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 appeared first on Labor Today.

Vice President of AFGE Local 1509 Ariel Ness talked on how devastating the current attack on the union has been, stating that union membership was cut in half in one night due to the VA violating the master contract and ending payroll deduction for dues. AFGE locals have had to scramble to enroll members in E-dues to maintain union membership, a blatant attempt to cut funding to unions representing federal workers.

Around 100 people attended the rally and showed their support for AFGE workers and veterans, many holding signs criticizing the Trump administration as well as local representative Dusty Johnson, Senator John Thune, and Senator Mike Rounds. Speakers and attendees alike remarked that like AFGE’s slogan of the rally, “not our first fight”, the attacks on federal workers will continue and this will be a long struggle that won’t be won overnight. Many left the event in high spirits, determined to continue supporting workers under attack by the current administration.

The post Workers and Veterans rally in Sioux Falls to support AFGE appeared first on Labor Today.

This violation of Brother Abrego Garcia’s rights, including the right to due process, has been acknowledged by federal courts and even the U.S. government.

That the federal government has not only dragged its feet in taking action to bring Brother Abrego Garcia home, but also inflicted further harm through the Department of Homeland Security’s exposing of Brother Abrego Garcia’s wife’s address on social media, in unconscionable and despicable beyond words.

Please join us in supporting Brother Abrego Garcia and his family and fighting to bring him home. An injury to one is an injury to all!

In Solidarity,
Public Rail Now

The post Public Rail Now Solidarity Statement with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and SMART-TD appeared first on Labor Today.

May Day has its early origins in the United States, in the late 19th century, with a pathbreaking and historical strike for the eight-hour day. International Workers’ Day commemorates the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers convened as part of a long-term organizing campaign to make Chicago the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day.

During this extended period of struggle, on the evening of May 4, 1886, Chicago police attempted to disperse a peaceful assembly of workers in Haymarket Square when an unidentified assailant threw a bomb. The police reacted by firing on the workers, killing a number of protestors. Organizers of the demonstration were charged with murder — but no evidence was ever found linking them to the bombing. Four of them – known as the “Haymarket Martyrs” were hanged the following year. 

In 1889, the first congress of the Second International Workingmen’s Association, meeting in Paris on the centennial of the French Revolution, called for international labor demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. Then, in 1891, May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International’s Second Congress. In subsequent years, the working class in many countries sought to make May Day an official holiday, and their efforts largely succeeded. 

In the United States and Canada, however, the official holiday for workers is Labor Day in September. After the Haymarket Incident in Chicago, U.S. President Grover Cleveland “feared” that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 would become an opportunity to commemorate Haymarket and radical worker struggle. Thus, he pushed for U.S. Labor Day to be the first Monday in September.

In the United States, efforts to officially switch Labor Day back to the May 1 have been unsuccessful. However, a number of unions and locals — especially in urban areas with strong support for organized labor — have maintained a connection with labor traditions through their own unofficial observances on May 1.

Today, May 1, 2025, working people all over the world — including millions here in North America — will celebrate International Workers’ Day. As railroaders, we will celebrate the dignity of all workers, highlighting working conditions in our own industry. The widespread negative effects of Precision Schedule Railroading (PSR) are now well known to millions of Americans. Rails have been sounding the alarm for years, educating the media, politicians and the public about unsafe and irresponsible practices of Class One billionaires.

Rails continue to fight against the dangers of long and heavy trains, the relentless profit-centered attempts to implement one-person crews, the lack of proper investment in maintenance and inspection, and the flight of workers from the rail industry due to eroding working conditions.

Further, in April 2024, RWU adopted a resolution in support of UAW’s President Fain calling for common contract expiration dates across industries to coordinate to a May Day (May 1) 2028 expiration.

Railroad Workers United has put the safety, well being, job quality, and voices of working railroaders at the center of its organizing since 2008. We amplify their voices today and keep the spirit of working class resistance, rank & file democracy, and good troublemaking alive in the rail industry.

Check the links below for May Day resources and take part in local May Day activities in your area as we celebrate OUR day — International Workers’ Day.
 
Solidarity Forever,
Railroad Workers United

The post RWU Greetings for International Workers’ Day appeared first on Labor Today.

The post WFTU-EUROF Newsletter May 2025 Out Now appeared first on Labor Today.

The members of the Executive Committee unanimously elected the General Secretary of the TUI, comrade Mpho Phakedi of NUM South Africa, and comrade Jose Divanilton Pereira Da Silva of CTB Brazil, as President of the TUI.

After their election, both the President and the General Secretary, along with the Executive Committee members, reaffirmed their commitment to supporting the struggles of workers in the energy and chemistry sectors.

The WFTU wishes all the best to the new leadership and the elected bodies of the TUI, and expresses the sureness that the implementation of the decisions of the 4th Congress will be a strong reinforcement of the class-oriented trade union movement.

The post TUI Energy and Chemistry Elect New Leadership appeared first on Labor Today.

The World Federation of Trade Unions expresses its solidarity with the working class of Bangladesh on the occasion of the 12th dark anniversary of the Rana Plaza bloody crime which had cost the lives of 1134 garment workers, including 851 women, on 24th April 2013.

The protection of workers in all aspects of their life is a main duty of the class-oriented trade union movement. We will relentlessly continue our struggle for the determination and implementation of health and safety measures in the workplaces, for free and safe vaccine for all, for public free and high-quality healthcare to all.

The post No More Rana Plazas — No More Blood For Profit appeared first on Labor Today.

The objective of unification and the mobilization of active workers, retirees and pensioners, both in the public and private sectors, is the demand for a general increase in wages and pensions. It is the requirement that article 91 of the Constitution be complied with, said the trade unionist at a press conference.

In this sense, the spokesman explained that the demand is to stop the process of destroying wages and labor rights that this government is applying with its neo-liberal criminal policy, which is why he called on all sectors of the country to join the march called by the public sector and by the employees of private companies.

Will the united workers defeat the anti-worker and anti-popular policy of the authoritarian and legitimate government, which is condemning the Venezuelan working people to hunger and misery. Together we will win with powerful mobilizations this May 1, he detailed.

He reiterated that in Caracas this day of mobilization will take place in a rally and a march that will depart from Plaza Venezuela to Parque Carabobo in front of the headquarters of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. That day in May 1 from 9 a.m. to go out in combative unitary and class mobilization.

Originally published in Contrapunto.

The post VENEZUELA: Active and Retired Workers to Hold a March from Plaza Venezuela to the Public Prosecutor’s Office this May 1st appeared first on Labor Today.

While former President Biden’s claim to have been “the most pro-union President in history” is certainly debatable, President Trump is on track to become the most anti-union President in history in his second term.

In his first three months in office, Trump has signed executive orders which seek to cancel collective bargaining agreements covering over one million federal workers. Although justified with reference to “national security,” the executive orders target workers across the federal government, in agencies as disparate as Veterans Affairs, the Treasury and Energy Departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The executive orders seek to not only overturn existing union contracts, but strip workers’ right to be represented by a union at all. They also instruct government agencies to stop deducting union dues from members’ paychecks. Since Trump was inaugurated, the largest federal government workers’ union, the American Federation of Government Employees, has seen its membership surge by tens of thousands of members.

As veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse pointed out in a recent article in The Guardian, Trump’s “aggressive wave of anti-union actions is already spurring some [private-sector] US employers to take a more hostile stance toward unions.”

Private-sector employers who wish to take advantage of the current moment to attack or weaken their workers’ unions will find it easier to do so since Trump fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox in January, leaving the Board unable to issue decisions. Following another executive order, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in March.

On April 3, an anti-union trade association asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to “invalidate fifteen NLRB cases that were decided during the Biden administration.” As analyst Matt Bruenig writes at NLRB Edge:

This sort of thing has never happened before. The NLRB is an independent agency and the AG has no statutory role in how it operates. Such a move by the AG would be illegal under prevailing understandings of administrative law, but of course Trump and the conservative legal movement are seeking to have the Supreme Court invalidate a large swath of administrative law on the theory that it unconstitutionally restricts the power of the president.

An even more disturbing and bizarre attack on the ability of the NLRB to protect workers’ rights was revealed earlier this week when a whistleblower from the NLRB’s information technology department revealed to Congress and NPR that operatives from DOGE likely removed around 10 gigabytes of sensitive information from the Board’s case management system.

In addition to obvious concerns about the breach of privacy (NLRB case data includes sensitive personal information such as social security numbers and home addresses, as well as proprietary corporate information), if employers got ahold of this data, it would make it easier for them to fire — and blacklist — active union members.

Of particular concern is that DOGE is headed by billionaire Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX has been the subject of NLRB complaints filed by its workers, and who has shown himself to be rabidly anti-union.

The post Trump Administration Goes on Union-Busting Spree appeared first on Labor Today.

The Labor Education Project On AFL-CIO International Operations (LEPAIO) opposes the efforts to liquidate the Unite All Workers For Democracy (UAWD) caucus in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. This rank and file caucus was formed to support the fight for democracy in the UAW, scoring successes in winning “One Member One Vote” elections for national and regional officers, and winning election of a slate of reform candidates led by President Shawn Fain.

There are recent attempts by one faction of the UAWD to dissolve the caucus over political differences: this is a blatant reversal of the UAWD’s mission and its core principles, with which LEPAIO is aligned. We need more worker democracy in the labor movement where all working class issues can be debated, discussed and acted upon:  debate not dissolution.

The AFL-CIO, the labor center to which the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) is affiliated, has developed as a pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist trade union organization.  LEPAIO has been challenging the AFL-CIO’s acceptance of US government’s funding of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center via the National Endowment for Democracy (created during the Reagan administration in 1983) as an ani-democratic operation within the labor movement. 

The recent DOGE-directed defunding of the NED and hence dismantling of the Solidarity Center, should be a matter for discussion and debate in the UAW and all AFL-CIO affiliated unions and other unions in the US. To date, the AFL-CIO leadership and the leadership of all AFL-CIO unions, including the UAW, have been silent about these unprecedented developments. The UAWD can play a critical role in promoting a revaluation of the US labor movement’s role internationally, and disentangling it from government control.

The US Empire is falling apart, giving rise to fascist Trump and the undermining of all democratic rights of working people. There is a corresponding political crisis in the labor movement:  we urgently need more democratic debate and a structure that will allow for  all workers to discuss and debate the  issues that we face.

The UAWD faction wanting to dismantle the caucus has the apparent backing of the leadership of Labor Notes, the DSA Bread and Roses Caucus, and the Social Justice & Solidarity Fund trustees.  We urge them to reassess that support, and to stand with the UAWD founders and members who see the urgent necessity of building an even stronger democratic caucus in these turbulent times. The reform of the UAW has taken big steps but the work is far from done, as elements of the entrenched bureaucracy are pushing back to mute the organized voice of the progressive rank and file. LEPAIO stands in solidarity with fighters for democracy in the UAWD.

For more information, contact

Frank Hammer 313-355-2401 (UAW 909)

Steve Zeltzer [email protected]

Kim Scipes 773/615-5019

LEPAIO

[email protected]

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