Labor, and in particular, a class-oriented trade union movement, has a crucial role to play within this Anti-Monopoly Coalition. Labor is to be the heart of this coalition. While the coalition is to unify all progressive and democratic forces (such as workers, students, urban professionals, farmers, small-business owners, etc.), the working class is the force that has the power, if leveraged correctly, to bring the economy to a halt until its demands are met. The workers control the production, the shipment, and even the commerce of goods. The bosses and monopolies that dictate policies to society are the ones who rely on the working class the most.

For labor to play the leading role in the Anti-Monopoly Coalition, it first has to work tirelessly to bring unity to the trade union movement. Concretely, this effort will have the following immediate goals:

1. Ending any prejudices within the unions, such as racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant sentiments, breaks up solidarity and even prevents entry to the organized labor movement by key sections of labor.
2. Organizing the unorganized to bring unity between unionized and non-unionized labor.
3. Pushing for a nationwide right to organize and against any attempts at systematic opening of shops, such as so-called “right to work” laws.
4. Amalgamating small craft unions into unions on industrial lines.
5. Pushing to overturn laws, such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which restrict solidarity strikes.
6. Forming caucuses within unions that struggle for trade union democracy, as the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) is working on.

As the Anti-Monopoly Coalition emerges, organized and militant labor must be ready to take leadership. To ensure success, labor has to work on the above goals. In working on these goals, militant labor leaders will inevitably clash with the bosses’ agents and reactionary trade union leaders within the unions that obstruct the independent political action of labor.

To learn more, join the Harry Bridges School of Labor class on July 2, 2025, called Labor and the Anti-Monopoly Coalition.

The post Labor Must Take the Lead in Building an Anti-Monopoly Coalition first appeared on Labor Today.

Fortunately, the U.S. labor movement has begun to rally behind Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation (SMART) local 100 union brother, was illegally arrested by the Trump administration’s Draconian Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  On March 15^th the was deported to El Salvador where he remains in the maximum security Center for Confinement of Terrorists (CECOT) without due process.

The building trades have rallied for the return Garcia back to his home and family. Sean McGarvey, the President of the North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU), has demanded that Garcia be returned. Just two months ago, a NABTU leaked memo showed their willingness to remain silent on Trump actions affecting the working class, it appears attacking one of their members finally forced them to step up. In a statement McGarvey said:

“We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue, we’re the building trades; the backbone of America. You want to build a five billion dollar data center? Want more six-figure careers with healthcare, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk! You call us!”

And further,

“And yeah, that means all of us. All of us! Including our brother, SMART apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!”

SMART in conjunction with the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), of which Garcia was a member, have held rallies for his return.

World Federation of Trade Unions affiliate, Roofers Local 36, has created and circulated a petition to bring Garcia home.

It must be understood that the deportations of trade unionist Kilmar Garcia and others, without due process, is an attack by monopoly against labor. This is proven by Donald Trump’s own statement to El Salvador president Nayib Bukele,

“I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.” Trump is apparently employing the tactic of attacking the “weakest link” in hopes that it will create little to no resistance among the broader labor movement. The building trades unions have so far countered, this marks a huge shift as the building trades unions historically have held reactionary views, especially on immigration. The solidarity among the building trades unions demonstrates that the labor slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” is learned through experience—the hard way. With this we must ask the question, which side are you on?

The post Unions Finally Step Up as Trump Deportations Hit Labor first appeared on Labor Today.

Matewan, directed by John Sayles, in 1987, documents—though with some added fictionalized characters for dramatic effect—the monumental events that occurred in Matewan, West Virginia in 1920. The film is seen through the lens of the coal miners of the Stone Mountain Coal Company who are confronted by the company’s hired thugs, the Pinkerton-esque strikebreaking Baldwin-Felts Detective Company.

This film is second to none in its presentation of the proto-fascist methods that companies have and will continue to use in their pursuit of super-profits. We start by seeing the semi-feudal conditions in the company towns: everything is owned by the company and employees must agree to submit to the monopoly on necessities held by the company stores and housing. Stone Mountain Coal Company was free to determine rent, costs of food, and use of non-company-sanctioned commodities would result in heavy consequences for the worker. Next, when the workers try to unionize with the United Mineworkers Association (UMWA), the bosses use the ignorance of the white workers to their advantage and bring in African-American scab workers to disrupt the unionization efforts. When UMWA organizer Joe Kenehan succeeds in redirecting the false frustration of the white workers towards the black workers back at the bosses, the bosses then bring in the next weapon in their arsenal: the strikebreaking Baldwin-Felts Detective Company. This company employs tactics such as using infiltrators to spread lies among the workers, sowing distrust among the workers against the union, using force and coercion to evict striking workers from the company’s housing, and even using gangster methods of torture and murder.

Though the union of workers succeeds in parrying the brutal tactics of the Baldwin-Felts paramilitary, ultimately the labor drive is forced into a bloody confrontation that leaves many dead due to the adventurism of certain workers who grow impatient with the mass organization methods of the union. The final confrontation shows the loyalty of Sheriff Sid Hatfield who arms the workers in a shoot-out against the desperate Baldwin-Felts agents.

Though the Battle of Matewan did not earn the workers the safety, job security, and better wages they initially demanded, it did succeed in ridding the town of the Baldwin-Felts Company which allowed safer union organization efforts among the workers. It also succeeded in educating the workers about the brutality that the bosses are willing to use as well as the only way to combat this violence: forming militant class-oriented unions that reject divisions on racial lines.

This film is a must-see that will teach the viewer that only through militant class-oriented labor struggles were the American and even international working class able to win better working conditions and wages. As we are experiencing the unprecedented attacks and reversals of labor and civil rights for the workers in today’s America, we must learn the lesson that our forebears learned through bloodshed: that only by relying on organization of the working class, can we defend and expand our rights.

The post MOVIE REVIEW: Matewan first appeared on Labor Today.

The strike came after failed strikes and labor organization failures, such as the Japanese Strikes in 1909 and 1920 and the failed labor struggles of the Filipino workers in 1920, 1924, and 1937. These failures shared a common denominator: they were all organized on ethnic lines.

For decades, Hawaiian plantation owners exploited ethnic differences between workers to prevent any efforts at successful organization. The bosses created a stratified wage system by race, segregated the worker housing, and most egregiously tried to divide the workers by ethnicity by hiring scab workers of other ethnicities that were not part of the strike.

Throughout the strike, the workers, regardless of race or nationality, maintained unity on democratic lines and everyone played a role in the mutual aid process to procure vital supplies for the duration of the strike. After 79 days of unified struggle, the workers, organized by ILWU, secured their demands of better housing, better pay, shorter work weeks, pensions, and more.

The 1946 Sugar Strike not only was a successful strike for the workers, but it also changed the Hawaiian islands forever, from a quasi-feudal society run by the “Big Five” monopolies to a democratic society. This strike showed that the primarily Asian workers are stronger when they put aside ethnic differences and unite for shared interests. This lesson should serve as an example to workers of all races, ethnicities, genders, religions, etc. that the only way to strike a blow at corporate oppression is through unity.

Originally Published by the American Asian Friendship Congress.

The post The 1946 Sugar Strike: A Lesson on the Strength in Unity of Asian Workers first appeared on Labor Today.

After the failure of two years of National Mediation Board debates to produce a new contract, President Biden used the Presidential Emergency Board to impose a cool-down period of 30 days of no strikes or lockouts. After the cool-down period and the rejection of the rank-and-file railway workers to ratify the tentative agreement, over 100,000 workers represented by railway unions such as BLET, International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers – Mechanical Division (SMART-MD), Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE), Brotherhood of Teamsters(Teamsters), and others overwhelmingly voted to strike. This strike, aimed at railroad monopolies such as Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX, BNSF, Kansas City Southern, and Canadian National, would have begun on December 9, 2022.

On December 2^nd, the Democrat-led US Senate voted 80 – 15 to ban a railroad strike, which would have caused 30 percent of US shipments to halt and $2 billion a day, and force the tentative agreement which did not include the main demand from labor, sick days, onto the workers.

This anti-democratic attack on labor is all the result of the century-old Railway Labor Act. So how did it come into being in the first place?

The position of railway labor was not always in such a weak position. During the 1910s and 20s the railroad unions, especially the Big Four: The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE), Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen (BRT), Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE), and Order of Railway Conductors (ORC), became formidable opponents to the bosses and their monopolies of railroading. This strength did not come from thin air. The strength of these unions, which numbered over a million members combined, grew from hard struggle from the 1870s until the 1920s. During WWI, the railway workers experienced great hardship when they were overworked and put under deadly working conditions to meet the needs of the war. In 1916, with the threat of an earth-shaking strike looming, President Woodrow’s government passed the Adamson Act which guaranteed an eight-hour day for the railway workers. The next year, the railroads in the US were then taken under public management as a public service rather than monopolies that ran inefficiently to maximize profits.

All the hard-earned achievements that cost the blood, sweat, and tears of the organized railway workers were all being thrown away starting in 1920. The leadership of the railway unions such as Bill Lee of the BRT, Edward Fitzgerald of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks (BRC), E.F. Grable of the Brotherhood of BMWE, and Warren Stone of BLE took the path of treachery. The downward spiral came when the leaders adopted policies of class collaboration with the monopoly bosses. These policies led to the re-privatization of the rails and the creation of the Railway Labor Board, the rejection of the federation of the railway unions and instead the breaking up of the existing unions, betrayal of Shopmen’s Strike of 1922, the adoption of the B&O Cooperation Plan which allowed companies to enact speed-ups with the blessing of reactionary trade union leadership, and finally the passing of the Railway Labor Act (RLA) which put extreme restrictions on railway labor’s collective power in favor of arbitration which puts labor at the mercy of the railway monopolies, reactionary union leadership, and government administrations that are heavily lobbied by the railway monopolies.

The argument for the Railway Labor Act, which expanded its jurisdiction to airline labor relations in 1936, is that interstate commerce is too important for the national economy and that any freezing of the railways would be catastrophic to the United States. This is a fact, however, does that mean the RLA is the solution to this crisis? No, it is even more of a threat. This is because arbitration forced upon labor by the government does not resolve the conflict between labor and the bosses but rather kicks the can down the road. All it does is aggravate the problem until it cannot be contained any longer. So if the Railway Labor Act is not the solution, what is? Nationalization of the rails. Numerous countries such as Germany, France, Argentina, Ireland, and even massive countries with land areas similar to or even greater than the United States such as India, China, Russia, and our neighbor to our north, Canada have public rail. The United States should learn from these countries put railways under public ownership and organize for the development of the welfare of American citizens. We must follow the leadership of the rank-and-file Railroad Workers United organization in its campaign to nationalize rails called Public Rail Now.

The post Railway Labor Act: Albatross Around the Neck of Railroad Labor first appeared on Labor Today.

It may appear that the situation in America is hopeless for the working class but in fact, there is still a path to better living and working conditions in the country. That path is the building of an anti-monopoly coalition. This anti-monopoly coalition is the key to revitalizing democracy in the US and returning America to “We The People”. The anti-monopoly coalition must be made up of the downtrodden and all patriotic Americans who love peace and democracy, all led by the bastion of American democracy: a militant class-oriented labor movement.

We have seen over many decades the AFL-CIO strategy of tailing the parties of the bosses, particularly the Democratic Party, is not meeting the demands of the working class. In 2024, we are starting to see the need for independent political action for the working class coming to a head with unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) refusing to endorse a Presidential candidate from either of the two parties of the bosses: neither the Democrats nor Republicans. Other unions like the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), are going a step further and are calling for an independent electoral party for the working class. It’s time for the rank-and-file of the American labor movement to work to build an anti-monopoly coalition.

The post EDITORIAL: The Time is Now for a Labor Led Anti-Monopoly Coalition first appeared on Labor Today.

It is important to note that airlines and their employees are not covered under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) but rather the Railway Labor Act (RLA) of 1926 which was amended in 1936 to broaden jurisdiction from railways to airline workers. The passage of the Railway Labor Act was a measure taken by the federal government to restrict the workers from Self-Help practices such as going on strike. The act requires a very lengthy process of negotiations between the union and bosses which if negotiations fail are then sent to the National Mediation Board, currently led by appointees of President Biden. Unlike with the National Labor Relations Act, under the Railway Labor Act, the contract does not simply expire and there is a lengthy and convoluted process for negotiating a new contract. While this process drags on, the workers are forced to work under the current status quo.

The Railway Labor Act was the law that allowed supposedly “most pro-union since FDR” President Biden as well as both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to ban a strike of Railway workers in December 2022.

Since 2019, American Airlines Flight attendants have been unable to negotiate increased wages while inflation and cost of living have continued to rise. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic also set back negotiations. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants organized American Airlines flight attendants are demanding a wage increase over four years of 33 percent, 5 percent, 4 percent, and 4 percent. The union also is demanding retroactive pay raises for employees who have been working under the status quo for the last 5 years of negotiations.

In early June, American Airlines offered a measly one-time pay increase of 17 percent, less than half of the total demanded by the 28,000 American Airlines employees. The flight attendants and APFA rejected the embarrassingly insufficient proposal by the company which pays its CEO Robert Isom an annual salary of $31.4 million.

This is an ongoing story and Labor Today will continue to provide updates as the struggle of the American Airlines flight attendants develops.

The post American Airlines Flight Attendants Ready to Strike, Blocked by Biden Appointed Mediation Board first appeared on Labor Today.

This decision comes from concerns that there will be set-backs from the Democrat Establishment with regards to labor’s right to organize and labor protections. These concerns stem from the 2022 Railway Fiasco where Democratic Party leaders like President Biden and then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi rallied to force an agreement on railway workers. This forced agreement favored the railway executives over workers who voted near unanimously to strike for their demands of work safety protections and better time-off policies.

The “uncommitted” vote of the UFCW Local 3000 echoes the concerns the American people have towards the status quo in the country. There is rising unemployment rates and higher cost of living, US involvement in wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, and decaying infrastructure, but politicians ignore the demands of the masses to address these issues.

The questions we have to ask ourselves, is it time organized labor breaks away from the two-party system which is controlled by the bosses? Is it time that organized labor and unions start organizing for labor parties independent of the Democrats and Republicans? Can we reasonably expect our economies and livelihoods to be sustainable when we are led by leaders who fight to give tax cuts and deregulation policies to the bosses while letting American workers worry about their housing, medical, and food securities?

There are already initiatives in localities across the country for independent parties for the working class such as the Democratic Workers Party and the United Front Committee for a Labor Party in South California, Workers Party of Massachusetts, and other local organizations. The time is now for class-oriented trade unionists nationwide to lead and unite the various movements together to build a national political party of the working class and all progressive forces.

The post UFCW Local 3000 Endorsed an “Uncommitted” Vote in the Washington State Primaries first appeared on Labor Today.

The mural painted by a team led by John Pitman Weber and Jose Guerrero displays a fraternity of workers and unions, which transcends race and organizes against repression by the bosses, their lackeys and external terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. This artwork has not only aesthetic appeal, but teaches people about the importance of unions and organizing labor. It is worth noting that the United Electrical workers was the first union chartered by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which formed in large part to combat the segregationist policies of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Today, changing community and gentrification threaten the very legacy advanced by the mural. The loss of these murals would be a major loss to culture and history for not only Chicago, but to the labor movement as a whole. Fortunately, UE President Carl Rosen is working with the Chicago public art group to preserve this history.

For readers who want to help protect this precious relic of labor history, the UE is running a fundraising campaign to help preserve the mural, as of February 23^rd they have already raised enough funds to preserve 90% of the mural, any donation helps in the efforts. It is a small action that lets the people of Chicago and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers in particular know that the community appreciates this cultural heritage.

Photo Credit: UE

The post Labor, Art and History: The Fight to Preserve the Solidarity Mural first appeared on Labor Today.

Cliff Smith is running for city council and building a People’s Democratic Workers Party in his locality. The peoples’ democracy works in grassroots organizing leads to greater democracy for the common worker. In this drive, his campaign is centered on calling for an increased production of low-income housing, a more democratic policing where the control board is made up of elected community members, a $25 minimum wage, and guaranteed basic rights for immigrants and non-citizen residents. Cliff along with his union, Roofers Local 36, have been vocal against foreign military intervention and against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which siphons workers’ wallets for endless war while living and working conditions deteriorate.

Hardworking Americans like Cliff Smith are actively building the much-needed labor parties that are missing from American politics. Cliff’s campaign may be local to Los Angeles, but his campaign represents the growing movement of militant class-oriented unionism that the United States desperately needs.

DISCLAIMER: Image is courtesy of “Elect Cliff Smith to City Council District 8” Campaign Facebook Page

The post Roofers 36 President, Cliff Smith, Running Grassroots Working-Class Campaign for Los Angeles City Council first appeared on Labor Today.