Afortunadamente, no hubo accidentes fatales en estos incidentes, pero es una cuestión de la seguridad de la vida y una cuestión de tiempo antes de que ocurra un accidente. Los aviones dependen de control de tránsito aéreo para la coordinación en el despegue y el aterrizaje, así como el seguimiento de los vuelos. Estos incidentes ponen de relieve el desafío para los controladores de tráfico aéreo para hacer sus trabajos de manera segura y coordinar el tráfico aéreo.

Varios temas están en la raíz de la causa de los apagones. El Nacional de Controladores de Tránsito Aéreo de la Asociación (NATCA) ha advertido durante décadas que el equipo de en el aire, torres de control del tráfico está fuera de la fecha y en muchos casos obsoleta y ya no se fabrica. La infraestructura de la nación aeropuertos es obsoleta con algunas proyecciones de modernización costando más de 18 mil millones de DÓLARES. La necesidad de reconstruir y modernizar los sistemas de tránsito aéreo también se hizo eco por Sara Nelson, el Presidente de la Asociación de auxiliares de Vuelo-CWA (AFA-CWA) en un declaración emitida el 2 de Mayo de 2025.

De Control de Tráfico aéreo Torres también la crónica escasez de personal y a los trabajadores que están allí suelen trabajar largas horas con el fin de garantizar la cobertura. Las recientes interrupciones a pesar de que han visto a los trabajadores a dejar el trabajo o ir en trauma ausencia, lo que ha agravado las condiciones de trabajo. La formación para el Control de Tráfico Aéreo tarda un mínimo de 8 semanas, y la tasa de deserción debido al estrés en el trabajo compuestos problemas de dotación de personal.

Por el momento, el tráfico aéreo dentro y fuera de Newark ha sido recortado en un 25% para acomodar el corto de personal y los problemas de los equipos. Sin embargo, esta es sólo una solución temporal en una cuestión mucho más grande. Nuestros aeropuertos son críticos en el espacio público para el transporte y la infraestructura de la nación. Los trabajadores deben tener plena niveles de dotación de personal y modernización de los equipos para garantizar la seguridad de los pasajeros aéreos y las condiciones de trabajo seguras.

No podemos olvidar que hace más de 40 años, el Profesional de Controladores de Tránsito Aéreo de la Organización (PATCO)nos advirtió de la creciente cuestiones de seguridad cuando se declararon en huelga en 1981. A continuación, el Presidente Reagan respondió a esta huelga en acciones fascistas de la moda por el disparo de todos los Controladores de Tráfico Aéreo. La anticuada infraestructura en nuestros aeropuertos espejos de la fecha de la infraestructura de muchos de los sistemas de energía de la nación.

The post We Were Warned By PATCO Strike, Out-of-Date Air Traffic Control Towers Leads to Nationwide Blackouts appeared first on Labor Today.

For decades organized labor has literally been drugged, stupefied, and dragged down to near extinction. Many will attest to rampant drug use, alcohol abuse, gambling, corruption, and general debauchery which could characterize many unions in years past as well as today. But the destruction of organized labor has in some ways made its rebirth possible.

With now considerably less influence, the labor bureaucracy has been unable to suppress growing militancy outside the trade unions. The workers of today in some respects do not carry on the same Gompersism that plagued US labor in the past. Many different trends in labor exist today and the working class is struggling to see who can answer their need for a strong labor movement.

We are meeting today at a time when the labor movement is struggling to integrate thousands of new organizers, new shops, and new perspectives. There is immense potential for what US labor can achieve today, but for our movement to put itself into position to utilize all of the culminating experience in the struggle for better working conditions we must support and defend a class-oriented trade unionism. No other perspective will be able to answer the needs of the American working class.

There are many who claim to be “pro-union”, “progressive” or “troublemakers” and who seek to fill the role of leader of the workers. But underneath their pro-union facade is objectively a policy of subservience to the bosses. In the interest of job security and temporary gains the long-term outlook of the working class is forsaken. Support for the struggle between the workers and the bosses turns to labor management and ways to improve production so companies retain a “competitive edge.” All initiative from the workers in the running of their own union is done away with. Organizing the unorganized is a long forgotten idea, and what little organizing does happen only comes on a silver platter in spite of the union. 

Our members live this reality every day and we unite today to say no more. We are done with the corruption, the stalling, and the sabotage of our institutions. Millions of Americans demand better from the so-called “pro-union” leaders in the labor movement who sit on mountains of wealth and ignore the South. Content with the section of the workers they are given by the bosses, these misleaders of labor employ the most backwards tactics to all but ensure that workers never achieve any sort of foothold not only in the industrial restructuring of the nation or for class-oriented trade unionists to lead our unions.

But we can’t achieve a class-oriented trade union movement unless we invest in the education of the rank and file. Which is why so much of what we do involves the Harry Bridges School of Labor. So that we can foster an environment free from the class collaboration taught by the AFL-CIO, and so we can give the rank and file of our unions the tools needed to put US labor back on the path of class struggle. This Congress represents the continued fight of honest rank-and-file members for class-oriented trade unionism!

The post Class-Oriented Trade Unionists Must Lead the Way—Opening Speech to LUEL’s 1st National Congress appeared first on Labor Today.

The worst of these derailments happened on January 4^th due to negligence from radio communication failure. About 22 passengers and 3 crew members were reportedly hurt in that collision.  The last of these derailments happened January 10^th on the above ground F line in Coney Island, near the New York City Aquarium, due to a missing bolt on the forth car of the train. Thankfully, this took place in winter when the trains in the area aren’t as busy, if this happened six months later this derailment could’ve been catastrophic.

Transit workers have complained that all three of these incidents are indicative of MTA bosses continually putting service and speed before worker safety. Trammell Thompson from the Progressive Action caucus in Transport Workers Union Local 100 has called the safety railings in the vicinity of the F train derailment “rickety”. The MTA continually promotes their safety record with only 23 derailments in the last three years, but in reality are they maintaining the safety of the system or have they just gotten lucky no one has died yet?

We have even talked to Bus Operators who work at the Transit Authority who have told us about the cuts in maintenance on the buses run by the New York City Transit Authority. One Bus Operator who asked to remain anonymous told us, “The MTA puts out alerts on their BusTime app telling riders they’re running limited service because they don’t have enough drivers, but we sit around the yard for hours waiting for buses that they can get away with saying are safe for service but most really aren’t.” He went on to say, “We have drivers who at this point pick their work to pull out at times they know there aren’t any buses … I myself have had days where I didn’t pull out a bus at all.”

It is seems obvious to us here at LUEL that the MTA has started to institute their own version of “Precision Scheduled Railroading” on the New York City Transit Authority. Last year when the New York State Budget was passed MTA Chairman Janno Lieber successfully lobbied for budget cuts for the MTA despite the State added billions in new guaranteed funding to the Transit Authority. With “leadership” like this its only a matter of time before a tragedy at the level of East Palestine comes to the New York City Transit system.

The post Subway Derailments Shine Light on Safety Questions in New York City Transit appeared first on Labor Today.

The lack of class-oriented trade unionists stems from the corporation led McCarthyite purges of our unions after WWII. In the vacuum left by the purges was a terrible swarm of charlatans, the mob, and reactionary elements who descended on our unions and did everything they could to make sure that American labor would not regain the strength it once had. With no strong guidance our unions floundered and have decayed culminating in the absolutely pitiful representation of 10.8% of American workers. A figure which is nearly the same as the period of American labor history before the creation of the National Labor Relations Board. This low figure is not from a lack of interest in union representation, but from an inability to achieve it. Meaning that the momentous achievement of union representation having federal legislation and being recognized as a constitutionally protected activity has been all but neutered.

Unfortunately, as unions gained federal recognition, this also meant increasingly stronger federal oversight and interference in unions. It’s not a coincidence that as unions were federally recognized and the NLRB passed that the State Department began to clean house by supporting right-wing candidates for union leadership ultimately resulting in the expulsion of class-oriented trade unionists from the AFL and CIO right after WWII and prevented US labor from affiliating with the WFTU. The bosses were forced to recognize our unions but they still control the government and in the long run they knew they would take control of them away from class-oriented workers and render them toothless.

And today, it is again no coincidence that with such close connections between the AFL-CIO, US State Department and the Department of Labor that many “leaders” of labor were quick to announce support for the fascist government of Ukraine. The US State Department is using our unions to give a veneer of union backing to those thugs, but the rank-and-file see through that bullshit. It is widely known that US involvement in Ukraine is a grift.

Tragically many groups in the labor movement today who claim to be trying to win back our unions from the entrenched and corrupt leadership that is primarily only supported by the US State Department parrot the same language of the State Department. As reactionaries took leadership of unions, the government cultivated “left” groups who they knew would promote instability and confusion in the labor movement through operation COINTELPRO.

The effect of COINTELPRO is still felt today. Many of these “left” groups are just reactionaries turned inside out. Two sides of the same coin. They promote sectarianism, a holier than thou attitude and a general disdain for discipline, organization, and the working class generally. They often end up being useful tools for the bosses, such as the “Reform Caucus” in ALU who sued their own union with frivolous accusations and now Amazon is using their lawsuit to file another against ALU in order to invalidate the election at JFK8. The difference between the right-wing shills working with the State Department and the “left-wing radicals” is the right-wing shills are getting paid for their treachery. The “left-wing” fools are wrecking the labor movement pro-bono.

It is up to all honest hard working people to approach the current situation with class-oriented trade unionism. Don’t let the “left-wing” sectarians gossip and weaken our unions, and don’t let the right wing stifle democracy either. Now is a time of reflection, of learning, and growth for all of us to find the pathway to bringing a class-orientation back to our unions. It all starts with getting back to the basics, to the fundamentals of why we have unions in the first place, and then fighting for the burning issues of labor today.

The post EDITORIAL: State of the Unions appeared first on Labor Today.

Over 100,000 union railroad workers and their families are up against the giant railroad monopolies who refuse to end precision railroad scheduling which penalizes railroad workers for any time off. The struggle has captured the attention of millions of workers across the country. It is the epitome of what we consider to be the effect that militant action from the leading elements of the working class in the basic industries creates. The bosses know this as well, which is why by hook and by crook (mostly crook) they try to control the unions representing the workers in the basic industries.

The specific tool they employ to accomplish this control is the Watson-Parker Law, known today as the Railway Labor Act of 1926. It is what guides the contract negotiation process for railroad workers. It was a reaction to the growing strength of the rail unions who had nearly 2 million members in the 1920s. Using the same excuse as today, the rail companies at that time argued that rail strikes were a grave threat to the national economy and had Congress first pass the 1920 Transportation Act to remove the right to strike from rail workers and place them under the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Board which would determine when and how the workers could strike.

In response to the 1920 Transportation Act, over 400,000 rail workers went on a wildcat strike. Unfortunately their own union leaders, rattled from previous fights and bought off by the rail companies, were some of the first to break the wildcat strikes and many other rail unions refused to recognize the strike and freely crossed the picket lines. In the aftermath of the failed wildcat strike, the union leadership which was bought off by the rail companies adopted the 1923 “B. & O.” plan of union-management co-operation. This move was in line with the general class-collaboration AFL policy of seeking legal arbitration over strikes which never failed to speed-up production, worsen working conditions, and destroy the militancy of rail unions. In 1926, the Railway Labor Act was passed with the support of the class collaborationist rail union leadership.

In 1937 William Z Foster, who was a railroad worker himself, remarked that:

“Between the effects of the semi-compulsory arbitration of the Railway Labor Act and the non-militant altitude of the union leaders, the twenty-one railroad unions have sunk deeply into a no-strike program. They have also developed other reactionary tendencies. From being the progressive head of the labor movement, as they were in 1920, they have become its tail end. True, the railroad union leaders talk big, adopt radical demands and take strike votes. Such maneuvers may fool some workers but certainly the companies are not deceived by them. The railroad owners know that when they say “no,” the union leaders subside. The employers even sneer about it in their trade journals. Said the Wall Street Journal recently: ‘No one supposes that strike votes mean a strike; things don’t happen that way in the railroad industry.’”

Nearly 100 years later and we are witnessing the same spineless betrayal of the rail workers by their own union leadership. A betrayal born from the rotting age old AFL policy of class collaboration codified as “reward your friends and punish your enemies” first put forward by Samuel Gompers. This policy essentially amounts to finding friends and support for reactionary leadership and policies in the union from the bosses. Support from the union membership is inconsequential when your position is defended by the apparatus of the state. Gompers policy results in the defense of the exploitation of workers by “rewarding” boot-licking servants of companies and punishing honest trade unionists who expect more out their union. In fact, Samuel Gompers during WWI was a dear “friend” of President Wilson who forced the meatpackers back to work under forced arbitration during the war.

Samuel Gompers, lauded by the lackeys of the bosses as a great “labor statesman,” managed to have his favorite axiom “the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce” included in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. This line of his amounts to a rejection of reality and forms the ideological justification of the boss loving union misleadership that has sold out the rail workers today. Gompers, who puts an American twist on the age old issue of class collaboration, means by his statement that workers don’t actually sell their labor skill, and in fact, workers who toil under capitalism are free from exploitation.

If there is no such thing as “exploitation”, i.e. no dividends from the employment of the skill of a workers labor which is not remunerated to them, that workers don’t actually sell their labor skill, and that there is no such thing as a class of wealthy who profit off the labor of workers they employ, then a strike is nothing but “adversarial” between the workers and bosses who could amicably work out their differences in a court room since workers and company bosses apparently have the same interests. So goes the logic of Gompers. In other words, workers should help the company to ensure employment. But why confrontations between workers and bosses continue to exist in defiance of Gompers, or why workers continue to get poorer, or where profits originate, or why unions exist in the first place, Gompers axiom has no answer for. Its use is primarily for that stratum of the labor movement who seek to justify their corruption and wash their hands of the blood of workers they supposedly represent.

In most AFL-CIO collective bargaining agreements today the contract will say something to the effect of “The Employer and the Union have a common and sympathetic interest…” and “All will benefit by continuous peace and adjusting any differences by rational common-sense methods.” By “rational common-sense methods” this of course means legal arbitration through a legal system set up by and for serving the interests of the major corporations. Making a strike an “irrational” action. A strike is considered “irrational” by the opponents of class-oriented trade unionism because by not recognizing the opposing interests between the worker and the boss and now adopting the interests of the bosses – the withholding of labor (a strike) jeopardizes continued employment and the profits of the bosses. Meanwhile, as these lackeys of the bosses suppress strikes the purchasing power of the workers decline as corporations refuse to raise wages faster than inflation to extract record profits. The toothless unions of the AFL-CIO have effectively become a management tool for the major corporations through the adoption of Gompers’ class collaboration policies.

These ghouls have neutered labor, and the boss-loving leadership of the AFL-CIO have gone along in complicity. In fact, after the tentative agreement was ratified by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) railroad union the international president Lonnie Stephenson retired even though Lonnie was elected to another term as international president this past summer. Their replacement will be chosen by the leadership. Why did Lonnie seek re-election if they were going to retire mere months down the road? Why could the membership not vote in a new president at the summer convention? Because Lonnie still had one more service to provide to the Democrats by pushing the tentative agreement through for the IBEW to help the midterm elections and to ensure his replacement was not picked by the membership at large.

Honest trade-unionists seeking higher offices in the rail unions are suppressed or purged by the entrenched reactionaries who tie the unions to the political games of the Democrats and Republicans. This is what Gompers “reward your friends and punish your enemies” means. To rely on the bosses for support in our unions to suppress the militancy of the workers who struggle for a fighting union. In fact Dennis Pierce who pushed for the unpopular tentative agreement lost their re-election as president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) to Eddie Hall. It was an election which closed right after Biden prompted congress to break the strike and force the tentative agreement. With betrayal fresh in their minds, the workers voiced their frustration with the leadership of the BLET.  But now the BLET disciplinary committee recommended filing a complaint—as well as a revote—with the Department of Labor against Eddie Hall for “election interference” for sharing an article about David Manning during the election. David Manning was also a candidate but was disqualified. Clearly, the results of the BLET election did not go the way the reactionary leadership wanted and they would like the bosses to reverse the democratic will of the membership, just as the Democrats did with the over 100,000 rail workers who rejected the tentative agreement. The goals of the misleadership have nonetheless been temporarily thwarted with Dennis Pierce’s withdrawal of his campaign’s complaints which lead to their decision, as well as removing himself from the ballot in a potential revote realizing his continued attempts at subversion of union democracy would cause irreparable harm to the union.

It is a joke for the Democrats to speak of “saving democracy” while they simultaneously trample on the democratic processes exercised by the rail workers. When “pro-labor” President Biden announced their recommendation to break the coming rail strike none of the leadership in the rail unions could offer the workers they represent anything but empty words of “frustration” with the decision to force the tentative agreement but then support for the doomed 7 days of paid sick leave which had zero chance of passing the Senate but offered the Democrats a convenient opportunity to simultaneously crush the rail workers but save face by showing that the Republicans refused to give rail workers paid sick time. Paid sick time was not why rail workers rejected the tentative agreement. That is why it’s clear now more than ever to rail workers the words of “solidarity” that come from the Democrats or Republicans and their lackeys in leadership positions of the unions are perverted and mean the opposite.

But the workers will not put up with these bought-off crooks in leadership of the AFL-CIO forever. It will take all honest trade-unionists to reject corporate political manipulation, demand militant leadership, and to put our unions back on the path of class-oriented trade unionism!

The post EDITORIAL: The Traitorous Rot at the Heart of the Rail Fight appeared first on Labor Today.

For decades, there has been an acute absence of militancy in the orientation of the AFL-CIO. In fact, the AFL-CIO has relentlessly pursued a policy of indifference toward organizing and sometimes outright betrayal in the face of mounting challenges for the working class. Several AFL-CIO unions in decades past pushed for ridiculous contracts that effectively cut workers’ wages against rising inflation and implemented the disastrous two-tier system that today has become the center of key struggles with the UMWA Warrior Met Coal strike, the Kellogg’s strike, the UAW Volvo strike, the UAW John Deere strike, and the BCTGM Nabisco strike to name a few which occurred last year.

The two-tier system is at its heart an anti-worker policy that sells out the next generation of workers for temporary gains. The chickens have come home to roost with mass retirements and the discrepancy between new and senior workers more pronounced than before. As further tragedy, workers are at odds with their own unions for selling them out years ago. A long-term and ideologically worker-grounded perspective was absent in the ratification of contracts that sacrificed the future of organized labor. Many wonder why the workers had voted for something so against their long-term interests as a class, but it’s quite simple: most of them didn’t vote.

A key issue with the recent AFL-CIO convention was democracy within the AFL-CIO. The Vermont AFL-CIO submitted to the convention a motion: to allow every member of the AFL-CIO to vote on its national body, rather than just the 500 delegates attending the convention. The Executive Council of the AFL-CIO blocked the motion entirely. But this struggle for union democracy takes place in many other AFL-CIO affiliated unions, and some outside of the AFL-CIO.

The main cause behind the 2021 UAW Volvo strike was an undesirable contract, but the reason the membership wouldn’t ratify it was because contract negotiations occurred without worker representation. One can hardly call the 2021 UAW Local 2069 contract a “negotiation”, in practice it was outright collaboration with Volvo corporate to have the local function as a company union. Where eventually the rank-and-file shop floor workers of the plant, frustrated with their union’s behavior, had to forcefully acquire documents from their own local to uncover the gross collaboration between their union leadership and the corporation. Similar stories of undemocratic processes and collaboration between union leadership and bosses can be found all throughout the labor movement but has become the norm for many millions of workers within the AFL-CIO whose boss-friendly leadership is unwilling or incapable of rectifying.

Many in the labor movement point fingers at laws, specific politicians, or companies for why labor is in the state it is today, but it is easy to put all the blame on the bosses and ignore our own issues. The truth is, a major reason for only a fraction of workers being organized today is that the workers have to fight on two fronts, against their bosses, and against their union.

The fight against the boss for better wages and conditions is undermined by a union leadership which does not have the same interests as the workers they represent. Often, we see union leadership living lives that are indistinguishable from the bosses’, perhaps even running in the same circles as the bosses to line up a cushy consulting job outside the union. These are privileged people, and they act like it.

It is extremely telling that Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon worker with little to nothing, managed to do what the AFL-CIO with all its wealth and expertise, would and could not by organizing the first Amazon fulfillment center. A monumental moment in modern labor history using strategies and tactics developed by militant organizers during the great depression that put to shame the AFL-CIO that is held down by its bankrupt policy of “Business Unionism” which says the workers and bosses have common interests and the main struggle is not on the shop floor, but in the boardroom of the corporations. The fact that the AFL-CIO willingly hosted President Biden at the convention after he did nothing to help the PRO-Act, and the fact that the AFL-CIO refuses to affiliate with the People’s Party should tell you everything you need to know about where the political and economic interests of the Executive Council are.

The American workers, some 100 million or so, are chomping at the bits to strike back against the onslaught of attacks on their wages and conditions, the frustration is palpable, but the AFL-CIO with its 12 million souls, fights with one hand behind its back. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler at the convention promised nearly a million new members by 2032 but one can’t help but roll their eyes at such a pitiful number given by the most powerful person in labor when it is possible to organize millions more by adopting militant organizing methods with a united effort of all unions in the federation using the organizations immense wealth and infrastructure and ditching its conservative and boss-friendly policies. What is needed, is a strong rank-and-file effort to take back our unions from these lackeys of the bosses and to struggle on our shop floors once again!

The post AFL-CIO Leadership Fighting with One Hand Behind its Back appeared first on Labor Today.