Snyder’s “retirement” – a quintessential moment of jumping before you’re pushed – is a much needed, albeit incomplete, step forward toward greater accountability within the labor movement. For too long, labor leadership,often fairly criticized as “male, pale, and stale,” has been characterized by a self-replicating “good old boys” culture that fosters harassment and misconduct. Although this is far from the norm, it is all the more egregious in a movement built upon notions of justice and equity.

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“We owe to workers – on Workers’ Memorial Day and every day – to do everything we can to secure a safe workplace for all. Ensuring workplace safety should be the bare minimum, a reflection of the dignity and respect that all workers deserve.” IBEW 351 member and New Jersey congressman Donald Norcross calls for widespread recognition of International Workers’ Memorial Day, and continuing the fight for better workplace standards.

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The NLRB has been one of the few bright spots of the floundering Biden administration. General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a former attorney for the Communications Workers of America, has moved aggressively to reshape American labor law and redefine the role of the NLRB from an ostensibly neutral agency to a protector of the right to organize. Her most recent initiatives – moving toward a ban “captive audience” meetings and a return to the Joy Silk standard – would dramatically curb the ability of employers to intimidate workers during organizing drives.

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Richard Trumka did not deliver the movement he promised, and which we deserve. What he did do was make such a movement possible, clearing the way for something better than the decaying House of Labor presided over by past AFL-CIO leaders. Our House still needs rebuilding—and we need new, bold leadership to do it. The movement we build, and the leaders which lead it, will be Trumka’s legacy.

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Maine Governor Janet Mills’ labor-backed veto of LD 1708—which would have consolidated two private utility corporations into a statewide consumer cooperative, Pine Tree Power—is a sober warning to those fighting for public utilities: neglect unions at your peril.

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The question of trade union democracy has occupied labor scholarship and labor activism for decades. Desire for internal accountability for trade union leadership has often existed in tension with the need for highly disciplined action against capital, leading some scholars to question the limits of democracy in the labor movement.

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Even as campaigns for ethical consumption have skyrocketed in the past few decades, the classic campaign—“look for the union label”—has all but disappeared. With increased consumer concern over manufacturing conditions, and with increased domestic interest in and support for unionization, the union label should return. But to bring back the union label, we have to understand what it has meant, as well as what we want it to mean.

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Rejecting the status quo and reformer factions, members of California’s state workers union, SEIU Local 1000, elected an anti-political firebrand named Richard Lewis “RL” Brown last month. Brown is known to many members for Trump-esque social media diatribes, cyber-bullying, and a strange mix of populist and conservative politics. The repercussions of his election for labor and California politics could be dire, and Brown may have broken the rules to win.

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There is new energy behind the question of sectoral bargaining, including recent controversy over quasi-sectoral proposals. Given this, the Editors have decided to draw from past debates on union organization and industrial organization and republish relevant key arguments with new introductions. C.M. Lewis introduces our first piece with excerpts from labor leader William Z. Foster.

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How might one describe the 2020-2022 session of the Virginia General Assembly when it comes to labor policy? In a word: Frustrating.

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Katy Slininger argues that the families that suffered to maintain the impossible balance of work and children through the past year need to transform their struggles into solidarity with returning childcare professionals and teachers.

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In the flurry of analysis surrounding this week’s news about Reddit users and GameStop, many writers have portrayed the story as a two-sided battle. The lines have been drawn between hedge fund managers on one side, reviled by the left as corporate parasites and celebrated by the right, and r/WallStreetBets (r/WSB) Reddit power-users on the other, using the power of crowdsourcing to mobilize many thousands of small-dollar retail investors to pump up the price of GameStop’s stock approximately 1600 percent between January 12 and the markets closing on January 27.

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The labor movement is presented with a choice between a return to “normalcy,” or demanding more. Politics as usual set the stage for the harms done by Donald Trump’s administration. A restoration to the way things were before Trump will do nothing to prevent another autocrat willing to cater to the whims of an ever-hateful right, exterminating whatever tattered shreds of democracy we have left. The other path, the one we must choose if the union movement is to survive, is to fight.

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President-elect Joe Biden campaigned on being a “union guy” and a friend of workers, and has pledged to be the “most pro-union President ever.” Rhetoric is one thing, and trade unionists are used to unfulfilled promises from Democratic politicians. Backing it up is another -- and there’s one measure that will signal that Biden is serious: on day one, he needs to fire National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Peter Robb.

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Shaun Richman’s book, Tell The Bosses We’re Coming, raises interesting and sincerely provocative questions about how labor approaches worker organization, but his argument is undermined by selective evidence and a tendency toward abstract wonkishness.

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Support for Marty Walsh as Labor Secretary exposes how the United States labor movement is out of touch as more people are recognizing the intersection of racism and exploitation.

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Kim Kelly argues that it’s time for the movement to bring back dynamite—if not literally, then in the very least metaphorically, by harnessing the mass worker power of this movement and forcing the change that some leaders are loath to even politely consider.

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This week, inconclusive results in key battleground states led former Vice President Joe Biden to call for calm and to count every vote, and led President Donald Trump to claim victory and allege widespread voter fraud and a stolen election. Our editors each weigh in.

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There’s reason to believe there are some schools that can provide relatively safe face-to-face instruction, but the rushing to declare it safe to reopen based on snap judgments from early (and misinterpreted) data is—at best—misguided, and at worst, knowingly shoves educators under a speeding bus.

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At the end of the day, Jeffrey Toobin will still be a well-connected and sought-after legal expert, as well as a best-selling author. Comparing the discomfort and ridicule that Toobin is facing at this moment to the real labor-management struggles faced by rank-and-file workers and their unions is, at best, out of touch.

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