analysis. Chris Brooks, who was UAW Chief of Staff in 2024-25, discusses his theory of “momentum” organizing. Michael Belt and Carla Villanueva, who ran the successful organizing drive at Volkswagen, largely rebut his view and argue the need for more on-the-ground work. Labor academic Nelson Lichtenstein writes about how the assessment of both successful and unsuccessful organizing drives has fed internal turmoil within UAW’s leadership ranks. And, if I can track some articles down, I’ll also write a bit about the break-up of UAW-D, the caucus that was headed by Shawn Fain in his successful 2023 presidential run, as Fain sought to distance himself from at least some of his left allies.

The best lesson I learned in all of graduate school came one day when we were ripping a book we’d read to shreds – that’s how graduate students show how smart they are. And the professor said, Never mind what’s wrong with the book. What did you learn from it?... Oh.

Violating that sentiment, though, I’m going to do something rare for this substack – critique (or at least dissect the problems with) an article on May Day that found its way to the ZNetwork, an aggregation site of left and left-ish posts from around the world.

Dan de la Botz is a venerable and respected name on the left side of the labor movement, and for good reason. He was one of the founders of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and a prolific author. More recently, he co-signed a letter with other early members of TDU rightly criticizing its endorsement of Sean O’Brien for re-election as president of the Teamsters. Alongside O’Brien’s alliance with Trump, the letter faults O’Brien for (among other things) “Reporting ‘new member’ numbers and PR releases that do not reflect accurate growth or loss information.”

So, it’s frustrating to see de la Botz sometimes reporting accurately on May Day and other times implying greater participation and disruption than occurred. Below are excerpts from his article. I’ve highlighted and numbered where I think only the uplifting part of a more problematic story is conveyed. Below that are my comments.

Tens of thousands of working people across the United States joined the May Day Strong protests in 3,500 cities demanding “Workers over billionaires,” “No ICE” (immigration police) and “No War.” The movement was organized by dozens of labor unions with millions of members (1) … May Day Strong called for “no school, no work, no shopping.” (2)… Sun Rise activists blocked the New York Stock Exchange, leading to their arrest. (3)

While not as large as the No Kings demonstrations that brought out millions, May Day Strong had more working class and more Black and Latino participants in many cities… In New York City my wife and I marched with her union of the 30,000 workers of the City University of New York (4)… In Los Angeles, where there are millions of Latino immigrants (5), the slogan of hundreds of unions, community groups, and faith-based organizations was “Somos el Pueblo [We Are the People]—Shut it Down.”…

Leah Greenberg of Indivisible, which has played a key role in organizing the No Kings protests, said that May Day Strong was a “structure test” for the movement.
“We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives – as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” she said. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.” We will need more such stress tests if we are to have the power to actually interfere with business and government. (6)

(1) It doesn’t matter that unions have “millions of members” if they don’t mobilize them. In NYC, the United Federation of Teachers and SEIU 1199 have more than a quarter of a million members between them and turned out a few dozen.

(2) May Day Strong did indeed make that call, but tell us if, and where, it was carried out.

(3) I was there. Perhaps ten activists were arrested. At no time was access to, or the operation of, the NYSE halted.

(4) Again, PSC does represent “30,000 workers” but 800 marched. And that was probably the highest percentage participation rate of any of the major NYC unions.

(5) Again, “millions of Latino immigrants” – how many marched?

(6) Most importantly, if May Day was indeed a “structure test” of “the power to actually interfere with business and government,” then we have to say we failed. It’s not just that we “need more such stress tests.” Rather, we need to analyze why the results were limited compared to initial aspirations, and what steps are necessary to do better next time.

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De la Botz wasn’t the only one to fudge the results. David Hunter, who “coaches and trains movements across the globe and is a founder of Choose Democracy,” titled his article, “May Day was even more important than you think: The mass mobilization on May Day was a show of power — and a dress rehearsal of the tactics it takes to win against an authoritarian regime.” I’ll just note that a “dress rehearsal” is the final practice before the real thing.

I’m an old guy. In 1980, when I was 23 – with the anti-nuclear movement flourishing, with labor just a few years removed from its last great wave of strikes in the early 1970s, with plenty of activists from the Civil Rights and anti-war movements still trying to figure out next steps – it was perhaps not unreasonable for the left to expect the 1960s to return. (I did!) But too many leftists have spent the last fifty years recycling the claim that the upsurge is just around the corner. Now, eventually a broken clock will tell the right time, but it’s has not been a very useful gauge of day-to-day reality, or a guide to how we should act.

Today, in the midst of genuine crisis, fudging, or spreading wishful thinking, about the state of affairs in the anti-Trump and working-class movements doesn’t serve radical activists well. In fact, it is downright detrimental. Alongside the real organizing efforts of May Day Strong, of the Democratic Socialists of America, of the small percentage of unions actually committed to increasing disruption and militancy, alongside the modest successes of May Day, we need real truthful analysis that assesses the keys to victory, steers us along fruitful paths, but also tells the truth when hopes and efforts fall short.

Then I went over to Guttman Community College, where its PSC-CUNY chapter had organized a May Day teach-in. Earlier in the week, several other PSC chapters had also organized teach-ins. But some initial ideas about encouraging hundreds of individual faculty to devote some portion of their classes last week to talking about May Day never came to fruition.

A rumor of an action at the New York Stock Exchange sent me downtown, where a rally of perhaps 100 was followed by a handful of arrests of people symbolically blocking entrances.

Further uptown, I rested my feet for a while as the Party of Socialism and Liberation’s (formerly Worker’s World) May Day rally at Union Square drew a few hundred before they marched down Fifth Ave to join the main rally at Washington Square Park.

On the way, they passed higher education workers from many unions and Higher Education Labor United rallying outside the New School, specifically about layoffs there and St. John’s University announcing it would no longer recognize its faculty union and more generally about threats to academic freedom - the ability of faculty to speak and teach about politically sensitive topics without fear of being fired.

Can you see a theme here? These were all uplifting actions, each in their own way; I had a good time at each; and each needed to be ten times bigger. Or a hundred times bigger.

When we got down to Washington Square Park, I wandered around, looking to see which unions had heeded the official NYC Central Labor Council call and which had ignored it.

It was nice to see banners up front reading “NO BILLIONAIRES",” “NO ICE,” “NO WAR.”

It was nice to hear from our Mayor.

It was nice to see lots of people of color - indeed, that’s what unions give us.

The largest union contingents were from my own Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (once again, pound-for-pound with the largest labor turnout), the Hotel and Gaming Workers, 32BJ (commercial and residential building workers), Laborers Locals 78 and 79 (construction) and the Taxi Workers Alliance. The various UAW cultural workers locals were not immediately evident but had coalesced by the time the march started.

Other big contingents were the Democratic Socialists of America, and Make the Road and Desis Rising-Up (two immigrant organizations).

You can see videos of most of these contingents marching down Broadway below - look to see which are carrying signs (or chanting) with any kind of labor or political message.

In each case, except for the PSC (which was bigger) these contingents ranged in size from a couple to several hundred.

Who was missing entirely, or in all but name, that have large numbers of NYC members? 1199 Hospital Workers, the United Federation of Teachers, Teamsters Local 237 (the blue collar municipal workers’ union), TWU Local 100 (which scheduled a separate contract rally outside MTA headquarters for the exact same time - I never got there). AFSCME DC37 (white collar municipal workers), NYS Nurses Association, Communication Workers of America (telephone and municipal workers), and the American Postal Workers Union had just token representation - a few dozen at most. And all of the building trades unions except for the Laborers.

What’s the punchline?

On the one hand, it was nice to march around with my fellow workers. The Washington Square rally and march was sizeable, if not huge. On the other hand, note all the large unions that were missing in action EVEN FOR A RALLY AFTER WORK!

And remember, that the initial objective of the day was to gauge our ability to mount a general strike: NO WORK - NO SCHOOL - NO SHOPPING. Some aspects of that took place in North Carolina (!!!!) where much of the school system was shut down, and Chicago, and perhaps other places as well, but in New York City we failed that “structure test.”

So, it’s not just a question of scaling up efforts here - of moving, say, in the PSC from 800 to 1500 to 2500, etc. - but of finding some basis to mobilize workers when their union leaders are resistant to doing anything.

And then, making the whole effort more explicitly political and more explicitly confrontational.

Other Notes:

That video I embedded last week of me asking Mayor Mamdani about collaborative bargaining? A similar Instagram version of a YouTube post went sort-of viral last week. You can see it here.

On a personal note, on the day after May Day, I got up and went downtown early in the morning and then walked around the perimeter of Manhattan - 32 miles. Today, I’m kind of sore. Next week, I think I’ll be writing about different kinds of union democracy, unless other events intervene.

What is Collaborative Bargaining?

Most of all, it means constant discussions between City agencies and union reps and worker activists about solving workplace problems and improving the provision of city services WITHOUT speed-up. Looking for win-win solutions. It assumes that a socialist Mayor (and his agency heads) don’t act like traditional capitalist employers, always trying to squeeze their workers. It asks those agency heads to mandate continual serious discussion at the level of the workplace. It also relies on union leaderships relaxing their grip on top-down bargaining, and trusting their workplace reps and activists to negotiate about working conditions. It’s about increasing workers’ control over the conditions of their work. For more on workers’ control see here and here and here.

I had previously written about this idea of collaborative bargaining both on this substack and in two articles in The Chief and Jacobin. (I was able to give those two articles to Mamdani as he left the stage.) You’ll see they’re pitched differently.

• The substack article is the most substantive explanation, and includes the most information on the long unfortunate history of pattern bargaining, in which all bargaining is between the Office of Labor Relations and union leadership, one union’s wage negotiations set a “pattern” for all that follow, and there is virtually no discussion of working conditions.

• The Chief article is pitched to its municipal worker/leadership readership: why moving away from top-down bargaining would be good for them.

• The Jacobin article explains the union leaders’ complicity in top-down bargaining and their resistance to agency- and workplace-level bargaining. It argues that rather than wait for unions to demand collaborative bargaining, it’s incumbent on a mayor who calls himself a SOCIALIST to try to implement pilot projects.

What Should We Make of Mamdani’s Response?

In one sense, it’s not unreasonable for Mamdani - who, as a state legislator, had no experience in municipal union bargaining - to say “I need to talk to my team…[that is] tasked with those negotiations” to understand the implications of a 60-second question. On the other hand, if that “team” is the Commissioner of the Office of Labor Relations, that’s worrisome. Renee Campion has worked in OLR since Bloomberg. She got a promotion first to Deputy Commissioner and then Commissioner under de Blasio, stayed put during Adams, and was re-appointed by Mamdani. In other words, she either participated in, or headed, pattern bargaining for the last umpteen years. It’s provided her with a nice predictable career path. Why would we expect her to want to reinvent the wheel? Why would we expect her to give away OLR’s power and control to agencies? Why would we expect her to embrace the prospect of the additional work that would come from having to monitor bargaining at dozens of agencies? This really requires the socialist cadre at City Hall to say, “yes, we want to empower workers and so we WILL reinvent the wheel.” In some ways it’s a litmus test of what they think socialism means since, after all, unlike “tax the rich,” this is a policy matter entirely under City Hall’s control.

What Else Could I Do?

I’ve been trying to catch the ear of someone in the Mamdani administration since December, unsuccessfully. So, actually being able to provide this suggestion to the Mayor himself was more than I could have possibly hoped for. The one additional thing I think I could do is to get NYC DSA to endorse the proposal. Maybe have some of those DSA “electeds” on the City Council keep raising the issue. So, I’ll try to work that angle. But if anyone out there has other ideas, I’m all ears.