Tyson workers fight sudden plant closure in Joslin

Tyson Foods has announced the sudden closure of its beef plant in Joslin, Illinois, throwing more than 2,500 union workers out of work and sending shock waves through the Quad Cities region.

The plant has been one of the most important employers in the area. For many workers, the closure came with almost no warning. Local reporting found the union was notified within roughly an hour of workers receiving notice. Most employees were told their duties would end almost immediately, even as Tyson says workers will remain employed and paid for 60 days under federal WARN requirements.

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Workers and supporters rallied at the plant gates this week, demanding six months of full compensation and benefits, relief for all workers regardless of immigration status, and action to keep the plant open and preserve jobs in the community. Workers are demanding Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker buy the plant or pressure Tyson to repurpose the plant to keep it open.

Over the last several decades, the state of Illinois has given Tyson millions of dollars in tax credits and abatements for Tyson to operate in the state. Workers have also spent decades of their lives working at the plant to generate huge profits for Tyson. In reality, the workers and the state of Illinois have every right to keep the plant operational. In fact, Pritzker can use eminent domain to keep the plant gates open. The question isn’t whether or not he is legally capable of saving thousands of jobs. The question is does he have the political will to stand on the side of workers instead of billion dollar corporations like Tyson.

Tyson says the closure is driven by tight cattle supplies and rising costs. Yet, USDA data shows beef cows down only about 1%. More importantly, the company’s explanation leaves out the power meatpacking giants already hold over the industry. Tyson is one of the “Big Four” beef packers – Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef – that control over 80% of the U.S. beef market. That level of concentration gives a handful of corporations enormous power over prices, production, plant capacity, and the fate of entire communities. Tyson and Cargill have recently settled price-fixing claims in the beef industry, while other lawsuits continue against the largest packers. They deny wrongdoing, but the pattern of concentration and alleged coordination raises serious questions about who really creates the market conditions workers are now being punished for.

The Joslin plant workforce is heavily immigrant, with workers from around the world who built lives around these jobs. In towns like Joslin and the surrounding region, the meatpacking industry recruited and relied on immigrant labor for decades. Those workers helped keep the plant running and helped revive communities that had been hollowed out by deindustrialization. Now they are being cast aside, with workers on temporary work authorization especially fearful that losing their job could mean greater risk of deportation by ICE.

In fiscal 2025, Tyson reported more than $54 billion in sales and nearly $2.3 billion in adjusted operating income. CEO Donnie King himself was paid $34.5 million in 2025. The company is also continuing to invest in restructuring and capital projects while consolidating its beef operations into fewer facilities.

Workers at the Joslin plant told On the Line that the company reportedly spent millions to construct a new automated facility at the Joslin plant. More so than changes in cattle prices, that shift may indicate the company’s real motivation. Across the industry, meatpacking companies are moving toward more consolidated and automated operations that require massive capital investment. As with tech companies cutting tens of thousands of software workers to free up money for AI infrastructure, meatpackers may increasingly close older plants, abandon workers, and redirect capital toward automation.

• 🎥Hundreds of laid off Tyson workers demand jobs back

• 🎥Laid off Tyson meatpackers demand state reopen plant

Delta pushes AI price discrimination

Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian said AI could increase their profits by 50% through cost cutting, layoffs, and individualized price fixing for customers.

Delta has partnered with Fetcherr, an AI pricing company, to test AI-powered ticket pricing. The company previously said the system was influencing about 3% of domestic fares and that it planned to expand the technology to about 20% of its domestic network. Delta has told lawmakers in the past that it didn’t use personal data to set individualized fares and does not share personal customer information with Fetcherr.

However, Delta’s own investor language has pointed toward a future of more individualized offers, with executives describing a move away from old fare buckets toward the “right offer” at the “right time” for “you, the individual.” Lawmakers have warned that AI pricing could allow airlines to charge passengers up to each person’s personal “pain point.”

This is what AI means for companies like Delta. It isn’t making your flight better, your connection smoother, or your bag arrive faster. It gives corporations more tools to analyze demand, adjust prices, segment customers, cut labor, and squeeze more revenue from the same service.

For instance, Consumer Reports found major price gaps on Uber and Lyft for similar rides requested at the same time, with the median difference between the lowest and highest price groups across tested routes landing at 42% after corrections. One can easily imagine how airline companies could use a profile of customer search history to determine just how desperate someone is to buy a ticket, like raising prices for customers planning for a funeral or emergency medical travel.

Airline consumer protection is handled largely by the Department of Transportation, and domestic airline fares have been broadly deregulated since 1978. If AI pricing helps one airline extract more money from passengers, every other carrier will face pressure to follow.

Trump’s new NLRB majority prepares to roll back worker rights

Trump’s new majority at the National Labor Relations Board is now in place, opening the door to a major rollback of worker rights.

The Senate confirmed Trump nominee James Macy and reconfirmed Democratic member David Prouty earlier this month. Macy’s arrival gives the Board a 3-1 Republican majority, with three Trump-appointed members now holding the votes needed to overturn precedent. After Trump’s earlier firing of Democratic member Gwynne Wilcox left the Board without a quorum and created a massive backlog, the agency can now begin issuing decisions again – under a decidedly anti-worker majority.

The NLRB is one of the most critical agencies in the country for workers trying to organize. It decides what conduct counts as illegal union busting, what remedies workers can win, which workers are covered by federal labor law, and how much power bosses have during union campaigns.

Under Biden, the Board issued several decisions that modestly expanded workers’ rights. It adopted the Cemex framework, making it harder for employers to benefit from illegal union-busting during organizing campaigns. It ruled that mandatory captive-audience meetings – where bosses force workers to listen to anti-union speeches under threat of discipline – violate the National Labor Relations Act. It also strengthened remedies in some unfair labor practice cases and limited some employer tactics around severance agreements and workplace rules. Now those decisions are all on the chopping block and can be reversed.

Management-side attorneys and employer groups are already pointing to Cemex, the captive-audience meeting ban, and other Biden-era precedents as targets for reversal. If the new Board moves as expected, bosses could regain more freedom to force workers into anti-union meetings, stall union recognition, drag out elections, and violate the law with fewer consequences.

The Board could also revisit questions about which workers are covered by the NLRA at all, including independent contractors, supervisors, graduate workers, student athletes, and other workers employers have long tried to exclude from labor protections.

This is how federal labor law works in the U.S.: basic organizing rights shift back and forth depending on which party controls the White House. Workers’ rights should not depend on the political makeup of a five-member board. But for decades, employers have used the NLRB’s instability to their advantage, waiting out more pro-worker decisions and then asking Republican boards to erase them.

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The result is a system where workers face endless delay while bosses adapt their union-busting playbook from one administration to the next. Meanwhile, even more worker friendly decisions have resulted in modest gains and minor changes around the edges, never delivering the transformative changes workers have demanded of labor law to truly respect their rights to organize and fight for a better life.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥NYC introduces Delivery Protection Act

• 🎥5-star casino workers vote 95% to strike

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Rideshare Drivers Move Toward National Breakthrough

Rideshare drivers are moving into a new phase of one of the most important private sector organizing waves in the country.

In Massachusetts, the App Drivers Union – backed by SEIU 32BJ and the IAM – has begun the process of negotiating with Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare companies after winning certification as the first recognized rideshare driver union in U.S. history. The union represents nearly 70,000 drivers across the state and for the first time has given workers the power to sit across the table from Uber and Lyft to bargain over fair wages, protection from arbitrary deactivations, and protections for driver safety.

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This victory matters because app companies built their business model around denying that drivers are workers at all. Uber and Lyft have long classified drivers as independent contractors while still controlling pay, access to work, discipline, and the basic conditions of the job through opaque app systems. Drivers pay for gas, insurance, repairs, phones, cleaning, and vehicle wear while the companies take more off the top.

For drivers, the core issues are straightforward. Pay has fallen while expenses and the company’s cut keeps rising. Arbitrary deactivations can destroy a worker’s income overnight. Safety concerns are handled through corporate systems that rarely put drivers first. And drivers have little access to real benefits despite powering billion-dollar companies. Now U.S. drivers will sit down at the bargaining table for the first time with Uber and Lyft to negotiate over these same issues.

The organizing wave is spreading beyond Massachusetts too. In California, the California Gig Workers Union has filed for recognition with the state, submitting proof of driver support to the Public Employment Relations Board under AB 1340. That law created a pathway for more than 800,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in California to organize and bargain collectively while still classified as independent contractors. If the California campaign succeeds, it would become the largest rideshare organizing victory yet and one of the biggest jumps in private sector unionization in modern U.S. history.

The California campaign comes after years of companies spending millions to block drivers from winning basic rights, including the Prop 22 fight that locked drivers into second-class contractor status. The new strategy shows how unions are attempting to address a long standing and growing challenge for workers today: the gig economy. Instead of waiting for federal labor law to protect workers it excludes, drivers and unions have been building state-level frameworks that create a path to bargaining. While these victories have drawn some criticism for not eliminating the “independent contractor” designation, others have argued that the victory has finally given drivers the opening to organize and build their power for the first time to fix all the biggest problems that stem from the company’s abuse of their designation and more.

Other states are watching closely. Illinois has moved toward a similar framework for roughly 100,000 drivers, and organizers in states like Minnesota have been connected to the national rideshare organizing wave. If this spreads, millions of app-based workers could be pulled into the labor movement for the first time.

The bigger fight is not only about today’s wages and deactivations. It is also about the future of the industry. Rideshare drivers are organizing as companies expand autonomous vehicle technology that could threaten their livelihoods altogether. Drivers understand that if they do not build power now, the future of transportation will be decided entirely by Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and corporate lobbyists.

• 🎥MA Rideshare Drivers Start Negotiations with Uber & Lyft

• 🎥70,000 MA rideshare drivers win union

• 🎥ICE raids hit rideshare drivers at Chicago airport

Southern Transit Workers Fight Privatization and Austerity

A wave of public transit strike threats has spread across Southern cities this Summer. In recent years, these workers are increasingly being pushed to the breaking point as privatization and austerity degrade service, working conditions, and safety across the region. The trend may continue as politicians push austerity cuts deeper to the bone, leaving workers and riders with no choice.

In Jackson, Mississippi, ATU Local 1208 members have now been on strike for more than a month against MV Transportation, the private contractor operating JTRAN. JTRAN is publicly funded, but its workforce is controlled by a private company. That means the city remains politically responsible for the service while a contractor manages the workers, wages, schedules, and daily operation.

This is the contradiction transit workers are fighting. Public officials say they want reliable service, but they outsource the system to private contractors whose basic incentive is to cut costs. Workers say MV has refused to treat them fairly, while the company has brought in replacement drivers and the city has temporarily loosened driver requirements to keep limited service running.

ATU International President John Costa called the Jackson fight “Déjà vu,” noting this is the second JTRAN strike in less than two years. He said MV Transportation’s anti-union tactics show the company cares about “making a profit on the backs of workers,” while paying inexperienced replacement drivers as much as $50 an hour instead of settling with the union.

Jackson is not alone. In Austin, Texas, roughly 1,400 CapMetro bus drivers, mechanics, and other workers represented by ATU Local 1091 voted 99.5% to authorize a strike after months of negotiations with Keolis, the private contractor that operates most of CapMetro’s fixed-route bus service. A strike could shut down nearly all fixed-route bus service in Austin for the first time since 2008. Workers are fighting over wages, time off, training, and safety.

In Augusta, Georgia, transit workers represented by TWU Local 527 are also facing a possible strike at Augusta Transit. The bargaining unit includes fixed-route bus drivers, paratransit operators, mechanics, cleaner/fuelers, customer service workers, clerks, and other workers who keep the system running. MV Transportation has taken over operations under a new public-private partnership since January of this year. Workers are demanding guarantees for a 40 hour work week, raises up to $21.70 per hour, and protections from further speed-ups that cut into breaks for rest, using the bathroom, and eating meals.

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The pattern is clear. Privatization worsens conditions through predictable cost-cutting. But it can also create a legal opening for strike activity, because workers employed by private contractors may have NLRA protections that direct public-sector transit workers often lack, especially in the South. Just as privatization through public-private partnerships is making public transit worse, those same transit workers have greater legal cover to strike back. The emerging transit strike wave shows that workers are beginning to challenge that model directly.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎞️The Night of the Living Wage: The Simpsons vs. Tech CEOS

• 🎥How Walmart Built a Poverty Economy

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Healthcare workers organize as hospital labor unrest keeps spreading

Healthcare workers are continuing to organize across the country as hospitals and health systems face another year of strikes, contract fights, and union elections driven by staffing, wages, burnout, and the rising cost of care.

In Boston, a multi-union coalition at Boston Medical Center is continuing its fight for fair contracts covering thousands of nurses, physicians, residents, fellows, and healthcare workers. Members of 1199SEIU, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and CIR/SEIU have united as the BMC Unions Coalition, pushing for fair wages and the staffing investments needed to protect patient care.

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The coalition has recently held informational pickets as negotiations continue. BMC is a level one trauma center and home to one of the busiest emergency rooms in New England, serving one of the most diverse patient populations in Boston as a safety net hospital. Workers say that reality should make investment in frontline staff a priority, not an afterthought.

The BMC fight comes on the heels of the Brigham and Women’s strike and Mass General Brigham Home Care strike, the largest nurse and healthcare professional strike in Massachusetts history. More than 4,000 Brigham nurses and 450 MGB Home Care clinicians struck over wages, staffing, caseloads, and patient care. BMC workers are now carrying that fight into another major Boston institution.

Meanwhile, in Missoula, Montana, more than 680 service and technical workers at Providence St. Patrick Hospital voted overwhelmingly to join SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. The vote was 446 to 102, bringing certified nursing assistants, environmental services staff, EMTs, radiology technologists, surgical technicians, pharmacy technicians, and other workers into the union. Providence is a massive multistate health system based in Washington state, and workers in Montana are now joining a broader wave of healthcare employees demanding a real voice on the job.

These fights are part of a much larger trend. Becker’s Hospital Review has tracked 17 healthcare strikes so far in 2026, continuing the elevated strike activity seen in 2025 and far above the pre-pandemic average of just a few major healthcare strikes per year. The strike wave reflects a healthcare system where executives continue to push staffing shortages, rising healthcare costs, and corporate technology schemes onto workers and patients alike.

Hospitals keep telling workers there is no money for safe staffing, wages, or respect. But healthcare workers know the truth from inside the system: hospitals do not run without nurses, techs, physicians, environmental service workers, home care clinicians, and support staff. They are organizing because the system is buckling, and because the people closest to patients are tired of being told to absorb the crisis quietly.

• 🎥Lowest Paid Healthcare Workers in MA Have Had Enough

• 🎥Nurses to Brigham: “You have blood on your hands”

Airline workers organize amid another year of aviation instability

Airline and airport workers are also continuing to organize, winning contracts and union recognition in an industry still marked by staffing shortages, public infrastructure failures, increasingly normalized shutdown chaos, and privatization threats.

Nearly 1,300 Allegiant Air pilots represented by the Teamsters ratified a new two-year agreement this week after years of contentious negotiations. The pilots had been working under a contract ratified in 2016, demanding industry-standard pay and improved scheduling.

The new agreement delivers an immediate average hourly wage increase of about 40%, with wage increases reaching about 54% by January 2027, along with improvements to retirement benefits, work rules, and quality of life. The Teamsters also said ratification triggers roughly $300 million in accrued retention bonuses for pilots. Allegiant pilots had been fighting for years to bring their pay and conditions closer to industry standards.

Fuelers at Orlando International Airport (MCO) employed by Menzies Aviation moved to organize with the Transport Workers Union, expanding TWU’s footprint at one of the busiest airports in the country. MCO is already a major TWU stronghold, with the union representing large numbers of airline workers across the airport. A fueler organizing win adds another essential group of workers to that base.

Fuelers are often invisible to passengers, but they are critical to keeping flights moving. They operate fuel trucks, connect hoses, oversee refueling operations, and help ensure planes can turn around safely and on time. Their work sits at the center of the airport operation, but like many airport service workers, they have faced low pay, high turnover, and difficult conditions under subcontractors that serve the major airlines.

The broader airline system has been in crisis for much of the year. This spring’s government shutdown forced tens of thousands of TSA workers to go without pay for weeks, contributing to major airport disruptions and security waits that stretched four hours or more in some places. Now the Trump administration is pushing privatization experiments in airport screening, while TSA workers and AFGE warn that contractors will cut staffing.

Meanwhile, the FAA continues to grapple with long-running air traffic controller shortages and aging infrastructure. The agency has released a workforce plan to address staffing gaps, but the system remains fragile. A regional FAA equipment outage this week caused hours-long delays across the Midwest, including at Minneapolis-St. Paul, reminding travelers that airline chaos is not only about weather or bad luck. It is about decades of underinvestment in the public systems that make air travel possible.

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The airline bosses want passengers to blame workers when flights are delayed, lines are long, or systems break down. But workers did not create this crisis. Chronic understaffing, outsourcing, shutdown politics, privatization schemes, and underfunded infrastructure did. Now workers across the industry are organizing to make clear that a safe, reliable aviation system requires good union jobs at every point in the operation and investment in the system, not a barebones operation to extract maximum profit.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥How Trump Plans to Take Away Your Vote

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Movement against ICE terror grows

The movement against ICE terror continues to grow as communities respond to a string of deadly encounters and the broader expansion of the deportation machine.

In Houston this weekend, thousands marched through the East End and gathered in Hidalgo Park for a “No Business As Usual” protest demanding justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old husband, father, and construction worker killed by ICE on July 7 while driving to work with coworkers. Organizers called on residents and businesses to close, stay home, avoid spending money, and join the protest to demand accountability. Dozens of businesses in the East End – the neighborhood where Lorenzo lived and built his life – reportedly closed their doors or supported the action.

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The protest comes after weeks of outrage. Federal officials have acknowledged that Lorenzo was not the intended target of the immigration operation. Passengers in the van have also contradicted the government’s account, saying officers were not in danger and that Lorenzo was parking when shots were fired. The men who survived the shooting remain detained by ICE.

At the same time, police violence is again fueling protests in cities across the country. In Madison, Wisconsin, Corey Ruiz was shot and killed by police during an attempted arrest captured on bystander video, sparking protests and renewed demands for accountability. The shooting has added to the same national anger over people being killed in the streets by armed agents of the state.

Whether at the hands of ICE or police, working people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people and marginalized people shot down, disappeared into detention, or killed in custody with little accountability.

• 🎥Why this Texas labor leader stands with Houston

• 🎥Thousands take to the streets in Houston

• 🎥Houston businesses shut it down

Driverless trucking advances as the industry pushes immigrant drivers out

Aurora announced this week that its driverless trucks are now operating with no person behind the wheel, marking another major step toward wider deployment of autonomous freight. The company says the Aurora Driver is now handling all driving on its second-generation driverless trucks, with the driver’s seat empty. A roadside assistance worker may ride in the rear seat on some trips, but no human operator is behind the wheel.

This matters because trucking is already entering one of the most turbulent periods in its history.

As we covered in a previous bulletin, new immigration and licensing rules could push hundreds of thousands of immigrant truckers out of the industry. FreightWaves reported last year that transportation economist Noël Perry warned the industry could face the “largest capacity purge in history,” estimating that the total at-risk driver population could exceed 600,000 when accounting for non-domiciled CDL restrictions, English-language enforcement, undocumented drivers, and restrictions on new hires. That number is a projection of drivers at risk, not a confirmed count of workers already removed, but the scale of the threat is enormous.

Now, as immigrant drivers are pushed out and remaining workers face pressure to take on longer, harder hours, autonomous trucking companies are moving fast to fill the space. Aurora is already operating in Texas and expanding across the Sun Belt. Its latest driverless launch removes one of the major barriers to broader deployment: the need to keep a human operator behind the wheel.

Tesla is also pushing deeper into the trucking market. The company reported $28.24 billion in quarterly revenue this week, while Elon Musk told investors Tesla is pursuing a self-driving version of its electric Semi. Tesla is pouring money into AI, autonomy, robotics, and electric vehicles, while presenting its future around a world where drivers, warehouse workers, and logistics workers are increasingly replaced by machines. But nothing about this is automatic. It is a political and economic choice by corporations and elected officials.

The trucking industry is being reshaped by immigration crackdowns, deregulation, longer-hour proposals, and self-driving technology all at once. Logistics giants are positioning themselves to reap super profits from that upheaval while immigrant drivers and working-class truckers are left to absorb the damage.

If autonomous trucking expands without worker power at the table, the result could be devastating: lost livelihoods, degraded labor standards, higher pressure on remaining drivers, and communities left to deal with the consequences of a logistics system built around profit instead of people.

Congress targets BreakThrough News in attack on independent media

The Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News this week, along with The People’s Forum and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, demanding internal communications and financial records as part of an investigation into alleged foreign-linked influence in the U.S. nonprofit sector. The committee claims the subpoenas are about foreign influence and tax compliance. Press freedom organizations have said the investigation is a political attack on independent journalism, aimed at punishing its reporting on U.S. foreign policy, mass deportations, ICE abuses, Cuba, Palestine, and anti-war movements.

BTN has reported extensively on Trump’s war on Iran, the military buildup against Venezuela, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the tightening U.S. blockade on Cuba, the genocide in Gaza, and the ICE occupation of immigrant communities across the United States. Those are exactly the stories the U.S. state, weapons manufacturers, corporate media, and billionaire-backed political class do not want challenged.

The attack has been years in the making. During the genocide in Gaza, BTN became one of the independent outlets consistently challenging both the Biden and Trump administrations’ military and diplomatic support for Israel. Now, under Trump, the attack has intensified alongside broader crackdowns on protest, immigrant rights organizing, and anti-war dissent.

The subpoena campaign also parallels the long-standing history and growing use of foreign influence accusations and FARA-style pressure against anti-war organizations, Palestine solidarity groups, immigrant rights advocates, and media outlets that challenge U.S. foreign policy. The basic logic is dangerous: if you criticize U.S. foreign policy too effectively, the government can imply you are working for a foreign power. That is a direct threat to press freedom.

At the same time, corporate media is consolidating even further. The Justice Department approved Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing major film studios, streaming platforms, and news brands like CBS News and CNN under one corporate roof. While the merger has since been challenged and delayed, they still plan to move forward. As media megamergers hand more control to billionaires and corporate executives, state attacks on independent journalism become even more dangerous.

When billionaires consolidate the media and Congress targets outlets that challenge U.S. foreign policy, the result is not a free press. It is a media system where dissent is marginalized, independent journalism is criminalized, and mainstream political narratives go uncontested. Organizations and media figures are now speaking out in defense of BreakThrough News, warning that if this attack succeeds, it will not stop with BTN. Any outlet reporting critically on U.S. wars, sanctions, deportations, corporate power, or police violence could be next.

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A free press means nothing if it only protects billionaire-owned media that repeats the government’s line.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥The political attack behind the DOJ probe into UAW President Fain

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

ICE agents commit string of murders from Texas to Maine

A string of deadly ICE encounters has sparked mass outrage across the country. On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old husband, father, and construction worker, was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Houston while driving to a job site with coworkers, including his brother. Federal officials have since acknowledged that he was not the intended target of the immigration operation. Less than a week later, Joan Sebastián Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian father, was shot and killed by an ICE officer near his home in Biddeford, Maine. He also was not the target of the operation. Then, in St. Augustine, Florida, a man fleeing an encounter with ICE agents was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer. In Georgia, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man, died in ICE custody while being transferred between detention facilities after not receiving his medication.

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These deaths are not isolated accidents. They are the predictable result of a deportation system that has been expanded, militarized, and unleashed against working-class immigrant communities. ICE has been rapidly expanding its workforce while the Trump administration pushes for record arrests and deportations. Internal data showed ICE arrests in Maine more than quadrupled in recent weeks. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin boasted that ICE is breaking arrest records “every single day.” In Texas, local police departments and sheriffs have increasingly been pulled into the dragnet through 287(g) agreements and other forms of collaboration, turning local law enforcement into an extension of ICE.

Houston has become one of the clearest examples. A new report found Houston police had cooperated with ICE more than 100 times since April, while advocates say HPD collaboration has helped make the city a hotspot for immigration enforcement. Texas has become one of the leading states for ICE arrests and deportations, driven in large part by state and local law enforcement acting as force multipliers for the federal crackdown.

In the face of all of this, communities are fighting back. In Houston, thousands have gathered in vigils and protests demanding justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an independent investigation, and an end to HPD collaboration with ICE. In Maine, the killing of Joan Sebastián Guerrero brought hundreds into the streets in Biddeford and Portland.

Earlier this year, after ICE killed Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, unions and community groups helped organize mass shutdown actions, reviving the general strike tactic for the first time in decades. After that uprising, ICE withdrew from Minnesota soon after and appeared to pull back from some of the most visible “shock and awe” tactics, while continuing to expand through quieter methods: more arrests, more detention, more rule changes, more local police collaboration, and more surveillance.

Now the violence is again in the open. The labor movement should understand this fight clearly. ICE terror is a worker issue. Immigrant workers build cities, staff hospitals, clean hotels, harvest food, drive trucks, teach children, care for elders, and keep whole industries running. When ICE kills workers on their way to work, raids job sites, or turns local police into deportation agents, it is attacking the working class itself. The question now is whether labor will treat these killings as isolated tragedies, or as part of a broader attack that requires organized working-class resistance.

• 🎥Texas father murdered by ICE

• 🎥Maine nurses tell ICE: “Nobody wants you here!”

• 🎥Houston day laborers demand justice for Lorenzo

Federal investigation launches against UAW President Shawn Fain as election approaches

The Justice Department has launched a grand jury investigation into allegations involving UAW President Shawn Fain, escalating a long-running conflict between Fain, UAW Vice President Rich Boyer, and court-appointed federal monitor Neil Barofsky.

The investigation grows out of allegations detailed in the monitor’s reports. Barofsky’s office has accused Fain of improperly pressuring Boyer to support bonuses for workers at a Stellantis-UAW training center, where Fain’s fiancée worked, and retaliating against Boyer after he objected. Fain denies the allegations and has called them bogus. No charges have been filed, and a lawyer for the UAW has said the union itself is not the subject of the grand jury investigation.

The timing of Barofsky’s report and the launch of the federal investigation raise serious questions. Fain is campaigning for another term as UAW president, and Boyer is running against him. The monitor’s latest report and the news of the federal investigation come as UAW members prepare to vote in a contested leadership election. The allegations have circulated for roughly two years, but their escalation now could shape the political terrain of the race.

This is not happening in a vacuum and Barofsky has been far from a neutral observer of the UAW’s internal political life. The UAW was placed under federal oversight after corruption scandals involving former leadership. Members responded by winning direct elections for the union’s top officers for the first time. In 2023, they elected Fain and a reform slate promising to break with decades of concessions, take on the Big Three, organize the nonunion South, and rebuild power on the shop floor.

That leadership then led the Stand Up Strike, winning major contract gains at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. The union followed with a historic win at Volkswagen in Chattanooga and a broader campaign to organize nonunion auto plants, especially across the South. Fain has also called for unions to align major contracts around May 1, 2028, raising the idea of coordinated strike action across industries. That record has made Fain one of the most visible labor leaders in the country. It has also made the fight over the UAW’s future more significant.

Barofsky’s role was supposed to be narrow: investigate corruption and enforce the consent decree. But UAW leaders and supporters argue his office has increasingly inserted itself into staffing decisions, internal disputes, political conflicts, and now the election for UAW president.

The political conflict escalated after the UAW called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Before Fain was set to speak at a Capitol Hill ceasefire press conference, Barofsky called him and urged him to reconsider. He later forwarded the union a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League about a UAW local’s ceasefire position, even while acknowledging that the issue was outside his jurisdiction. The UAW refused to back down. Delegates have since voted to divest the union’s investments from Israeli bonds.

Now the monitor’s allegations have become the basis for a federal grand jury investigation. The monitor’s expanding role, his intervention over the union’s anti-war politics, and the timing of this investigation during a contested election deserve scrutiny. What is clear is that the future of the UAW should be decided by its members – the workers who struck the Big Three, changed their union through direct elections, and are organizing the next wave of autoworkers – not by the federal monitor.

• 🎥The political attack behind the DOJ probe into UAW President Fain

Jackson transit workers strike against austerity and privatization

Transit workers in Jackson, Mississippi went on strike this week after contract talks broke down between ATU Local 1208 and MV Transportation, the private company contracted to operate JTRAN.

JTRAN is a publicly funded bus system, but its workers are employed by MV Transportation, a Texas-based private contractor and one of the largest privately owned transportation companies in the country. The arrangement reflects a familiar model of public-service privatization: the city remains politically responsible for the service, but private management controls the workforce.

MV Transportation has proposed changes to the system that include new safety policies, greater use of on-demand “microtransit”, and the ability to hire drivers without commercial licenses to operate smaller vehicles. Workers and riders have also raised alarms over proposals from management that would cut routes, shorten service hours, eliminate Saturday service, and further weaken a system that low-income and disabled residents depend on. This is the second JTRAN strike in two years. Workers previously struck for 14 days in September 2024.

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MV Transportation has begun bringing in out-of-state drivers to resume limited service. The union has criticized that move as dangerous, especially as the city waives some requirements for drivers during the strike. If public transit is treated as a low-cost contract to be managed by private companies, workers lose, riders lose, and the public good erodes. Jackson transit workers are fighting over whether public transportation will be a reliable service for the people who need it, or another public good gutted through privatization and austerity.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥How the climate crisis is killing postal workers

• 🎥Union nurses explain how hospital cost cutting hurts you

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Brigham nurses launch largest healthcare strike in Massachusetts history

More than 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital walked out this week, joined by 450 Mass General Brigham Home Care clinicians, launching what the Massachusetts Nurses Association called the largest nurse and healthcare professional strike in state history. Brigham nurses held a one-day strike, while MGB Home Care clinicians began a seven-day strike for their first contract. Brigham management then locked out nurses for four additional days, extending the work stoppage through July 13.

The core issues are wages, health insurance costs, permanent staffing, and respect for frontline nurses who say the hospital has refused to invest in the workforce needed to provide safe patient care. Brigham nurses say the hospital offered no real cost-of-living raise beyond the existing step system and proposed shifting more healthcare costs onto them. “During COVID we were the heroes,” operating room nurse Peter Sztramski told WBUR. “Now they offer us zero. Unacceptable.”

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The Mass General Brigham board is stacked with figures from private equity, venture capital, investment management, and billion-dollar corporations, including Josh Kraft – son of billionaire Robert Kraft. MGB reportedly has $35.8 billion in assets and $2.4 billion in net gains last year, while telling nurses they deserve nothing to keep pace with the cost of living. MGB CEO Anne Klibanski made $8.4 million in 2024.

Brigham’s response has been to praise the scab nurses brought in during the strike. To nurses who spent years carrying the hospital through COVID, staffing shortages, and dangerous workloads, their praise for scabs was a huge insult– especially when the hospital used those replacement contracts as justification for locking out its own nurses for days after their one-day strike ended. The issue touches yet another sore spot as Brigham has turned to traveling nurses to alleviate burn out and retention issues instead of paying permanent nurses a fair wage or improving ratios and safety.

Meanwhile, NNU affiliated nurses in Wichita and Baltimore held one day strikes this week as well. On July 6, NNU nurses in Wichita held a one-day strike at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and St. Joseph over patient safety and workplace violence protections after a fatal shooting outside the St. Joseph emergency department. That same day, nurses at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore held a one-day strike over staffing, retention, and patient safety after management cut staff hours while Ascension reported over $900 million in net profit.

The broader healthcare system is buckling under pressures that hospitals and politicians refuse to address. ACA marketplace premiums rose sharply in 2026 after enhanced subsidies expired, with Reuters reporting premiums rose 58%, deductibles increased by about $1,000 per person, and enrollment fell 13% from 2025 to 2026. As coverage gets more expensive, patients delay care, come into hospitals sicker, and put even more strain on nurses already working in understaffed units.

That is the cycle nurses are striking against: executives squeeze staffing and shift costs onto workers while patients face rising costs and delayed care. Nurses are left to absorb all of those failures at the bedside. This is why healthcare workers continue to strike in waves – not because they want to leave patients, but because the system is already failing them.

• 🎥Nurses to Brigham: “You have blood on your hands”

• 🎥Boston nurses on verge of historic strike

PECO workers win after July 4 strike and widespread outages

IBEW Local 614 ended its historic three-day strike against PECO this week after reaching a TA with the Philadelphia-area utility. The strike began at midnight on July 4, marking the first strike in PECO’s 145-year history. The 1,600-member bargaining unit includes linemen, gas technicians, mechanics, call center workers, and back-office employees who maintain the electric and gas systems across southeastern Pennsylvania.

The agreement includes wage increases, cash-balance pension plans, full retirement medical coverage, improved rules around medical certifications, 24-hour notice for mandatory overtime in the call center, and doubled upgrade pay for workers doing duties outside their regular job classifications. PECO workers were paid as much as 30% below comparable utility workers, while PECO’s profits jumped nearly 50% after rate hikes driven by their monopoly over regional utilities.

The timing gave workers major leverage. The strike began during Philadelphia’s America 250 celebrations and continued through severe storms and widespread power outages with nearly 60,000 reportedly losing power with slow response times from scabs. PECO workers keep the lights on through heat waves, storms, holidays, and national celebrations. When they struck, the company and the public saw how quickly the system depends on their labor. They walked out on July 4 and came back with a contract that restored benefits, raised standards, and forced the company to move.

• 🎥Philly utility workers strikes during July 4th weekend

Broadway cleaners win contract under strike threat

Broadway cleaners with 32BJ SEIU reached a TA with the Broadway League this week, averting a strike that could have affected 30 theaters across the district. The contract covers about 250 cleaners working in theaters operated by ATG, Nederlander, Shubert, and Circle in the Square, including workers who clean venues hosting productions like Chicago, Aladdin, Schmigadoon, and Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

The four-year contract includes $5 per hour in wage increases, totaling a 21% raise by the end of the contract, along with pension improvements, continued fully employer-paid family healthcare, expanded paid leave, better working conditions, Juneteenth as a paid holiday, and stronger anti-discrimination protections. The deal still needs ratification, but it comes after Broadway cleaners held their first strike authorization vote in 18 years.

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The victory comes during a record-breaking Broadway season. The Broadway League reported that the 2025–2026 season grossed $1.91 billion, sold 14.6 million tickets, and filled 90.8% of available seats. Workers who clean theaters after those massive crowds leave used that boom to demand their share. Broadway is built on spectacle, tourism, and ticket prices that can stretch into the hundreds of dollars a seat. But none of it runs without the cleaners, porters, matrons, restroom attendants, custodians, and building service workers who keep the theaters functioning.

BONUS ROUND

• 📰The UAW stood up to genocide, now a federal appointed “monitor” is attacking the union

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Supreme Court closes term by backing Trump, billionaires, and the right-wing culture war

The Supreme Court ended its term with another round of decisions expanding presidential power, weakening limits on big money in politics, and validating one of the right’s central anti-trans campaigns.

The rulings came just days after the Court also sided with Trump’s deportation agenda, allowing the administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians and revive “metering” at the border, making it easier to turn asylum seekers away before they can even make their claim. Those immigration rulings immediately threaten roughly 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians, while opening the door to attacks on a broader TPS population of nearly 1.3 million people. Our last bulletin covers this decision and its implications.

Then came campaign finance. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Court struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. The 6–3 ruling overturns a major limit that had been upheld in 2001 and gives party committees far more room to directly coordinate campaign strategy, advertising, and spending with candidates.

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This is the most significant campaign finance ruling since Citizens United. That 2010 decision helped open the floodgates to unlimited independent political spending, fueling the rise of Super PACs and dark money. Now the Court has gone further, removing caps on party coordinated expenditures too. The result is another gift to the rich: more money, more coordination, and more ways for wealthy donors and corporate interests to shape elections and the country’s politics. Justice Elena Kagan warned in a dissenting opinion that the ruling opens new opportunities for corruption.

The Court also issued a major ruling on executive power in Trump v. Slaughter, holding that Trump had authority to remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and weakening the long-standing independence of federal regulatory agencies. The ruling gives the president more direct control over agencies like the FTC, SEC, FCC, and NLRB, making it easier to fire officials who refuse to carry out the administration’s agenda.

Agencies like the NLRB and FTC are supposed to enforce rules against union busting, corporate abuse, monopolies, fraud, and unfair labor practices. If those agencies become direct tools of the White House disciplined to Trump’s agenda, then enforcement can be bent even more openly toward the political needs of the administration and the corporate class behind it.

On the same day, the Court treated the Federal Reserve differently, allowing Fed Governor Lisa Cook to remain in office while litigation continues. That split shows the politics clearly: the Court is willing to weaken the independence of agencies that regulate corporations, labor, consumer protection, and communications, while moving more cautiously around the institution most central to the stability of finance capital.

Finally, in West Virginia v. B.P.J., the Court ruled that states can ban transgender women from women’s school sports. The decision upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho and found that such bans do not violate Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause.

The right has turned trans athletes into a national panic over a problem that doesn’t exist. NCAA President Charlie Baker told Congress in 2024 that he knew of fewer than 10 trans athletes among more than 500,000 NCAA athletes. That is around 0.002%. But Trump made the issue a central piece of his political brand, using trans people as scapegoats while his administration attacks healthcare, schools, student loans, and working-class families.

On July 1, new student loan restrictions under Trump’s H.R. 1 took effect, phasing out Grad PLUS loans for new borrowers and adding new borrowing caps on student loans. So while the right claims to be defending women’s opportunities in college sports, it is making higher education itself less accessible to working-class families.

Taken together, the Court’s message is clear. More power for presidents. More power for billionaires. More power for corporations. More power for states to target trans people. Less protection for immigrants, workers, voters, and marginalized communities.

• 🎥How we will defend Haitian immigrants from racist deportation

Utility workers strike in Philadelphia as America turns 250

On July 4, 1,600 utility workers at PECO, represented by IBEW Local 614, went on strike after months of negotiations failed to produce a fair contract. PECO is the utility giant serving roughly 1.6 million electric customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers across Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania. Its workers include linemen, gas technicians, mechanics, call center staff, and back-office workers who keep the region’s power and gas systems running.

The strike comes as Philadelphia sits on the national stage for America’s 250th anniversary. Up to 1 million people were expected in the city for July 4 events, including concerts, fireworks, and World Cup festivities. The timing gave PECO workers enormous leverage, especially as a dangerous heat wave pushed temperatures into the 100s and strained the region’s infrastructure.

Workers say the company failed to make serious counterproposals after negotiations began in January and their contract expired April 1. PECO workers are paid about 30% less than comparable utility workers elsewhere in Pennsylvania. They are demanding raises that keep up with the cost of living, along with improvements to benefits and retirement. The union also says PECO opened disciplinary cases against 150 members to intimidate workers after the strike announcement, before ultimately putting those cases on hold after pushback from the union.

The strike comes after PECO reported major profits and while Exelon, its parent company, continues to reward executives. PECO reported $278 million in profit in just the first quarter of 2026, while Exelon CEO Calvin Butler got more than $24 million in 2025.

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Workers keep the lights on during heat waves, holidays, and national celebrations, while executives cash the checks. And when the country gathered in Philadelphia to celebrate independence, PECO workers used the moment to demand some power of their own.

• 🎥 Philly utility workers strike during July 4th heatwave

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥Should our railroads be publicly owned?

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Supreme Court backs Trump’s deportation machine

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration two major immigration victories this week, ruling against TPS holders and asylum seekers in decisions that could expose hundreds of thousands of immigrants to deportation while making it even harder for new migrants to seek refuge in the U.S.

In Mullin v. Doe, the Court ruled 6–3 that the federal government can terminate Temporary Protected Status designations for Haitians and Syrians, and that federal law sharply limits court review of those decisions. The ruling immediately threatens roughly 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians who have lived and worked legally in the U.S. under TPS. It could also open the door to future attacks on the nearly 1.3 million TPS holders nationwide.

TPS holders are immigrants who registered with the government, received work authorization, renewed their status, and followed the rules laid out for them. Many fled countries devastated by war, political instability, climate disasters, and economic crises, often with the fingerprints of U.S. foreign policy and corporate exploitation all over them. Now, because they have repeatedly given the government information about where they live and work, they could be among the easiest people for ICE to target if their protections are stripped away.

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In a second 6–3 ruling, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court allowed the administration to revive “metering,” the practice of limiting how many asylum seekers can be processed at ports of entry each day and turning away migrants before they physically step onto U.S. soil. The policy began under Obama, was expanded under Trump, and can now be used to effectively shut the door on asylum seekers before they can even make their claim.

Together, the rulings show how the next phase of Trump’s mass deportation project is developing. After high-profile raids provoked mass resistance, legal scrutiny, and political backlash, the administration has increasingly paired enforcement with quieter bureaucratic weapons: court rulings, rule changes, status terminations, detention expansion, and new barriers to asylum.

That does not mean the deportation machine has stopped. It means the terrain is shifting. Observers have noted the administration is recalibrating away from the most public, “shock and awe” tactics while continuing harsh enforcement through rules and red tape. After Kristi Noem was replaced by Markwayne Mullin at DHS, some of the most theatrical figures of the crackdown were removed or demoted, but the administration’s goals remained intact.

This is the danger of the moment: fewer viral images of mass raids does not mean less repression. It can mean deportations happening through paperwork, databases, court orders, status revocations, and employer firings. For immigrant workers, the threat is still the same. One day you are legally working, raising a family, paying taxes, and building a life. The next day, the government changes the rules and declares you deportable.

Trucking faces a historic purge, longer hours, and self-driving expansion

The trucking industry is entering one of the most turbulent periods in its history, as new immigration and licensing rules threaten to push hundreds of thousands of immigrant drivers out of the workforce at the same time companies are pushing for less limits on driving hours and expanding self-driving truck operations.

Industry economists warned last fall that the industry could face the “largest capacity purge in history,” citing estimates that the total at-risk driver population could exceed 600,000 when accounting for non-domiciled CDL restrictions, English-language enforcement, undocumented drivers, and restrictions on new hires.

The rule changes are already real. FMCSA’s 2026 non-domiciled CDL rule sharply restricts which immigration statuses qualify for non-domiciled commercial licenses, and says states should audit and revoke credentials that do not comply with federal standards. The agency’s own FAQ says applicants with pending asylum claims are not eligible for non-domiciled CDLs under the new framework.

At the same time, the Trump administration has intensified English-language enforcement for truck drivers, with drivers who fail newly intensified proficiency checks placed out of service. The administration frames the crackdown as a safety measure. But in practice, it is also functioning as an immigration and labor-market purge in an industry heavily dependent on immigrant drivers.

Now trucking companies and regulators are also looking at changes to hours-of-service rules. FMCSA is testing new pilot programs that would let drivers “pause” the 14-hour driving window by excluding certain breaks or non-driving time. The agency says the pilots are about flexibility, but in the context of a looming driver shortage, workers have reason to worry that “flexibility” for carriers could mean longer, more exhausting workdays for drivers.

Then comes automation. Aurora has expanded driverless trucking operations in Texas, including a deal with McLane to haul goods between Dallas and Houston without a human safety driver operating the vehicle. Aurora has also announced autonomous freight expansion in the Permian Basin, where trucks could operate more than 20 hours a day hauling materials for the oil and gas industry.

Taken together, these changes point to a dangerous restructuring of trucking. Immigrant drivers are being pushed out. Remaining drivers could be pushed harder. And companies are using the disruption to accelerate automation that could threaten millions of trucking and logistics jobs in the years ahead.

Twins concessions workers strike for wages, healthcare, and job protections

More than 500 concessions workers at Target Field in Minneapolis held a one-day strike this week during the Twins’ game against the Dodgers, demanding higher wages, affordable healthcare, and job protections.

The workers, represented by UNITE HERE Local 17, include cooks, bartenders, suite attendants, dishwashers, food runners, and other concessions staff who keep the stadium running. The strike was the first of its kind at a major league stadium in Minnesota and landed on one of the biggest games of the season, with more than 30,000 fans expected.

Workers say negotiations with Delaware North have stalled over pay and health insurance. Many seasonal stadium workers have no employer health coverage, forcing them to rely on expensive marketplace plans or go without. That fight has become even sharper as ACA marketplace premiums rose dramatically in 2026 after federal subsidies expired.

At a stadium where a beer or meal can cost more than some workers make in an hour, concessions workers are demanding a fair share of the profits they bring in. They’re also demanding job protections against the use of non-profit volunteer groups in concessions work, a model that can allow stadium operators and contractors to fill jobs without creating stable union employment.

California state workers fight Newsom’s return-to-office order

California state workers are calling out Gov. Gavin Newsom’s return-to-office mandate, which is set to take effect July 1 and requires many telework-eligible state employees to report to the office at least four days per week.

SEIU Local 1000, which represents nearly 100,000 state workers, has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board, arguing that the state refused to bargain in good faith over changes to telework conditions. The union is organizing rallies, bargaining pressure, and member actions as the mandate approaches.

Newsom’s order was delayed last year after union pushback. Now the deadline is back, and state workers say the policy will increase childcare costs, gas costs, commute time, traffic, pollution, and turnover while doing little to improve public services. The union has argued that telework saves money, helps retain experienced workers, and makes state jobs more accessible.

Newsom has positioned himself as a national opponent of Trump, but on return-to-office he is borrowing from the same management playbook used against federal workers: force people back into offices, make jobs harder to keep, and call it accountability.

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For workers, RTO mandates are not just about preference. They are about control over time, money, family life, disability access, and whether public agencies can retain experienced staff. If management can unilaterally rewrite telework rules for 100,000 workers, it weakens the power of state workers by circumventing their bargaining rights.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎞️Out at Work: How to Beat Your Homophobic Boss

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

World Cup workers use global spotlight to push for contracts and protections

Hospitality workers across several World Cup host cities are increasingly using the tournament as leverage in contract fights, arguing that workers who make the event possible deserve a fair share of the economic benefits it brings.

The most visible action this week came in Seattle, where members of UNITE HERE Local 8 launched an indefinite strike at the Embassy Suites Pioneer Square, minutes from Lumen Field. Workers are demanding higher wages, year-round healthcare coverage, staffing improvements, and protections against ICE enforcement actions that could target immigrant workers.

In Philadelphia, workers at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown walked off this morning on strike. Members of UNITE HERE Local 274 are demanding a minimum of $30 per hour and a daily quota of 15 rooms for housekeeping workers. In addition to the World Cup games in the city, the strike is timed to coincide with America 250 events underway.

The strikes follow a similar fight in Los Angeles, where roughly 2,000 stadium workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 11 authorized a strike ahead of World Cup events before reaching a tentative agreement. Workers there also demanded protections related to immigration enforcement and maintained the right to strike if ICE presence threatens workers.

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Additionally, hospitality workers in Houston and other host cities have raised similar demands as the tournament has begun. Many argue that while politicians and corporations celebrate the economic benefits of hosting major sporting events, the workers who clean the rooms, prepare the food, and staff the venues are too often left behind.

The disputes also reflect a distinctly American reality surrounding this year’s tournament. As the federal government expands immigration enforcement, many workers who help make these events possible are simultaneously demanding protection from the same agencies being deployed to secure them. For unions, the World Cup has become a bargaining opportunity and a stage on which workers can make their demands visible to the world.

• 🎥No ICE at the World Cup!

ICE rewrites detention rules after lobbying from private prison giant

A Washington Post investigation revealed this week that ICE revised its detention standards after direct outreach from GEO Group, the largest private contractor operating immigrant detention facilities in the United States. The new rules explicitly state that detainees are not workers and are therefore not entitled to protections under local or state labor laws.

The change arrives as GEO Group faces multiple lawsuits alleging that immigrant detainees were coerced into working for as little as $1 per day while performing essential jobs inside detention centers. According to the Post, GEO Group specifically sought language that could strengthen its defense against those lawsuits. ICE adopted the revisions earlier this week.

The issue is particularly significant because more than 90% of ICE detention beds are operated by private companies, with GEO Group serving as one of the largest beneficiaries of the federal government’s expanding detention system. The company receives billions in government contracts and has deep ties to the administration. Both border czar Tom Homan and ICE Acting Director David Venturella previously worked for GEO Group. Since Trump took office in 2025, DHS funding has ballooned to $191 billion – with for-profit detention centers racking in billions while lobbying to continue expanding the deportation machine.

The rule change comes amid growing reports of labor actions and protests inside detention facilities themselves. At Delaney Hall in Newark, detainees launched labor and hunger strikes over conditions, while outside supporters have maintained regular demonstrations demanding improved treatment and release of detainees. Reports of unsanitary conditions, sexual assault, medical neglect, abuse, and labor exploitation have generated increasing scrutiny of the detention system.

UAW convention votes to divest from Israel

Delegates at the UAW’s 39th Constitutional Convention voted this week to divest union funds from Israeli bonds, marking a historic shift in the union’s approach to Palestinian liberation and one of the most significant labor convention votes on the issue since the genocide in Gaza began in 2023. The measure follows years of organizing by members within the union and reflects a broader transformation in labor’s politics on the issue. The vote comes as the Israeli government continues bombing Lebanon, endangering the fragile regional ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

The vote builds on a trend that has accelerated across the labor movement over the last three years. The UAW was among the first major unions to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2023. Since then, dozens of unions endorsed ceasefire resolutions, condemned the genocide in Gaza, or called for restrictions on U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. The convention vote goes a step further by divesting union funds directly, mainstreaming the tactic and demand on other major institutions.

For many delegates, the comparison to the anti-apartheid movement came to mind, when unions and pension funds divested from South Africa as part of a broader international campaign. In 1978, the UAW voted to divest from South African companies to protest against the apartheid system. This was a breakthrough moment that catalyzed the broader labor movement to follow suit, condemning the apartheid regime and leading to further divestment. Ultimately, statewide public pension funds divested in the 1980s, creating a major blow against the regime and legitimizing the growing international movement against the racist system.

Bezos says AI will create jobs while Amazon keeps cutting them

Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris, Jeff Bezos argued that artificial intelligence will ultimately create more jobs than it destroys, predicting that AI could even produce a future labor shortage rather than mass unemployment. Rather than backing up his arguments with evidence-based claims or even corporate commitments from the Amazon CEO, he made vague allusions that AI would make everyone’s entrepreneurial dreams come true.

The comments come at a moment when many workers are experiencing the opposite reality, including at Amazon. Earlier this year, Amazon eliminated roughly 16,000 jobs in January following 14,000 job cuts in October – while continuing one of the largest AI investment campaigns in corporate history. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta have collectively committed over $700 billion toward AI infrastructure, data centers, chips, and automation systems in 2026. Amazon alone is expected to spend close to $200 billion on AI-related infrastructure and expansion. The far larger logistics workforce for the warehouse giant isn’t safe either, threatening over 1 million logistics jobs in the U.S.. Amazon warehouses have been introducing robotics and automation across newer facilities for years, attempting to remove as many workers as possible to drive down costs.

Corporate executives continue to insist that AI will create new opportunities while simultaneously announcing layoffs, restructuring departments, and demanding increased use of AI tools from existing employees. Across tech, nearly 120,000 jobs have already been cut this year as companies redirect resources toward AI investments and seek higher productivity from smaller workforces.

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Supporters of AI argue that technological revolutions have historically created new jobs even as they eliminate others. Workers do not experience those transitions as abstract economic theories. They experience them as layoffs, wage pressure, and increased workloads. AI has not resulted in the promises of new job creation, but it has made corporations and the already rich hundreds of billions of dollars – including making the first trillionaire. Workers are being asked to bear the costs and uncertainty of that transition while corporations and investors chase the potential rewards.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥How your taxes made Musk a trillionaire

• 🎥The real story of Juneteenth

• 🎥Unionists to Musk: No one should be a trillionaire

• 🎥Why’d you join the union?

• 🎥Georgians stand against racist redistricting

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Elon Musk becomes the world’s first trillionaire

Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire following the historic IPO of SpaceX, which debuted as the largest public offering in history. Depending on the stock price, Musk’s net worth now exceeds $1 trillion. Most of that wealth now comes from SpaceX, which has become one of the most valuable companies on Earth through its rocket business, Starlink satellite network, and growing investments in artificial intelligence. Musk now has more wealth than the bottom 46% of the world’s population – 3.8 billion people.

The scale of the IPO is difficult to comprehend. SpaceX’s public debut raised roughly $75 billion and immediately pushed the company into the ranks of the most valuable corporations in the world. The offering doubled the previous IPO record set by Saudi Aramco and benefited from special rules demanded by Musk of Wall St that allowed the rapid inclusion of SpaceX stocks into major stock indexes, opening the door for billions in retirement and pension fund investments to flow into the company. This has raised controversy as it opens these funds that are typically seen as a safer investment to far more risk.

Musk’s rise has often been presented as the story of a lone entrepreneur. However, SpaceX was built with enormous public support. The company relied on government contracts, NASA partnerships, and federal investments to grow into the aerospace giant it is today. Government agencies remain among its largest customers. There would be no SpaceX without those early guaranteed revenue streams from NASA and DoD. Just as there would be no Tesla without federal and state spending on EV tax credits and clean energy subsidies.

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And despite taking so much from public coffers, Musk has historically used tax loopholes aggressively to dodge both personal taxes as well as taxes on his corporations. Tesla paid $0 in federal taxes in 2025, and across the last three years paid just 0.47% effective tax rate to the federal government. That is 45 times smaller than the 21% statutory corporate tax rate, which itself was cut from 35% by Trump in 2017.

And what has he done with this immense wealth? Besides lavish spending on private jets and vanity projects, his political influence has expanded alongside his fortune. In 2022, Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, reshaping the major social media platform and gutting former moderation efforts. In the 2024 election cycle, Musk spent $290 million supporting Donald Trump and allied candidates, emerging as one of the most influential figures shaping the administration’s approach to technology, regulation, and industrial policy. Just after Trump election in November 2024, Musk’s net worth stood at $350 billion. It has now more than tripled since then. He then joined the Trump administration leading the Department of Government Efficiency, where he led the effort to slash hundreds of thousands of federal union jobs and the services they provide to working people across the country.

The milestone also says something about the era we live in. Union density peaked at roughly 35% in the 1950s. Today it sits near 10%. Meanwhile, wealth concentration has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age. The gap between a trillionaire and an ordinary worker is so vast it almost stops being meaningful as a number. Last year, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill cut $1 trillion in Medicaid funding, funding those same tax breaks to corporations and the rich that enable Musk to become a trillionaire. This scale of money could solve broad societal problems – homelessness, hunger, clean water, equitable access to education – but instead it is withheld by the ultra-rich.

But wealth does not appear out of thin air. Tens of thousands of workers designed the rockets, built the satellites, assembled the vehicles, wrote the software, and generated the profits that created this fortune. The question raised by Musk’s trillion-dollar milestone is not simply how rich one person can become. It is what this level of wealth concentration means for democracy, politics, and the future of the economy itself. His wealth was built by – and ultimately stolen from – the working class of this country. No one person should decide what it is used for.

UAW workers win after 10-day strike at American Axle

After ten days on strike, members of UAW Local 2093 at American Axle reached a tentative agreement, bringing an end to a dispute that was nearly two decades in the making.

The strike involved roughly 1,000 workers at the Three Rivers, Michigan facility, a critical supplier for General Motors. Workers had spent years trying to recover from the massive concessions imposed during the Great Recession, when wages were slashed nearly in half under the threat of plant closure. Even after eighteen years, workers still had not fully recovered what they lost.

The new agreement finally begins to close that gap. Workers secured a path to top wages of roughly $30 an hour by 2030 – what many members called “30 by 30.” Just as importantly, they achieved those gains without sacrificing healthcare or other benefits the company had argued would have to be cut. Workers succeeded in finally reversing concessions that had defined an entire generation of employment at the facility and proving that sacrifices made during a crisis do not have to become permanent.

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The strike also demonstrated the leverage workers continue to hold in strategic parts of the supply chain. By targeting a critical supplier for GM’s most profitable truck lines, a relatively small group of workers was able to put pressure on a major corporation and force movement at the bargaining table.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥Atlanta transit workers demand safety ahead of World Cup

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

UAW workers strike key GM supplier after 18 years of concessions

Nearly 1,000 members of UAW Local 2093 walked off the job June 1 at Dauch Corporation’s Three Rivers, Michigan facility, a critical supplier of axles and driveline components for General Motors’ most profitable pickup trucks. Workers launched an unfair labor practice strike after negotiations collapsed and the company failed to meet demands around wages and healthcare.

In 2008, during the Great Recession, workers agreed to major concessions under the threat of plant closure. Employees previously earning as much as $29 an hour saw wages slashed to roughly $14.50. Eighteen years later, top pay has only recovered to about $22 an hour after a five-year progression. Adjusted for inflation, workers are making half as much as their pre-2008 pay. Meanwhile, the company has thrived. American Axle has generated roughly $8.4 billion in profits over the past decade. During that same period, the CEO made $111 million. UAW President Shawn Fain summed up the frustration: “For 18 years, these members have built you an empire of profit while getting treated like dirt.”

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The strike targets a key chokepoint in GM’s supply chain. Analysts estimate GM only has a limited supply of axle inventory before production of its highly profitable truck lines begins feeling pressure. Like the Stand Up Strike strategy in 2023, the UAW is targeting a strategic point in the supply chain where a relatively small group of workers can have an outsized impact.

USC faculty win major union election after years of delays

Faculty at the University of Southern California voted overwhelmingly to join the UAW this week, marking one of the largest private-sector higher education organizing victories of the year. The bargaining unit includes roughly 2,700 non-tenure-track faculty, including adjunct instructors, full-time teaching faculty, research scientists, and clinical healthcare practitioners who teach and conduct research across the university.

The victory comes after years of organizing and nearly eighteen months of legal delays. USC repeatedly challenged the bargaining unit and argued before the NLRB that all of the workers were ineligible to unionize, despite established precedent of similar bargaining units at other private universities. Organizers accused the university of pursuing a familiar union-busting strategy: drag out the process, force endless legal fights, and hope workers lose momentum before ever reaching an election.

Instead, workers maintained support throughout the campaign. When the NLRB finally ordered an election last month, faculty delivered a decisive result. Roughly 78% of eligible workers participated, with approximately 70% voting in favor of unionization. After years of delays and aggressive opposition, workers demonstrated that support for the union had not faded – it had grown.

The win is particularly significant in Los Angeles. USC is the second-largest private employer in the city after Kaiser Permanente, and the campaign adds another major group of workers to the growing UAW presence in higher education. Following recent organizing victories across the University of California system as well, the union has grown by thousands of academic workers joining across the state.

The fight is not over. USC has already appealed to the national NLRB in an attempt to block recognition. But after years of delays, faculty have spoken clearly. At a time when university administrations have largely accommodated Trump’s attacks on higher education, workers are increasingly organizing to defend themselves and the institutions they help run.

• 🎥How USC is siding with Trump against workers

100,000 Illinois Rideshare Drivers Win Path to Unionize

Soon after 70,000 Massachusetts drivers formed the first recognized rideshare union in U.S. history last week, Illinois lawmakers have passed legislation creating a pathway for approximately 100,000 Uber and Lyft drivers to organize and negotiate a contract. The win for MA rideshare drivers is the biggest private sector unionization win since 1941 when Ford recognized the UAW. Now Illinois and California are continuing the trend with hundreds of thousands more drivers who could be soon to follow. If this momentum spreads nationally, rideshare workers could become one of the largest groups of new union members in generations.

The legislation allows drivers to form unions, elect representatives, and collectively negotiate over wages, deactivations, safety concerns, and more. For years, drivers have argued that while companies classify them as independent contractors, the platforms exercise enormous control over their livelihoods and are completely dependent on the driver workforce to operate.

After years of battles over worker classification, organizers have increasingly pursued state-level frameworks that create pathways to bargaining outside traditional NLRA recognition models. The strategy mirrors earlier efforts by SEIU among homecare and domestic workers who were similarly excluded from federal labor law protections.

Drivers have consistently cited low pay, lack of transparency, and arbitrary deactivations as major issues. In recent years, companies have raised the price on riders while lowering the payout to drivers – squeezing profit from both ends as they flex their growing monopoly power in the sector. That has only made it more difficult for drivers to make ends meet. For the first time, they will have a path to negotiate at the table to address them.

For years, Silicon Valley thrived on the idea that app-based workers were too isolated and fragmented to organize while ensuring through misclassification that none would have a legally guaranteed path to unionize. As their efforts fall apart to block unionization, tech giants are simultaneously pushing autonomous vehicles across the country that threaten to eliminate millions of jobs across the country. The drivers recognize this threat as well, demanding as seat at the table and a voice in the halls of power to ensure robotaxis don’t devastate their livelihood.

• 🎥70,000 MA rideshare drivers win union

• 🎥ICE raids hit rideshare drivers at Chicago airport

Colorado labor movement suffers setback as Democratic Gov Polis vetoes Worker Protection Act again

Colorado Governor Jared Polis vetoed the Worker Protection Act for the second year in a row, blocking legislation that would have removed Colorado’s unique labor law often referred to as “right-to-work lite.” Colorado’s Labor Peace Act requires unions that have already won recognition to clear a second hurdle before negotiating union security agreements. Workers must win a separate vote with support from 75% of employees, a threshold that Polis himself has acknowledged is extraordinarily difficult to achieve at large workplaces. Yet despite recognizing the problem, he vetoed repeal efforts once again.

Labor leaders argue the system effectively functions as a hybrid right-to-work framework, forcing newly organized unions to clear an additional hurdle just as they are trying to build power and negotiate a first contract. The law dates to 1943, before Congress passed Taft-Hartley and opened the floodgates for right-to-work laws nationwide. Labor advocates argue Colorado’s system remains a relic of that anti-union era.

For unions, the frustration is especially sharp because the legislation passed the legislature with broad labor support. Instead of siding with workers and unions, Polis – the Democratic Governor – once again sided with business interests arguing the status quo should remain intact. This echoes the betrayal of labor by Democratic Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger who last month vetoed a piece of legislation that would have dramatically expanded public sector bargaining rights across the state.

MLB owners revive push for a salary cap

Major League Baseball owners have officially placed a salary cap proposal on the table during collective bargaining, setting up what could become the defining conflict before the current agreement expires on December 1. The proposal would cap total team payroll and limit how much clubs can spend on player salaries.

Owners argue a cap would improve competitive balance. The MLB Players Association counters that the real issue is not teams spending too much on players but many owners choosing not to spend enough. Nearly a third of teams operate well below current payroll thresholds while still collecting substantial revenue-sharing payments. Rather than requiring owners to invest more, a salary cap would simply limit worker compensation.

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MLB generates more than $12 billion annually. The players’ position is straightforward: the issue is not excessive spending on labor but owners choosing not to invest in their teams. Instead of a cap, the MLBPA has favored stronger spending floors that would require owners to compete. The smaller market teams are still guaranteed a revenue share each season, which has encouraged owners to minimally invest in the players and teams while still collecting billions each season.

The fight over salary caps carries enormous historical significance for the league. The last major attempt to impose a salary cap helped trigger the 1994 strike, which lasted 232 days and canceled 948 games – the longest work stoppage in MLB history. That memory hangs over negotiations today.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎞️I Love Boosters: Deconstructing Retail Hell

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Rideshare drivers celebrate victory at MA state house. Photo: AP

70,000 rideshare drivers win first union in U.S. history

In the largest private sector organizing victory since Ford recognized the UAW in 1941, nearly 70,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts have officially won union recognition, creating the first certified rideshare union in U.S. history. Organized through the App Drivers Union – affiliated with SEIU 32BJ and the IAM, drivers will now be able to bargain collectively with Uber and Lyft and set standards across one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy.

In fact, with estimates of 1.5-2.5 million drivers just in the U.S., Uber would be considered the largest employer in the country – bigger than Walmart or Amazon – if all of the drivers were recognized as Uber employees officially. Classifying drivers as independent contractors allowed Uber and Lyft to deny these workers a path to unionize through the NLRB. However, in states like Massachusetts, California, and Illinois, drivers have organized to introduce a new legal framework to organize and negotiate a union contract across the sector.

For years, rideshare companies built their business model around classifying drivers as independent contractors while exercising enormous control over their work. Drivers have faced falling real wages as vehicle costs, insurance, fuel, and maintenance expenses continue rising while the apps reportedly take a larger and larger share of fares. Many workers describe arbitrary deactivations as one of the biggest issues in the industry – a driver can lose access to work overnight with little explanation and almost no recourse.

The victory is especially significant because rideshare drivers represent one of the most immigrant-heavy workforces in the country, reportedly making up 80–90% of drivers in major markets. Workers from dozens of countries who were intentionally isolated through app-based work are beginning to organize at scale even in some of the most difficult sectors to unionize.

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SEIU is already organizing toward similar efforts in Illinois, where roughly 100,000 drivers could be brought into bargaining structures, while California organizers are looking toward organizing 800,000 more app-based workers. If similar campaigns spread nationally, the rideshare industry could become one of the largest new organizing fronts in modern labor history.

Drivers are also confronting another threat looming over the industry: automation. Companies like Uber continue investing heavily in autonomous vehicle partnerships while firms like Waymo push rapid expansion. Many drivers increasingly view unionization as necessary not only to improve conditions today but to build enough power to fight for a real say in what happens as automation threatens their livelihoods.

• 🎥70,000 rideshare drivers win union

Federal workers rally in DC against government cuts in Feb 2025. Photo: Nathan Posner / Anadolu

Trump administration moves to require NDAs across federal workforce

The Office of Personnel Management announced this week that it is beginning the formal process of requiring broad nondisclosure agreements across large sections of the federal workforce, escalating the administration’s campaign to tighten control over federal employees amid growing whistleblower disclosures and public criticism.

Under the proposal, current and future federal workers could be required to sign NDAs restricting disclosure of a wide range of internal information. Violations could expose workers to civil and criminal penalties. OPM says the proposal is aimed at stopping leaks involving sensitive government operations, citing the leaks of the governments planning around the unpopular operations to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.

The American Federation of Government Employees – the largest union of federal workers – warned that the proposal is part of a broader effort to silence dissent, intimidate workers, and weaken independent civil service protections. They point out that existing laws already govern classified information and that the proposal is meant to create a chilling effect throughout the federal workforce.

The proposal arrives after months of turmoil across federal agencies. Since returning to office, Trump has overseen sweeping layoffs, workforce reductions, agency restructuring, and DOGE-driven cuts across federal programs. The administration has also moved to terminate collective bargaining agreements in parts of the federal workforce and expand pathways for removing career civil servants.

At the same time, some of the most significant reporting on the administration this year has come from federal workers themselves – including disclosures involving immigration enforcement operations, agency cuts, retaliation against employees, and internal resistance to administration directives. OPM argues the new rules are necessary to stop damaging leaks. Federal workers increasingly fear they are being used to suppress lawful whistleblowing and criticism.

For labor unions representing federal employees, the concern goes beyond leaks. The fear is that the administration is steadily constructing a federal workforce where workers are expected to demonstrate loyalty, remain silent, and avoid speaking out about abuses – even as agencies undergo some of the most dramatic restructuring in modern history.

Federal unions have filed lawsuits to block many of these attacks, but mostly to little avail. The mass layoffs pushed by DOGE have been challenged, but most laid off workers remain in limbo without work. Federal contracts have been voided and ignored by agencies, with unions losing their office space and needed resources. Legal strategies – adopted as the primary shield by federal unions – have shown limited success in reversing or showing these attacks, with organizations like AFGE bleeding resources and membership.

As the workforce is hit by these attacks, members of the Federal Unionists Network – a multi-union formation of federal workers – have advocated to organize urgently to protect against these attacks, calling for more collective action and the need to break out of the usual playbook for federal unions to survive. One of their main strategies has been working with whistle blowers in the federal workforce to call out the attacks on federal services and the workers who provide them. With the authority and expertise on these systems, they are raising the alarm as the Trump administration attempts to break down these public goods. The Trump administration is now trying to crack down on whistle blowers to ensure the public is kept in the dark.

• 🎧Interview with Chris Dols, Federal Unionists Network

Big Tech starts pumping the brakes on AI hype

After spending years telling investors that artificial intelligence would transform productivity and justify massive restructuring, some of the companies leading the AI rush are beginning to quietly acknowledge a problem. The tools are costing enormous amounts of money – and many companies still aren’t seeing the returns they expected.

This week, reports emerged that Microsoft has begun cutting access to certain AI coding tools internally, including Claude Code licenses, after costs ballooned across parts of the company. At the same time, Uber executives publicly questioned whether the company’s massive AI spending is actually producing meaningful improvements for workers or customers. Uber reportedly burned through its entire planned 2026 AI budget within four months.

The shift comes after years of unprecedented spending. Microsoft alone expects to spend nearly $200 billion in 2026, much of it tied to AI infrastructure, while companies across tech have collectively poured over $700 billion into data centers, chips, cloud computing, and enterprise AI contracts.

At the same time, workers have paid the price. Companies including Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, and Block have collectively eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs while arguing AI would make organizations more efficient. Earlier this month, Meta cut another 8,000 workers as part of plans to eliminate up to 20,000 jobs this year, even while posting massive profits.

What makes this moment notable is not that companies are abandoning AI – they aren’t. Instead, some of the firms most aggressively pushing adoption are beginning to realize that AI is not magically reducing costs at the speed investors expected. In some cases, companies are discovering that maintaining massive AI systems, computing infrastructure, and enterprise contracts can be more expensive than anticipated without guarantees of major improvements.

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That does not mean the threat to workers disappears. Companies are still restructuring around AI, slowing hiring, raising productivity expectations, and searching for ways to reduce labor costs. But cracks are beginning to emerge in the narrative that AI would immediately revolutionize everything while effortlessly generating profits. The deeper question now is whether the AI boom is creating a sustainable transformation of the economy – or whether parts of the industry are beginning to resemble more of a speculative bubble fueled by endless spending and investor hype.

• 📰Meta lays off 8,000 workers, betting on AI

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

NYC hotel workers secure historic contract victory

More than 30,000 hotel workers in New York City won one of the largest hospitality contracts in U.S. history this week, after months of escalating pressure and growing strike threats ahead of the World Cup and peak tourism season. Workers with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council (HTC) secured major gains in wages, pensions, healthcare, childcare, staffing protections, and new safeguards around artificial intelligence and automation.

The deal reportedly includes raises exceeding 50% over the life of the eight year agreement, protections against automation replacing jobs, expanded family supports, and stronger protections against understaffing – a major issue since the pandemic as hotels cut staffing levels while demanding remaining workers do more.

Union leaders made clear they were willing to strike if necessary, threatening disruption across one of the country’s largest tourism hubs just as New York prepares for a massive influx of visitors for the World Cup. This opportunity gave the workers major leverage at the table.

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NYC is the largest urban hotel market in the US, rebounding coming out of the pandemic years. Hotel guests spend $38.4 billion annually across the city.

The industry wide agreement is a rare opportunity for workers at coordinated bargaining across the biggest players in the sector, giving workers the power to not just push standards at one employer but to lift standards across the industry. This framework is a reflection of the power of unionized hospitality workers in NYC, first negotiated in 1939.

Since the last contract negotiations, the union set out to regain strength in the sector after years of declining density by pushing a wave of new organizing to increase density. Ultimately, they succeeded in building greater density, in addition to securing key worker protections and strike preparation that prepared them for this fight to flex their power and win.

• 🎥Priced out of NYC: Union hotel workers won’t back down

Meta fires 8,000 workers betting big on AI

Meta laid off another 8,000 workers this week, part of plans to cut up to 20,000 jobs in 2026, as the company doubles down on artificial intelligence (AI). The layoffs come despite Meta posting over $60 billion in profits last year, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues pouring billions into AI infrastructure and computing capacity. Despite reporting over $60 billion in profits last year, the company is majorly restructuring. The message from Wall Street is that if companies continue to cut workers and invest in AI, then the stock market will reward them.

Meta says the layoffs are about efficiency and reorganizing around the future of technology. But workers increasingly see a broader trend unfolding across tech. Companies are not only betting on AI to eventually replace labor – they are cutting workers now to free up billions for speculative investments in that future. Collectively over $700 billion has been invested in 2026 in massive AI capital projects, especially data centers and the infrastructure of the AI boom. Similar waves have already hit companies like Block, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Amazon – with estimates already over 114,000 tech jobs cut in 2026 so far. Since 2022, over 800,000 tech workers have been laid off as firms chase profitability after years of expansion. This has become a norm to signal “financial responsibility” to investors, meaning they will cut as deep as their competition to stay “efficient.”

What makes this moment especially bitter is that many of the workers facing layoffs are the same people who helped build the technologies now being used to justify eliminating their jobs.

The response from organized tech workers has been sharp. In a statement responding to the layoffs, the Alphabet Workers Union argued, “It’s hard not to feel anxiety and fear when we can see more and more tech companies cutting huge portions of their workforce both in anticipation of replacing them with AI and to fund their multi-billion dollar bets on AI as the future of the industry…. The products generating massive profits for companies like Meta and Google don’t exist without our labor… don’t mourn, organize!”

This fight increasingly reaches far beyond Silicon Valley. Employers across healthcare, logistics, education, media, and customer service are now rapidly experimenting with AI to cut labor costs and intensify workloads. Tech workers are simply the first major group learning what happens when the technology you helped build gets turned back against you.

• 📰Meta lays off 8,000 workers, betting on AI

LIRR workers strike – and win

After shutting down the busiest commuter rail system in North America for three days, 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers represented by a coalition of five unions won new contracts this week, ending the first strike on the railroad in 32 years. The strike disrupted travel for nearly 300,000 daily riders and forced New York political leaders to finally move after years of delays and stalled negotiations.

At the center of the fight were wages and cost of living. Workers had gone three years without raises while inflation and housing costs exploded across the region. The settlement reportedly includes retroactive raises, cost-of-living improvements, and stronger wage protections, largely bringing workers in line with gains won elsewhere in the MTA system.

The MTA operates under the governor’s office in NY, meaning Governor Kathy Hochul ultimately guides the MTA management team in negotiations. Before and during the strike, Hochul aggressively attacked workers, calling the walkout “reckless” and warning that meeting workers’ demands could mean higher taxes and fare hikes, while saying that LIRR workers were already highly paid.

Then, after workers won, the tone changed completely. Hochul suddenly praised the agreement for ensuring workers would be “paid fairly” – while quietly dropping earlier warnings about catastrophic fare hikes. Public sector workers across the board will recognize this dynamic where public servants are pitted against the public they serve, with fearmongering about higher taxes, prices, or cuts to services. Essentially saying the only way they can support essential public servants is by taking it out of the pockets of other working people. In the aftermath we can see this was just a bluff meant to undercut public support.

The strike also highlighted the unique power – and restrictions – of transportation workers. Rail and airline workers labor under the Railway Labor Act, a law designed to make strikes extremely difficult through endless mediation, cooling-off periods, and federal intervention. Workers still remember the 2022 national rail strike, when Congress and Biden blocked 115,000 rail workers from striking. Read more about this in our previous bulletin.

After three long years of negotiations and delays without a contract, LIRR workers won a major victory after just three days out on strike. Now another 40,000 MTA workers for the NYC subway system represented by TWU Local 100 continue their own negotiations following their own recent contract expiration. While these workers are much earlier on in the long and painstaking process of RLA negotiations, the powerful example set by the LIRR workers can serve as both inspiration for the workers and a serious threat to MTA management.

• 🎥Nation’s busiest commuter rail system on strike

Postal workers prepare for contract fight as agreement expires

The contract covering more than 200,000 city letter carriers expired at midnight Friday, 5/22. Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) have been bargaining under growing pressure over wages, staffing shortages, forced overtime, and the long-running two-tier workforce system that has left newer postal workers earning less and struggling to survive.

Over recent months, NALC members have organized rallies in more than 100 cities, preparing for bargaining and warning against threats of privatization and further erosion of one of the country’s oldest public services. Their core demands are “30 for 30” – calling for $30 / hour starting wages and 1 manager for every 30 workers.

Mike Pinto, a longtime letter carrier, said “When I started around twenty years ago it was one supervisor for every twenty carriers. Now it’s like one per seven. I think we could run the office without them. If none of them showed up we’d still run.” Carriers have seen management bureaucracy and budget expand dramatically at the same time that the Post Master General and Congress claim that they’re in a financial crisis.

The USPS remains one of the few truly universal public services in the country, reaching every address regardless of profitability. Yet workers say years of austerity, understaffing, and political attacks have weakened service while pushing employees toward burnout. NALC leaders have also repeatedly warned against efforts to privatize postal services, arguing it would mean higher prices, worse service, and more pressure on workers.

Chris Persampieri, a letter carrier with the Next Generation Carriers, explained how many postal workers see their fight to protect the public service from privatization. “Many people want a cheap public service. And Wall St, corporations, want a more expensive service so they can make that money for themselves. We have a clear message for them and for the public as well that the Post Office is not for sale.”

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In 1970, postal workers launched a massive illegal wildcat strike, shutting down mail service nationwide and ultimately forcing major gains, including granting postal workers collective bargaining rights – despite federal law banning strikes for workers. These workers still do not have the legal right to strike, but the memory of 1970 still remains with the workforce today, especially as more postal workers feel pushed to their limit again.

• 🎥Who will defend the postal service?

BONUS ROUND

• 🎞️Sorry to Bother You: Why you NEVER cross the picket

• 🎥How Amazon’s greed kills

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

LIRR workers shut down nation’s busiest commuter rail line

At 12:01am Saturday morning, roughly 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers walked off the job, shutting down the busiest commuter rail line in North America and disrupting travel for nearly 300,000 daily riders across the New York metro region. Workers represented by a coalition of five unions led by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET-IBT) struck after three years of negotiations with the MTA. Workers have gone three years without raises while inflation and housing continued to rise across one of the most expensive metro regions in the country.

At the center of the fight is a simple demand: wages that actually keep up with the cost of surviving in New York. The MTA offered lump-sum bonuses for 2026 rather than permanent raises, while workers argued temporary payments do nothing to solve the long-term erosion of wages.

Railway and airline workers operate under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), a far more restrictive legal framework that puts brakes on efforts by workers to go out on strike. Passed in 1926 and expanded to airlines in 1936, the law was designed explicitly to contain disruptions in transportation by forcing workers through endless mediation, cooling-off periods, presidential emergency boards, and even federal intervention before workers can legally strike.

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This strike itself was originally expected in September 2025, but repeated interventions delayed it for months. Many workers still remember the federal government’s intervention to stop the national rail strike in 2022, when Congress and President Biden blocked 115,000 rail workers from striking after years of brutal scheduling and unsafe working conditions. Workers were told the economy was too dependent on them to allow a shutdown.

Transit and rail workers – along with airlines and other logistics workers – have enormous power because the economy depends on them. When trains stop, cities stop. Congested streets hold the city in gridlock. Finance, logistics, and daily life slow down. The entire structure of the economy reveals how dependent it is on workers who are usually treated as invisible.

The LIRR last struck in 1994, shutting the system down until Congress intervened. Before that came major strikes in 1987 and 1960. Even under one of the harshest labor laws in the country, rail workers have repeatedly found ways to exercise their leverage. This strike is a reminder that even when the law is built to contain worker power, there are moments when workers in critical infrastructure can still force the issue – and bring entire regions to a standstill.

• 🎥Nation’s busiest commuter rail system ON STRIKE

UC frontline workers force major contract victory after two-year fight

Just hours before launching their first open-ended unfair labor practice strike across the University of California system, AFSCME Local 3299 reached a tentative agreement covering more than 40,000 frontline UC workers across campuses and hospitals statewide. The victory comes after more than two years of bargaining, repeated unfair labor practice strikes, and escalating pressure against one of the largest public institutions in the country.

The workers represented by 3299 are some of the most essential – and lowest paid – in the UC system. They include patient care staff, custodians, food service workers, maintenance crews, and hospital support workers. About 30,000 of the 40,000 members work in healthcare facilities, which generate some of the largest revenue streams in the UC system. And yet, during bargaining, UC raised healthcare costs on the very workers who keep their hospitals running, even while refusing to seriously negotiate housing proposals at the table.

The tentative agreement reportedly includes 34% raises over five years, a $1,500 bonus, caps on healthcare premium increases, stronger layoff protections, expanded leave, and raises that gradually move the lowest-paid workers toward over $30/hour by 2029. Housing affordability remained the defining issue throughout bargaining, with workers describing impossible rents, multi-hour commutes, and even homelessness among workers employed by one of the wealthiest public university systems in the world.

AFSCME 3299 consistently framed their contract fight as about more than themselves. Over the past two years, workers connected their struggle to the broader housing crisis facing the entire working class, calling out billionaire real estate firms like Blackstone and speculative housing markets that have made California increasingly unaffordable. They linked their demands to attacks on immigrant communities, to public money flowing endlessly toward wars abroad – from Gaza to Iran – while workers are told there is never enough money for healthcare, housing, or wages.

This was not a quick fight. UC dragged negotiations out for years against one of the most diverse and lowest-paid workforces in the system, forcing workers to repeatedly strike and escalate. Ultimately, the credible threat of an indefinite shutdown of campuses and hospitals forced movement.

• 🎥UC workers launch statewide strike!

Trump escalates attacks on immigrant organizers in Ventura County

Federal agents tied to a Trump administration task force raided homes connected to VC Defensa, an immigrant rights organization in Ventura County near Los Angeles, this week, detaining volunteers and seizing electronics from organizers involved in rapid response networks defending immigrant communities from ICE raids. DHS claims organizers interfered with law enforcement. VC Defensa calls it what it looks like: an attack on people trying to protect their neighbors.

For months, immigrant communities across the country have lived under what increasingly feels like a campaign of terror – workplace raids, home raids, mass detentions, deportations, and constant surveillance. But increasingly, the administration is not only targeting immigrant communities themselves. It is targeting the people trying to organize resistance.

Groups like CHIRLA in Southern California and community defense formations like VC Defensa have played a key role to coordinate legal support, know-your-rights trainings, constitutional observation, rapid response networks, and neighborhood defense against raids. In response, the administration increasingly frames immigrant organizations as supporters of “criminality” or “terrorism” simply for documenting abuses and helping communities respond.

Over the past year, constitutional observers and labor leaders have increasingly come under attack for standing up to immigration enforcement. Last year, SEIU Union of Service Workers West President David Huerta was violently arrested by federal agents when acting as an observer and responder to immigrant raids in Los Angeles. After they brutalized and arrested him on camera, the city and labor movement mobilized to demand his release and all chargers dropped.

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In Minnesota earlier this year, constitutional observers Nicole Goode and Alex Pretti – a VA nurse and AFGE member – were killed while defending their community during Operation “Metro Surge,” the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.

These attacks are not random. Their goal is clear: make people afraid to organize, afraid to document abuses, afraid to stand together to clear a path to terrorize and harass immigrant communities and any progressive or working class organization standing against the billionaire agenda.

The labor movement should recognize this for what it is – not only an attack on immigrant communities, but an attack on the very civil liberties and freedoms that make organizing possible. Because if communities can be criminalized for standing together against state violence, then the basic rights underpinning all working-class organizations are at risk too.

• 🎥Trump taskforce raids homes of immigrant rights organizers

BONUS ROUND

• 📰An inside look at Amazon organizing in the warehouse capital of the world

• 🎥The Busted Rules Behidn the Biggest Tax Dodgers

• 🎥No Poverty Wages, No Cop City

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

The Inland Empire – a region east of Los Angeles – has become the warehouse capital of the United States. Nearly everything entering through the ports of LA and Long Beach moves through the region before being distributed across the country. Over the past two decades, Amazon and other logistics giants have transformed the area into a sprawling logistics hub built on warehouses, truck traffic, and low-wage labor.

On the Line spoke with Sam Padilla, an Amazon worker at the DJT6 facility in Riverside and an organizer with Amazon Teamsters, about growing up in the Inland Empire, organizing inside Amazon, and why he believes the fight has to become something bigger than a traditional union campaign. The following has been edited for clarity and length.

Jeff Rosenberg [JR]: For people outside Southern California who may not know much about the Inland Empire, what is this region and why has it become so central to Amazon and logistics in general?

Sam Padilla [SP]: The Inland Empire is basically the logistics hub of the country now. Everything comes through the ports in LA and Long Beach and then gets moved out here before it’s shipped across the country. The Inland Empire used to have a lot more industry, especially with the defense industry and military. When those jobs started to shut down and move elsewhere, a lot of people started losing their jobs. It was the logistics industry that moved in next.

Companies realized there was a huge amount of cheap land out here where they could build massive warehouses, and there’s also a huge working class population – many people out of work – including a lot of people that got pushed further east because people couldn’t afford LA anymore.

So now entire cities out here revolve around warehouses, trucking, and logistics. Everybody either works in a warehouse, drives trucks, or knows somebody who does. That became the economy.

JR: You grew up watching that transformation happen in real time. What was that like?

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SP: Yeah. My dad was a truck driver. I remember seeing the industry start changing in the 2000s and 2010s. A lot of trucking jobs became less stable. Companies started squeezing workers harder and harder. Independent truckers got pushed out because these corporations wanted cheaper labor and tighter control over everything.

Eventually my dad ended up back in warehouses because trucking stopped being sustainable. But warehouse work was even worse – harder labor, lower pay, no real future. That’s what happened to a lot of families out here. Warehouses became one of the only options if you didn’t have a degree.

At the same time, you could see the landscape of the region changing. They were demolishing homes and flattening neighborhoods to build warehouse after warehouse. Places that used to be open land or parks are industrial zones now. There are literally houses that refused to sell to these companies now standing surrounded by giant warehouses on all sides.

And the crazy thing is they always sell it as “development” or “bringing jobs,” but the communities absorb all the costs – pollution, traffic, noise, respiratory problems – while workers still struggle to survive.

Amazon and these companies generate billions out here, but workers don’t see that wealth. People are working nonstop just to survive. And the work itself breaks people down physically. That’s one of the first things that hit me when I started at Amazon.

JR: What was that experience like when you first started working there?

SP: Honestly, the pace shocked me. Before Amazon I worked at a grocery store. Even when it was busy, there were moments where things slowed down. Amazon never slows down. It’s thousands of packages constantly coming at you for hours and hours. Even at the end of the shift there’s always more work. They push people nonstop to maintain rate and move faster.

And it’s not just physically exhausting. It takes over your whole life. A lot of the shifts are overnight or super early morning. People work overtime constantly because they need the money, but then you basically only have enough time to work, eat, sleep, and recover before doing it all over again.

I had a coworker trying to decide between shifts because one gave him more hours, but another would at least let him occasionally see his kid. He told me his son was asking, “Where’s my dad? I miss him because he’s always at work.” That’s the reality for a lot of workers there.

JR: People online sometimes act like warehouse workers are just complaining about moving boxes, but what they don’t understand is the level of pressure and control Amazon imposes. What goes through your mind when you see those kind of comments online?

SP: Yeah. It’s not just “moving boxes.” It’s the pace they force on you. It’s the surveillance. It’s constantly feeling like somebody’s breathing down your neck. Even when I first started, managers would come tell workers not to talk while working. You’re standing shoulder to shoulder with people for ten hours but they want complete control over every second.

There’s always this fear that if you slow down too much or miss rate or do something wrong, you’ll get disciplined or fired. And people burn out fast because of it. You see workers come in and disappear after a few weeks all the time. Amazon’s turnover is insane because the company treats people as disposable.

JR: You didn’t go into Amazon planning to become an organizer though. What made you decide to join the union?

SP: I was going to school studying psychology because I wanted to help people. Growing up in the Inland Empire, you start seeing the bigger picture. You see how corporations reshape communities. You see poverty, stress, displacement, people working nonstop and still struggling.

And eventually you realize you can’t solve those problems individually. You can’t “medicate poverty.” I started getting more politically involved and learning more about labor organizing. Then Teamsters and Amazon delivery drivers organized a picket outside my warehouse during the UPS contract fight.

Amazon tried diverting workers away from the picket line so nobody would interact with it. But instead of clocking in, I joined the picket. That was basically the beginning.

JR: Everyone in the labor movement and beyond knows Amazon is one of the most aggressively anti-union companies in the world. What did the union busting look like inside your facility?

SP: It’s constant. They put anti-union propaganda everywhere – TVs in the breakroom, flyers in the bathrooms, mandatory meetings where managers talk against organizing. They also bring in these “employee relations” people who pretend they’re just there to hear worker concerns.

It was ridiculous, when you think about it. Some of these people were getting paid $3,000 a day to go around to try to convince us as Amazon workers that we don’t deserve $30 an hour. Even worse, that the people saying we do deserve that are actually hurting us or trying to trick us.

Before we went public, they’d come around asking what we wanted changed at work or whether people were talking about unions. They were fishing for information. Then after organizing became public, suddenly management starts pretending they care about every complaint workers have ever had.

That’s how we knew the organizing was working. The issues workers raised before suddenly matter because now the company sees workers organizing collectively to change it, and they were afraid it could really catch on.

JR: One thing that stands out in talking to you is that you don’t view this as just a workplace campaign over wages and benefits, but see yourself as part of a bigger fight against corporate power.

SP: Exactly. The organizing drive can’t just be about the classic “union difference,” just in terms of the check or benefits. Don’t get me wrong – that kind of message is important too and can mean a lot for workers like us who are struggling to survive. People joke all the time that with inflation, living in the Inland Empire means trying to make San Bernardino wages cover LA cost of living, and they aren’t far off. But I keep finding in my conversations that it needs to be bigger than just this.

Amazon is too massive to approach like other union drives. These corporations shape entire communities and entire economies. So organizing Amazon has to become bigger than just “we deserve a raise.” This is a long fight and the truth of it is that we are going to need a massive movement across the company to have the power to win life-changing wins. That won’t come quickly, and so we need people to know they are fighting as part of a bigger movement across Amazon.

Obviously wages matter. Safety matters. But people’s lives go beyond the warehouse. My co-workers care about housing, immigration raids, healthcare cuts, endless wars, pollution, and their families. Whether they ever have free time or a future outside work.

And if organizing ignores those things, people won’t truly believe it represents them. That’s why we bring broader political issues into organizing conversations. Not to be divisive or argue with our coworkers. The opposite actually. It’s about understanding what workers are actually living through.

JR: There’s often this argument that unions should avoid politics in order to stay “united,” especially in new organizing campaigns.

SP: I think that’s a losing strategy. Trying to dodge the issues many people are thinking about most just makes us seem isolated, like we are blind to what they are seeing.

For example, there are tons of Latino workers in the Inland Empire. ICE raids and deportations affect people directly. Why would workers trust an organization that ignores that reality? What if instead they know we’re an organization that is fighting to defend them and their communities?

Or if workers are struggling because rent is insane, because they never see their families, because they’re scared about healthcare or war or police violence – why would we pretend those things don’t matter?

The point isn’t to force ideology onto people. The point is to connect organizing to real life, and not shy away from any part of their lives that really matters to them. When workers start understanding the power they have collectively, they also start imagining bigger possibilities and what they can fight for.

Like what if workers had enough power to reshape the community instead of corporations deciding everything? What if in the Inland Empire we built parks again instead of just endless warehouses? Affordable housing instead of more luxury development? What if workers had enough free time to actually live life? Or if we could finally make corporations like Amazon pay their fair share to support the communities that made them a multi-trillion dollar company?

That’s the vision. The vision is to change the world around us, not just change the inside of the warehouse. Amazon has shaped our lives and has our whole community and political system under their thumb. Organizing working people is the only way to change that.

JR: Are there any stories you can share about what this has looked like to bring your coworkers into the fight by connecting with them on broader political issues?

SP: Yeah. I’ve brought coworkers to anti-ICE protests and anti-war rallies in LA and even out here in the IE. And honestly, for many people seeing those kinds of mobilizations can give people a new sense of confidence and energy to organize and fight.

A lot of workers feel isolated. Work takes over their whole life. So when they see community and solidarity in action, it reminds them that people actually do have power when we come together. Then they start thinking differently about the workplace too. They realize: if people can organize out here, why can’t we organize at work too?

I’ve been able to reach coworkers like that who told me time and time again that they didn’t want to hear about the union. Sometimes they talked about bad experiences with unions in the past or skepticism and hopelessness about anything ever changing. Whatever it was that was holding them back, connecting with them in other ways opened the door.

It’s not just about making a couple more dollars an hour. It’s about building enough collective power to fight for a completely different quality of life. And that’s why this fight matters so much to me and my coworkers.

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40,000 UC frontline workers prepare first-ever open-ended strike

More than 40,000 frontline workers across the University of California system are preparing to launch an open-ended unfair labor practice strike beginning May 14, escalating one of the largest labor fights in the country. Represented by AFSCME 3299, the workers include patient care staff, dining hall workers, custodians, groundskeepers, and building and facilities staff who keep UC hospitals and campuses running every day.

The strike comes after more than two years of bargaining and numerous shorter unfair labor practice strikes, but this marks their first open-ended strike. The union is calling out UC for bargaining in bad faith, including unilaterally increasing healthcare costs during bargaining and refusing to meaningfully negotiate over housing proposals.

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UC operates in some of the richest regions in the country, yet many of the workers who keep campuses and hospitals functioning are increasingly unable to afford to live anywhere near their jobs. Rising rents have pushed workers farther and farther away from campuses, driving up commute times while real wages effectively fall. Meanwhile, higher-paid UC employees often receive housing assistance or benefits, while many frontline workers receive nothing comparable. AFSCME members are demanding contracts with livable wages, protected healthcare, job security, and housing assistance to offset crushing costs of living.

• 🎥UC workers launch statewide strike!

Spirit Airlines collapse leaves 17,000 workers behind

After 34 years in business, Spirit Airlines abruptly shut down operations on May 2, immediately canceling flights and leaving 17,000 workers without jobs, including over 5,500 flight attendants represented by AFA-CWA and thousands of IAM members.

Spirit had struggled financially for years, surviving multiple bankruptcies in 2024 and 2025, reflecting broader turbulence in the industry. But the sharp rise in fuel prices following the expanding U.S. war on Iran pushed the already weakened airline over the edge, forcing the sudden shut down. Spirit publicly cited soaring fuel costs as a major factor in its collapse after failed efforts to secure a federal bailout of $500 million – less than the U.S. spent each day on the war on Iran.

For workers, the devastation is immediate. Many spent years building seniority and stable schedules in one of the hardest industries to break into. Now they face layoffs overnight and uncertain prospects in a volatile airline industry already defined by instability and consolidation.

As AFA President Sara Nelson put it: “Spirit Flight Attendants are not just some asset to be written off in this process. Their lives matter, and the livelihoods of all Spirit workers must come before the profits of shareholders.” The collapse also raises broader questions about who air travel is actually for. Spirit served hundreds of thousands of working-class travelers who relied on one of the country’s few ultra-low-cost carriers. Major airlines had little incentive to see a low-cost competitor survive, especially one that helped restrain prices across the market.

In response, the ideas of public ownership to worker-led cooperative models are becoming viral trends – reflecting growing frustration with an airline industry that repeatedly privatizes profits and socializes collapse. If airlines are essential infrastructure, many are beginning to conclude that they should be run like a public good.

• 🎧Interview with Sara Nelson: Crisis and Opportunity Ahead

Workers protest Bezos Met Gala spectacle

At a time when working people are struggling to afford rent, groceries, and healthcare, this year’s Met Gala – sponsored by billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos – became one of the clearest symbols yet of America’s growing inequality. Tickets cost $100,000 – putting the price tag at more than the median annual household income in the United States – while luxury outfits worn for a single evening regularly cost hundreds of thousands or even millions.

This year, workers refused to simply watch the spectacle. Labor organizers turned the event into a target, protesting Amazon’s labor practices and Bezos’ attempts to polish his image through philanthropy and elite cultural institutions. Protesters placed fake urine bottles around the museum – a reference to long-standing reports of Amazon workers forced to urinate in bottles under brutal warehouse production demands. Massive projections across nearby buildings highlighted Amazon workers speaking out about working conditions, while labor activists organized a competing “Ball Without Billionaires” celebrating workers instead of elites.

Former Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls was arrested after breaching a barricade during protests outside the gala. Smalls later said he had no regrets, framing the protest as exposing the disconnect between billionaire excess and working-class reality.

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The backlash to this year’s Met Gala says something deeper about this political moment. Workers are increasingly unwilling to let billionaires wrap themselves in art, culture, and philanthropy while the people who make their wealth possible struggle to survive. The old idea that ordinary people are supposed to admire the ultra-rich is wearing thin.

• 🎥What does Amazon have to do with ICE?

• 🎥Amazon worker rejects “Snack attack” salary

• 🎥The twisted real story behind Amazon’s rise

• 🎥What Amazon really delivers to Black and Brown communities

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥Ironworker: “Billionaires are robbing us blind, not immigrants”

• 🎥Trump is trying to steal the election

• 🎥No ICE at the World Cup

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

May Day On-the-Ground Reporting

Workers hit the streets across the country to mark International Workers Day – May Day – on May 1 with over 3,000 demonstrations and actions. The day of action was called by a broad national coalition, including major national and local unions as well as immigrant, community, student, and political organizations. Hundreds of thousands of workers participated from LA to NYC, effectively revitalizing May Day in the country where it originated.

This year, demonstrations showed the growing opposition to the Trump administration and their billionaire agenda. Looking to create greater disruption and economic pressure on the Trump administration and Corporate America, organizers raised the call for “no work, no school, no spending,” echoing the calls from the general strikes in Minneapolis earlier this year on January 23rd and January 30th. Major cities like Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles saw mass mobilizations with thousands hitting the streets in rallies and marches demanding an end to ICE terror and needless wars, taxing the rich, and full funding for public education, healthcare, and housing for all working people.

Students and their educators led major school shutdowns and walkouts across the country. In North Carolina, 22 out of 115 school districts closed or moved to remote learning for the day, meaning more than half of North Carolina educators shut down schools for the day under the banner of “Kids Over Corporations.” Over 10,000 students, educators, and workers rallied in Raleigh together in the largest demonstration in the Southeast.

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In North Carolina, Christina Cole, President-elect of North Carolina Association of Educators, said “We’re demanding that we increase per pupil spending to the national average and get educator pay up because our kids and public school staff deserve it. We have had over 20 counties shut down in the last two weeks, so a majority of public school staff in North Carolina organized to shut down their schools, and we expect thousands in the streets in Raleigh today.”

In many cities, organizers led civil disobedience actions as well. Protestors blocked the entrances to the NYC stock exchange. In San Francisco, hundreds blocked the main lanes of SFO airport, causing major delays and disruption. Corporate actions targeted Home Depot, Hilton, and the American Petroleum Institute.

With the midterms approaching, many will look to the ballot box hoping to undercut Republican majorities in Congress to slow the Trump administration. Others have highlighted the Trump administration’s attempts to rig the elections by manipulating voting maps through Gerrymandering while pushing legislation and executive orders that aim to disenfranchise millions. Republicans and Trump are being forced to recognize their declining popularity as they push a right-wing anti-worker program. Rather than change their program to garner popular support, they are attempting to effectively steal the elections.

In LA, David Huerta, President of SEIU-USWW, said of the threats posted by Trump, “Our communities are under attack and we need to mobilize to defend them. We need to not just get out to vote in November, but to defend our democracy from attack… No one is coming to save us. In Spanish, we say “Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo” – meaning only the community can save ourselves.”

As the threat against the viability of free and fair elections in the midterms becomes increasingly clear, more voices are calling to continue to build on the momentum from No Kings and May Day to continue the shutdown movement – advocating to revive the tactic of the general strike. As the Trump administration continues its onslaught against the working class, another pressure cooker – like the federal occupation of Minnesota – may once again lead to calls for mass action to fight back and defend our communities through a general strike.

In Atlanta, Katie Giddy, a leader with the Union of Southern Service Workers and a Waffle House worker, said of Trump, “He’s trying to steal the election. I think he’s trying to steal the world in any way that he can. He’s one man, and we are millions and millions of working Americans, and we’re gonna stand in his way of that… We know the truth and we know our power that we hold and we are here to take our power back.”

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On the Line brought reporting on these actions from coast to coast with the support of our volunteers, operating on a shoestring budget only a tiny fraction of mainstream media. We rely on your support to help bring you on-the-ground reporting like this. Support our work by signing up for a monthly contribution today.

• 🎥Shawn Fain on power of May Day

• 🎥May Day actions coast to coast

• 🎥Why educators closed NC schools on May Day

• 🎥Voices from May Day nationwide

10,000 Michigan Nurses Ready to Strike

Over 10,000 union nurses in Michigan are bargaining for their first contract with Corewell Health East at 9 hospitals across Southeastern Michigan. In 2024, nurses voted to unionize with Teamsters Local 2024 after facing an aggressive $1.7 million anti-union campaign funded by Corewell Health. Corewell formed from a recent merger in 2022 from other large healthcare systems in Michigan, now forming the largest healthcare system in Michigan with 21 hospitals total and hundreds of outpatient facilities.

Nurses have voted 90% to authorize a strike across the hospital system if they don’t get a fair contract soon. Showing their strength this past week, nurses have held practice pickets to prepare their strike muscles and show Corewell they are serious. Their core contract demands focus on improved staffing ratios, raises to keep up with inflation, and workplace safety concerns.

These are the same central demands seen in nursing fights across the country, reflecting chronic issues in the healthcare system accelerated by the pandemic. Staffing shortages since the pandemic have contributed to worsening conditions in hospitals for workers and patients, which has only led to more burnout and workers quitting the field. Fewer nurses on shift then put healthcare workers at greater risk for injury, working longer hours and more likely to be alone with patients under greater duress – a recipe for tragedy.

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Nurses are organizing and demanding safe staffing levels and pay to improve retention to finally address the root causes. And it’s clear the nurses are feeling ready to strike if they need to. “This overwhelming strike vote shows that nurses are done being bullied into silence while executives put profits over patients and gamble with our safety and our licenses,” said Rachel Szadyr, a cardiac ICU nurse and member of the bargaining committee. The strike date could be set any day now, demanding the employer meet their demands or face a strike across the hospital system.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥How Waymo creeped into your neighborhood

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

May Day organizing surges toward nationwide day of disruption

With May 1 just days away, organizers across the country are preparing for what could be one of the largest May Day mobilizations in U.S. history. The May Day Strong coalition – bringing together unions, community organizations, and social movements – is projecting over 3,000 actions nationwide, from rallies and marches to walkouts and economic disruption.

The call is simple and ambitious: “no work, no school, no shopping.” Organizers are aiming to demonstrate the collective power of working people by disrupting business as usual across sectors and regions. Mobilizing under a broad coalition, organizers are fighting back against the billionaire agenda pushed by the Trump administration – from ICE terror to cuts to healthcare to attacks on public education to endless wars.

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With national unions like the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Service Employees International Union, National Nurses United, United Auto Workers, and United Electrical Workers all tied into organizing efforts, May Day is becoming a step towards building the kind of national strike power organizers are saying will be needed to stop the Trump administration in their tracks.

• 🎥The Origins of May Day: Working class pride and power

Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer resigns amid scandal and anti-worker record

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned this week following a series of scandals, including allegations of mistreatment of staff and misconduct in office. While the resignation is being framed as a personal and ethical failure, it also brings renewed attention to her tenure and its impact on workers.

Chavez-DeRemer entered office with backing from some labor leaders who pointed to her previous support for pro-labor legislation while in Congress. Her time in the Trump administration quickly showed she would be no friend to workers. Under her leadership, the Department of Labor oversaw the rollback of key worker protections, including rules affecting wages and safety standards in sectors like domestic work and construction.

Her tenure reflected a broader pattern within the administration: using regulatory power to weaken labor standards while peddling lies that these same policies would benefit working people. The scandals that led to her resignation do not represent a break from that agenda, but rather the collapse of one figure within it.

The administration has consistently prioritized deregulation, corporate flexibility, and cost-cutting over worker protections. Her departure is unlikely to change that trajectory – only who carries it forward.

• 📰Trump’s Dept of Labor Attacks on Worker Rights

NYC transit workers move toward strike that could shut down the region

In New York City, a growing strike threat across the transit system is raising the stakes for one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure in the country. Contracts covering tens of thousands of workers are set to expire in mid-May, and negotiations are intensifying.

Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing more than 40,000 subway and bus workers, has begun bargaining with the MTA over wages, working conditions, and the rising cost of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. At the same time, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen under the Teamsters are preparing for a possible strike on the Long Island Rail Road, one of the busiest commuter systems in the country.

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Union leaders have made it clear that without a contract that keeps pace with inflation and rising costs, they are prepared to shut the system down. That threat carries enormous weight. New York’s transit network is the most heavily used in the United States, with millions of riders depending on it every day to get to work.

A strike would not just disrupt commutes – it would ripple through the entire regional economy.

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥Salt of the Earth: The Film the Gov doesn’t want you to see

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

Chicago schools join May Day shutdown

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has successfully pushed Chicago Public Schools after weeks of pressure to make May 1 a day of civic engagement for all Chicago public school students to allow over 300,000 students and over 40,000 educators to join the May Day national shutdown movement – calling for “no work, no school, no shopping.”

CPS will remain open, yet May 1 will be treated as a “day of civic action,” with students and educators allowed to participate in protests, and schools encouraged to facilitate attendance at rallies as part of the school day. This is motivated by the Trump administration’s attacks on public education and more broadly against the working class families who send their children to CPS. As a part of the agreement, CPS will even be providing buses to transport students and educators to the rally downtown.

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Under pressure from organized labor, one of the largest school districts in the country is now formally recognizing mass protest as part of civic education. In the birthplace of May Day and the center of the May Day Strong coalition, more workers, students, and families will now prepare to join mass protest actions in the streets.

• 🎥The Origins of May Day: Working class pride and power

70,000 LA educators win major contracts

In Los Angeles, over 70,000 educators won major contract gains and narrowly averted a massive strike across the second-largest school district in the country. Three unions – UTLA, SEIU Local 99, and AALA (IBT 2010) – were bargaining simultaneously with LAUSD, bringing negotiations down to the wire. As each union reached a tentative agreement, they maintained a united strike threat until the final deal, showing that no group would settle until every school worker secured a fair contract.

That leverage produced major gains. Teachers won raises averaging nearly 14%, with larger increases for early-career educators to help stabilize a workforce strained by the cost of living. School workers secured higher wages, additional hours, and protections against subcontracting and layoffs, while administrators won raises and more flexibility in workload. The agreements also included provisions on class size enforcement, special education support, and protections against unchecked AI implementation in schools.

This marks the high point of the California Teachers Association’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign, which has mobilized over 80,000 educators statewide. From Richmond to San Francisco to Sacramento and now Los Angeles, the strategy has been consistent – build coordinated campaigns, create credible strike threats, and raise standards across the sector.

Like other recent education fights, this was also about students’ learning conditions. Educators were organizing in response to housing instability, cuts to social programs, and the fear caused by ICE enforcement in immigrant communities. Schools are being asked to absorb these pressures while districts sit on billions in reserves.

The campaign shows how educators can link local fights into a broader movement for education justice. California is the fourth-largest economy in the world, yet public education remains underfunded. Now the focus is shifting from district-by-district fights to demanding that the state fully fund public education.

• 🎥LA Educators & School Staff: “Enough is enough!”

• 🎧Interview with Nathalie Hrizi on UESF strike victory

NYC building workers beat back real estate billionaires

In New York City, 34,000 building service workers with SEIU 32BJ forced a major contract settlement after preparing for a strike that would have hit the heart of the most valuable real estate market in the world for the first time since 1991.

Their employer counterpart, the Realty Advisory Board, represents many of the biggest real estate interests in the world. The RAB was formed in the 1930s explicitly to break the union just as building service workers were getting organized. These are the landlords and developers who control billions in property across Manhattan and beyond – an industry built on some of the highest rents and property values on the planet. Those same corporate landlords have been a major factor driving the out of control affordability crisis in New York City. Building service workers themselves have been feeling the rising costs push them out of the city along with their working class neighbors.

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And yet, even here, the employers came to the table demanding concessions from the union. They pushed to cut healthcare benefits and introduce a two-tier system that would permanently divide new workers from the rest of the workforce, ensuring everyone hired going forward would have to accept lower pay and benefits. The RAB claimed they could not afford to maintain or improve the pay and benefits of building service workers, citing the possibility of rent freezes as a coming crisis for corporate landlords.

Workers refused to sell out future generations or accept cuts themselves. After a massive strike vote and public mobilization this past week, they won a deal that not only defeated the RAB attempts to cut health benefits and introduce a two-tier contract, but actually won $4.50 per hour in raises by the end of the 4-year agreement and a 15% increase to their guaranteed pension.

Even in the most profitable industries, employers are trying to claw back standards by targeting the next generation of workers. Similar two-tier contracts were pushed on auto workers and UPS workers in decades past, undermining the unity of the workforce and the integrity of their contracts. Those two-tier systems in auto and UPS were ultimately defeated in recent years through powerful strikes and strike threats.

Nurses take the fight against ICE to Congress

This week in Washington, DC, members of National Nurses United – representing over 225,000 nurses nationwide – rallied with a clear message: ICE is not just an immigration issue, it is a healthcare issue. Nurses are on the front lines of what immigration enforcement does to communities. Patients avoid seeking care out of fear. Consequently, families delay treatment until conditions become emergencies. Entire communities are destabilized, and hospitals are forced to operate in the middle of that crisis.

After the murder of Alex Pretti – a VA nurse and AFGE union member, executed by federal agents in January as a consequence of the federal occupation of Minnesota – NNU sprung into action to condemn the murder and called to abolish ICE to curb their violent terror campaign. By taking up the call to abolish ICE, NNU is expanding what it means to defend their workplaces against new threats growing under the Trump administration. Healthcare workers are making the case that protecting patients requires confronting the broader systems that are harming them outside the hospital walls.

That includes speaking out against the massive public spending on war and deportation, while healthcare systems remain underfunded and overstretched. Massive cuts under Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” – including a trillion dollar cut to Medicaid – have been used to fund trillions in tax breaks for the billionaires, the deportation machine, and endless war.

• 🎥ABOLISH ICE: Union nurses to Congress

Layoffs spread as corporations double down on AI and cost-cutting

Another wave of layoffs hit major corporations this week, reinforcing a pattern that is becoming impossible to ignore. Disney cut around 1,000 jobs across its operations despite generating roughly $12 billion in profits last year. The cuts hit major divisions including Marvel and ESPN, with leadership framing the layoffs as part of becoming more “technologically enabled” – a familiar phrase that signals a deeper push toward automation and AI-driven restructuring.

At the same time, Snap announced layoffs of about 1,000 workers as well – roughly 16% of its global workforce – explicitly tying the cuts to its increasing reliance on AI tools. The company has told investors that 65% of new code is already being generated by AI systems, and that it intends to accelerate that shift even further. At the same time, Meta has announced they will layoff 10% of their workforce next month as part of the mass layoffs they announced last month to cut 20% total in the near future. This comes as Meta continues to aggressively integrate AI into every area possible.

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Markets have rewarded these moves. Companies cut workers, promise future gains through AI, and see their valuations rise. AI driven mass layoffs have become a regular feature of both tech and entertainment, and other sectors are likely to follow. The more major companies announce such layoffs, investors and corporate America will continue to feel the competitive pressure to do the same, accelerating the trend further.

• 🎥”AI won’t replace us!” ProPublica workers on strike

BONUS ROUND

• 🎥Sara Nelson, Bernie, and Zohran launch National Organizing and Strike Fund

• 🎥Priced out of NYC: Union hotel workers won’t back down!

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!

UTLA reaches TA; 68,000 LA education workers still prepare to strike

A potential strike of up to 68,000 workers across Los Angeles schools is rapidly approaching the April 14 deadline. United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) reached a TA with the district early morning on Sunday, April 12 through the strength of their strike threat. School support staff and administrators with SEIU Local 99 and ALAA Teamsters Local 2010, respectively are still negotiating and planning to strike on April 14 if they don’t have a deal. UTLA has committed to join in a sympathy strike to support their colleagues. This would shut down the second-largest school district in the country, and could be the largest coordinated education strike in years.

At the center of the fight are familiar issues, but they are getting worse: Underfunded schools and staffing shortages, rising cost of living pushing educators out of the profession, overcrowded classrooms and lack of student support.

Beyond these longstanding underfunding of CA public education, educators are also fighting to defend their most vulnerable students from the impacts of the Trump administration on working class and immigrant communities. Educators are dealing with the growing impact of immigration enforcement, ICE raids, and the presence of law enforcement and the National Guard in communities, which are directly affecting students’ ability to learn. Schools are increasingly being asked to absorb the fallout of broader political crises and cuts to programs for working families, without the resources to respond.

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At the beginning of the school year, LAUSD had over $5 billion in reserves, and has been called out for committing $10 billion to private multiyear contracts during 2022-2025. This reinforces the core message of the statewide We Can’t Wait campaign: the money is there, it’s just not being spent on our students. After strike victories from Richmond to San Francisco to Sacramento, Los Angeles now represents the crest of a statewide wave – one that is linking contract fights to broader demands for fully funded schools and protections for immigrant communities.

• 🎥LA Educators & School Staff: “Enough is enough!”

ProPublica workers strike over AI impacts

Roughly 150 workers at ProPublica walked out on April 8, launching a one-day strike in their fight for a first contract with the usage and impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) at the center. Workers are demanding protections against layoffs driven by AI, “just cause” standards, and a say in how AI is implemented in their work, after management introduced new policies without bargaining.

Journalists at ProPublica and other outlets have been raising concerns about how the technology has undermined job security for the entire industry as outlets turn to AI for faster output. This transformation is felt acutely by journalists who see how these tools are being pushed not only as a supplement to their work, but already as a means of replacing them in research, data analysis, writing, and editing.

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Ultimately, ProPublica workers have stated they aren’t completely opposed to using new technology as a tool for their reporting, but believe that without proper protections these tools pose a threat to their job security and journalistic ethics and standards.

Add to these threats the decades-long decline of print media. With more outlets closing or downsizing and losses to advertising revenue, the industry has seen work become less and less secure. And more recently the second Trump administration has put a target on journalists critical of his policies and actions.

The attacks on free press have resulted in arrests and trials of journalists – like Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who were arrested in Minnesota for reporting on anti-ICE protest actions – and Mario Guevara, who faced detention and deportation. All of these challenges feed into the need for these workers to have guarantees of job security in the face of an uncertain future.

• 🎥”AI won’t replace us!” ProPublica on strike

“Union Now” launch reflects growing demand for organized labor

A new national effort – Union Now, launched by Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants – is aiming to scale union organizing nationwide, with backing from Senator Bernie Sanders and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The project is focused on supporting new organizing drives and strikes at a moment when more workers are looking to unions as a vehicle for change.

Public approval of unions has surged in recent years, reaching levels not seen in decades, while trust in traditional institutions – from government to corporations – continues to fall. Union Now is an attempt to meet that moment and to turn growing pro-union sentiment into actual organizing and workplace power.

It also reflects a broader recognition inside the labor movement that this is not a normal period we are in. The second Trump administration has carried out some of the biggest assaults on organized labor in years – attempting to eliminate collective bargaining rights for one million federal workers amid mass layoffs, stripping workers of many critical federal protections, and leaving federal labor law enforcement in shambles.

With mass protests, strike waves, and economic pressure building at the same time, there is an opportunity and urgency to expand labor’s reach.

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BONUS ROUND

• 🎥Amazon and ICE: Southern warehouse workers fight back!

Bring it to the shop!

The Pickets & Power Bulletin covers the biggest stories impacting all working people today. Share these stories with your union siblings, coworkers, friends, and family. Read it together, discuss, and take lessons to strengthen your own fights. When we fight, we win – and when we fight, we learn. Tell us in the comments about campaigns you think we should include in our next bulletin!