Worker Solidarity Action Network
The Worker Solidarity Action Network is a place where we are committed to build worker solidarity by sharing info and stories about workers struggles.
USW 5 oil workers have been locked out and are on strike at the Marathon renewable refinery in Concord, California
youtu.be/Ed9Trmm6SHY
USW 5 Marathon bargaining committee member Carl Smith talks about the issues including dangerous understaffing
and the union busting tactics of the company to weaken and break out this contract from the other national contracts.
He also reports on the Project Labor Agreements that the Building Trades Unions have signed that require that their
members cross the picket lines and do the worker of striking USW5 members.
This interview was done on 6/22/26
Additional Media:
On The Line In The Fight For Justice: USW 5 Chevron Richmond Refinery Workers Strike
youtu.be/Ed9Trmm6SHY
USW Striking Oil Workers And Supporters Speakout For Health And Safety At Tesoro Refinery
youtu.be/kEcoHjGJ-LQ
USW Unionists Report On Richmond Chevron Refinery Fire At US Chemical Safety Board Meeting
youtu.be/EtLclfELgfc
United Steel Workers Kim Nibarger On Health And Safety For Oil Refiinery Workers & The Communities
youtu.be/eJ-YVAucxJM
Dr. Rose On Cal-Osha, The Chevron Richmond Refinery, Health And Safety For Workers & The Community
youtu.be/QnJfC44Ew3w
Cover-up:The Chevron Richmond Refinery Explosion-Fire, Health And Safety And Cal-Osha
youtu.be/hplpolLXV6Y
Cal-OSHA Mandated to take effective criminal action to immediately remediate the Richmond refinery multiple safety hazards
www.upwa.info/documents/Cal-osha-Rose.htm
US CSB Report
www.csb.gov/assets/1/16/Draft_Report_for_Public_Comment.pdf
Additional Info:
“Solidarity Mondays” and visit the picket line any time, 24/7, at the intersection of Solano Way and Arnold Industrial
Way Concord, CA. Send contributions to the strike fund to USW Local 5, at P.O. Box 349, Martinez, CA 94553-0034
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
www.labormedia.net
Support Ryan: Fired for Union Organizing at UFCW 2013 …https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ryan-fired-for-union-organizing?attribution_id=sl:48d80d14-aba0-4b2c-b9b9-3b6cf7305aaa&lang=en_US&ts=1780882…
USW 5 oil workers have been locked out and are on strike at the Marathon renewable refinery in Concord, California.
youtu.be/Ed9Trmm6SHY
USW 5 Marathon bargaining committee member Carl Smith talks about the issues including dangerous understaffing and the union busting tactics of the company to weaken and break out this contract from the other national contracts.
He also reports on the Project Labor Agreements that the Building Trades Unions have signed that require that their members cross the picket lines and do the worker of striking USW5 members.
This interview was done on 6/22/26
Additional Media:
On The Line In The Fight For Justice: USW 5 Chevron Richmond Refinery Workers Strike
youtu.be/Ed9Trmm6SHY
USW Striking Oil Workers And Supporters Speakout For Health And Safety At Tesoro Refinery
youtu.be/kEcoHjGJ-LQ
USW Unionists Report On Richmond Chevron Refinery Fire At US Chemical Safety Board Meeting
youtu.be/EtLclfELgfc
United Steel Workers Kim Nibarger On Health And Safety For Oil Refiinery Workers & The Communities
youtu.be/eJ-YVAucxJM
Dr. Rose On Cal-Osha, The Chevron Richmond Refinery, Health And Safety For Workers & The Community
youtu.be/QnJfC44Ew3w
Cover-up:The Chevron Richmond Refinery Explosion-Fire, Health And Safety And Cal-Osha
youtu.be/hplpolLXV6Y
Cal-OSHA Mandated to take effective criminal action to immediately remediate the Richmond refinery multiple safety hazards
www.upwa.info/documents/Cal-osha-Rose.htm
US CSB Report
www.csb.gov/assets/1/16/Draft_Report_for_Public_Comment.pdf
Additional Info:
“Solidarity Mondays” and visit the picket line any time, 24/7, at the intersection of Solano Way and Arnold Industrial Way Concord, CA. Send contributions to the strike fund to USW Local 5, at P.O. Box 349, Martinez, CA 94553-0034
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
www.labormedia.net
Support Ryan: Fired for Union Organizing at UFCW 2013 …https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ryan-fired-for-union-organizing?attribution_id=sl:48d80d14-aba0-4b2c-b9b9-3b6cf7305aaa&lang=en_US&ts=1780882…
United Auto Workers Vote to Divest From Israel in Historic Victory
truthout.org/articles/united-auto-workers-vote-to-divest-from-israel-in-historic-victory/
The divestment vote makes the UAW the first major national union to vote to divest from Israel.
By Shireen Akram-Boshar , TRUTHOUT
Published June 22, 2026
Pro-Palestinian protestors gather with a sign reading 'UAW Rank-and-File Workers For Palestine' after police cleared a new encampment of pro-Palestinian protestors on the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) campus on May 23, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
MARIO TAMA / GETTY IMAGES
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The United Auto Workers (UAW), a union with some 400,000 active members across the U.S., has voted to divest its estimated $400,000 from Israel bonds. The divestment vote makes the UAW the first major national union to vote to divest from Israel.
On Thursday, UAW members voted at the union’s 39th Constitutional Convention in Detroit, where some 1,000 delegates from UAW locals around the country had gathered to discuss the union’s strategy for the next four years.
UAW represents some 400,000 active members, largely in the U.S. but also in Canada and Puerto Rico. Members include workers in the auto industry and in higher education, as well as a significant number of health care workers and state and government workers.
The resolution states that the “billionaire class” that “profits from war” funnels public money into militarism instead of “healthcare, housing and education working people need.” It cites the nearly three-year-long genocide in Gaza and the call by the Palestinian trade union movement for workers internationally to act in solidarity as among the reasons for its resolution to divest from Israel Bonds – which are bonds issued directly by Israel and function as loans to the Israeli government.
The vote was organized by Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a left-wing caucus within the UAW, and UAW Labor for Palestine, which is part of a broader Labor for Palestine coalition.
Maryland’s public pension fund raised its Israeli bond holdings to $74 million in 2024.
By Jaisal Noor , TRUTHOUTNovember 8, 2025
Olga Karounos, a member of the UAWD caucus and public defender from Brooklyn who made the motion to call the amendment to the floor, said that “this is going to send a message to – not just the billionaire class – but to politicians and any single person who is not afraid to stand up to genocide, to Netanyahu, to the United States government, and will put the UAW again on the map for standing up for international solidarity.”
The UAW has a history of left-wing, rank-and-file action, including its divestment from South Africa in 1978. More recently, the UAW became the first major union to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in December 2023. It also formed a Divestment and Just Transition working group to study the history of Palestine as well as the union’s economic ties to Israel. During the campus protest movement, members in New York and elsewhere organized in solidarity with students. In May 2024, however, the UAW’s Executive Board, including its president, Shawn Fain, voted down a resolution to divest from Israel.
Navruz Baum, a legal services worker in New York City and member of Local 2325 and UAWD, told Truthout that the victory “is the result of years of organizing by UAWD and Labor for Palestine members,” and “stand[s] on the shoulders of decades of rank-and-file organizing, stretching back to the 1973 strike led by the Arab Workers Caucus and the fight for divestment at the 1974 UAW Constitutional Convention.”
At the time, Arab workers in the auto industry in Detroit were upset that the UAW had invested in some $750,000 worth of Israeli bonds without rank-and-file approval, and began organizing to divest. The UAW leadership, however, ignored the workers’ demands, and its position only changed in 2023 after the start of Israel’s genocide brought rank-and-file pressure on the union.
“This vote is part of our effort to honor the call from Palestinian trade unions to support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and refuse complicity in genocide,” Baum told Truthout.
“UAWD brought divestment to the Convention as part of a broader class struggle program that also included proposals to fight mass layoffs, resist ICE raids, and support workers who take action to stop weapons shipments to Israel,” he continued – though the latter two proposals did not pass.
One UAWD member from Ohio had introduced an amendment at the Convention calling to support workers who strike to prevent weapons from reaching Israel, to set endorsement criteria for politicians, and to cut ties with Israel’s exclusivist, Zionist labor union, the Histadrut. This motion did not receive the votes needed to pass, however.
“UAW leadership tried to block our entire agenda,” Baum said. “But the success of the divestment amendment shows that more and more workers are realizing that the old playbook just won’t cut it. At a time when workers are facing layoffs, deportations, and an ongoing genocide in Palestine, we need a labor movement that’s willing to fight, take risks, and act in solidarity – not just issue statements and hope for the best.”
UAWD member Olga Karounos, whose family is Greek Orthodox, also said that Israel’s 2023 bombing of the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City motivated her union organizing efforts.
United Auto Workers Vote to Divest From Israel in Historic Victory
truthout.org
The divestment vote makes the UAW the first major national union to vote to divest from Israel.
Fighting the UP NF Railroad Merger & Defending Contaminated Communities
youtu.be/npvOuSg315s
At a national conference of Railroad Workers United in Chicago ahead of the Labor Notes conference
a panel was held on the issue of the merger of UP and NFS, the effect on workers, shoppers and the
communities. They also had speakers Jamie Wallace and Nicole Fabricant talking about the conditions
of contaminated communities including East Palestine.
Additional Media:
Robber Barrons The Union Pacifica & Norfolk Southern Rail Merger Unions & Communities & Public
youtu.be/ESrnClu5A8w
At Piketon-Portsmouth, Ohio Meeting: Unite To Defend Residents & Workers & Link Up With E. Palestine & The US
youtu.be/cSwCzhIa_NQ
The Piketon Nightmare Continues: Residents & Workers Speak Out About Cancer Epidemic & NUKE Cover-up
youtu.be/s338K-GLjw0
On 2nd Anniversary Of East Palestine NFS Derailment, The Fight For Residents & Workers & The Lessons
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bSlkzkcBsM
Additional Info:
Railroad Workers United
rairoadworkersunited.org
Production Of Labor Video Project
www.labrmedia.net
The Faster Labor Contracts Act is A Dangerous Attack on the Power of Labor
teamstersmobilize.com/blog/the-faster-labor-contracts-act-is-a-dangerous-attack-on-the-power-of-l…
Jun 20
By: Adam Chavez, Steward in Teamsters Local 1932, & Gabe Fields, Teamsters Mobilize Supporter
On Tuesday June 9, the Faster Labor Contracts Act (FLCA) was passed in the House of Representatives. Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien is calling the FLCA "one of the most consequential Labor bills to come before Congress in generations", and saying it "has the potential to hold Corporate America accountable for… denying workers the first union contracts they deserve." The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions have also been vocal in advocating for the law’s passage. In reality, the bill is a Trojan horse hiding major new attacks on the union movement. It would crush the union rank-and-file's ability to mobilize over the terms of their contracts and deal an existential blow to the important weapon of the first-contract strike. This law represents a major setback to the many advances made by labor in the last century, at a moment when union activity is just starting to recover from historic lows.
The FLCA shackles bargaining to federal government arbitration boards which would decide on the terms of the contract and can force workers to swallow poverty wages without the right to vote down these contracts. On top of that, it calls into question whether strikes over first contracts will even be viable or legal in the future. It's not a coincidence that this bill undermining the power of unions is being pushed now, as the US's global power is crumbling and we teeter on the verge of a once-in-a-century economic crisis. Even right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson are correctly warning about the popular unrest of the working class with the threat of mass unemployment and famine. We can be sure that the lawmakers' intention here is to quash militancy and make workers forget that the unions are our organizations, which depend on our activity to survive. So we call on militants around the country to join us in fighting tooth and nail against this bill, and to advocate for the unshackling of of union power instead of more chains; by ending no-strike clauses and repealing the Taft-Hartley Act.
Militiamen surrounding and threatening striking workers at the Lawrence MA textile mills in 1912. Since then, government union-busting has become more sophisticated.
On the surface, the FLCA is an attempt to force employers to negotiate in good faith for a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA): that is, to speed up the time between the recognition of a union and the signing of a contract. The issue it's claiming to address is a very real one: bosses regularly stonewall in bargaining and work to obstruct newly recognized unions from gaining contracts for years, hoping to prevent any CBA from being reached and that, with time, the union will eventually fall apart or be de-certified. We cannot deny the seriousness of this problem: after decades of erosion of the limited rights of the U.S. working class enjoy, and a steady decline of labor union membership, we workers are already in a very weak position in our leverage against the employers. What's more, the popular consciousness about the importance of union struggle among the working class has been on a gradual decline for decades. There is an entire industry composed of anti-labor organizations, law firms, and business interests that utilize every means accessible to hamper the development of a mobilized working class capable of waging sharp struggle against their worsening conditions. But the supposed solution in the FLCA is little more than a poison pill wrapped in American cheese.
Under the law, after three months without successfully reaching a contract agreement, either the union or the company can trigger federal mediation by a government board. The arbitration board has three members: one appointed by the company, one by the union, and a third that is mutually agreed on. If the mediation does not succeed within thirty days, this board would decide the terms of the contract themselves and force it on the union without a vote from membership! The forced contract would be binding for 2 years and the federal arbitrators can include no-strike clauses. Forced arbitration would deprive young unions of their greatest weapon: the strike. Rather than use their ability to stop work as leverage against the company for stronger contract demands, the workers are being told they should trust the government, which is tied to the hip of the capitalists, to reach an agreement on their behalf.
A vague notion put forward in the act is that compensation, benefits, and working conditions that will be imposed by the federal board will be formed on the basis of "industry norms". Who is it exactly that will decide on these "industry norms"? It will certainly not be the workers who decide. Those deliberations on what is the "standard" will be between the corporations that exploit us and the government which has shown time and time again it will side with, and carry out the rule of, the exploiters. Besides, are unions not meant to be the organ workers use to secure benefits that are above the industry standard? So, in the FLCA, the stated solution to getting unions recognized by the company and reaching a CBA is to stack the deck against the workers and permit the company and government to decide the terms for the workers, who, again, cannot even vote on said terms, much less call a strike against them.
Senators Cory Booker (left) and Josh Hawley (right) pretend to stand for the working class, but have consistently worked for the capitalists.
The FLCA was proposed by Corey Booker (D) and Josh Hawley (R), who were both invited to speak at this year’s IBT convention. Booker was just revealed to be a member of fascist billionaire Peter Thiel’s secret society “Dialog”, and he is notorious even in Washington D.C. for having received more money from Wall Street in 2013 than any other member of Congress. Hawley touts himself as a fighter for the people against Wall Street, real estate, and the establishment, but has received mountains of funding from those exact sectors. Besides direct donations to his campaigns, super-PACs like the Senate Leadership fund (Mitch-McConnell aligned) and Americans for Prosperity (a Koch brothers network) have collectively spent about $25 million supporting Hawley's election.
It's notable that today we find O’Brien "preaching the good word” about the benefits of the FLCA, yet he has the opposite opinion of the PRO Act, a failed bill which he criticized recently on his podcast for being “not bipartisan” and “politically divisive.” This says a lot about what O'Brien and the Teamsters leadership are trying to do here. As a reminder, the FLCA was a section taken from the PRO Act itself, and it was one of the worst sections! Other parts of the bill were significantly better, such as limiting right-to-work laws, enabling the return of solidarity strikes, prohibiting captive audience meetings, etc. Instead of all these, the part that the backwards Teamsters bureaucracy has chosen to fight for is the section controlling strike action and forcing workers to accept government-forced contracts they haven't approved.
IBT President Sean O’Brien lobbying Congress for the FLCA.
As the working class, we can and must fight for reforms within the capitalist state, but we also have to be very careful of being fooled by politicians into supporting reforms that actually harm us. Both Democrat and Republican politicians act like snake oil salesmen, marketing all sorts of “cures” to the people that, when you read the fine print, turn out to be poison. In addition to "reforms" that directly hurt unions, we also have to pay attention to efforts by the ruling class to allow certain levels of growth of unions that actually strengthen their grip over the working class. American labor history is full of examples of the ruling class using the controlled development of "safe" unions in order to crush worker activity.
All employers directly benefit to a degree from the U.S. labor law system, largely defined by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and other related legislation. The NLRB is often credited with acting as an unbiased mediator between workers and bosses, but this could not be further from the truth. The NLRB is a political institution that is at the direction of the executive, and even "pro-labor democrats”, such as Joe Biden, still operate in the interests of capital. It was Biden who led the charge to prevent the railroad unions from going on strike in 2022 by executive order. He did this in a way that closely resembles the provisions laid out by the FLCA, by setting up a federal arbitration board that forced a contract on the unions without giving them an opportunity to oppose it. Where was the NLRB, the supposed protector of the workers?
Picketers in Boston protesting Biden’s crushing of the 2022 railroad strike.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act is likely part of a longer-term plan by the capitalists to decrease the level of struggle of the workers even if it means forcing certain employers to accept contracts they'd rather flat out deny. We can see this in the statements made by Secretary of War Hegseth when he criticized management of Bath Iron Works in the lead up to the recent strike, saying to the workers "To your leadership, like I say to all leadership, invest in your plants and invest in your people.” Of course, Hegseth is not actually standing up for the workers, but what he is saying is that if the military industrial complex is going to have consistent and predictable production, their companies will need to make some "compromises" with the workers. He and others in the ruling class understand that a major recession, if not a depression, is coming, and that a workforce under tighter control means more domestic stability, and more easily manageable competition with China.
The idea that the government will ever be a neutral mediator establishing "peace" between the conflicting classes in society is a fiction promoted by the capitalists. In reality, the government acts consistently in the interest of the bosses, and there is a revolving door between the government and the C-suite. The whole government system was set up by the capitalists as a tool to help them rule over the people. And the fight over a contract is not a simple mediation to find "compromise", it's a bitter struggle between the robbers and the robbed, requiring every bit of leverage possible on the part of the union to try and decrease the degree that the workers are exploited. When Sean O'Brien united with UPS CEO Carol Tome and Joe Biden over the sell-out UPS contract of 2023 to promote the idea that the contract was a “win-win-win” for labor, the company, and the government, he was promoting these same poisonous ideas.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks to workers at Bath Iron Works in Maine in February 2026.
Instead of tighter federal control, genuine unionists should be fighting for the opposite. We need more freedom to strike, not less, and we should be working to build inspiring examples of trade union struggle that can help awaken the sleeping giant of the American working class. We have to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, which made wildcat strikes, solidarity strikes, and political strikes illegal. We should fight to get rid of all the federal and state laws that restrict the level of activity of government, port, and rail unions, which has stifled the working class's leverage. And we should promote the abolition of “no-strike clauses”, which have become standard in labor contracts. If we allow the leadership of unions like the Teamsters to take us down the blind alley that starts with the FLCA, we will more and more lose our legal rights completely to organize as workers.
Adam Chavez is a steward and member of Teamsters Local 1932. The views expressed in this article are the opinion of himself and Gabe Fields, and do not represent the official position of Teamsters Local 1932, its officers, or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act is A Dangerous Attack on the Power of Labor — Teamsters Mobilize
teamstersmobilize.com
By: Adam Chavez, Steward in Teamsters Local 1932, & Gabe Fields, Teamsters Mobilize Supporter
UAW Divests from Israel Bonds
dailystruggle.org/uaw-divests-from-israel-bonds/
UAW Constitutional Convention, big hall with hundreds of delegates seated, wearing red
UAW Divests from Israel Bonds
Navruz Baum
June 18, 2026
After UAWD members forced the amendment onto the Constitutional Convention agenda, UAW delegates voted to divest the union’s reported $400,000 in Israel bonds, marking a victory for decades of rank-and-file organizing.
Bucking a decades-long trend of sidelining questions of international solidarity and silencing Palestine liberation, delegates to the 39th UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit, Michigan voted June 18th to divest from Israel bonds. The UAW reportedly holds at least $400,000 in these investments. Delegates from Unite all Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the class struggle movement of the UAW, representing UAW members across the country, led the effort to divest.
UAW members have been fighting to divest dues money from Israel bonds for over fifty years. In the 1970s, the UAW Arab Workers Caucus picketed UAW events, struck, and organized for the 1974 UAW Constitutional Convention demanding divestment. Workers redoubled their efforts after the apartheid state escalated its genocide in October 2023.
UAWD developed and organized to advance a class struggle program of Constitutional amendments, grounded in UAWD’s principles of rank-and-file militancy, workers’ democracy and workplace control, international working class solidarity, and political independence. The program includes a stronger version of the divestment amendment to end the UAW’s complicity with Israeli genocide and end imperialist wars. UAWD members brought the amendment to membership meetings in several locals across the country. Members at locals 869, 1115, 2320, 2325, and 7902 voted to send the amendment to the Convention.
UAW leadership initially excluded divestment from the Convention’s agenda. On Wednesday, June 17 UAWD member Olga Karounos, a legal services worker from New York, made a motion to call the amendmentout of committee. 147 delegates stood in support, clearing the 128 required to agendize the amendment. The amendment was debated and adopted by the Convention Thursday, June 18. A previous UAW Executive Board vote on divestment failed on May 3, 2024. The vote came after sustained worker pressure and demands for action on the issue from multiple union locals.
Since its founding in 2004, Labor for Palestine has led the effort within the US labor movement to honor the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line. Labor for Palestine has organized protests and resolutions in the UAW and in unions across the labor movement, and many of the UAWD members who advanced the divestment amendment are also long-time Labor for Palestine members.
Earlier in the day on Wednesday, UAWD member Mike Davis, a parts manufacturing worker from Ohio, made a motion to call the stronger pro-Palestine amendment to the floor. In addition to forcing divestment, UAWD’s amendment to End Complicity With Israeli Genocide and Imperialist Wars would support workers who strike to interrupt weapons flows to Israel, set endorsement criteria for politicians, and cut ties with the apartheid Histadrut labor organization. 69 delegates stood in support of Davis’ motion, falling short of the 128 required.
UAWD delegates also brought amendments to fight layoffs and ICE to the Convention. UAW leadership also excluded these resolutions from the agenda and UAWD delegates called for them to be debated. These amendments, and the stronger pro-Palestine amendment, threatened to disrupt production and labor-management agreements that maintain labor peace.
UAWD’s amendment to Fight Layoffs with Work Sharing would require UAW negotiators to bargain work sharing provisions, spreading available work across the entire bargaining unit instead of throwing some workers out of a job. The resolution notes that “thousands of UAW members have recently been laid off at John Deere, Stellantis, General Motors, Ultium, and numerous IPS facilities.” On Tuesday, June 16 UAWD member Margie Thornton made a motion to call it out of committee. 62 delegates stood in support, falling short of the 128 required.
UAWD’s amendment to Abolish ICE and Fight State Attacks on Workers would trigger membership meetings to discuss striking in the event of ICE attacks in the area. UAW Local 2325 has already implemented a similar structure. On Tuesday, June 16 UAWD supporter Andrew Eichen made a motion to call it out of committee. 162 delegates stood in support, clearing the 128 required. Shawn Fain’s United caucus organized against the resolution in their Wednesday morning meeting, which delegates were urged to attend if they want future jobs on UAW staff. The amendment was debated and voted down Thursday, June 18.
Unite all Workers for Democracy (UAWD) is the class struggle movement of the UAW. UAWD members across the country organized in their locals to send class struggle amendments to the Convention and ran as delegates from their locals.
dailystruggle.org
After UAWD members forced the amendment onto the Constitutional Convention agenda, UAW delegates voted to divest the union’s reported $400,000 in Israel bonds, marking a victory for decades of rank-…
Minnesota Trade Unionists Among Those Targeted in Federal Indictments of ICE Observers
workdaymagazine.org/minnesota-trade-unionists-among-those-targeted-in-federal-indictments-of-ice-…
“I think this is intended to make workers shy away from being vociferous in their opposition to state sponsored violence.”
BY SARAH LAZARE AND AMY LIVINGSTON | 24 hours ago
Minnesota trade unionists active in worker assemblies are among the 15 people indicted by the federal government today, as part of a sweeping crackdown on organizing in opposition to the ICE and Border Patrol since December 2025. Among a slew of other allegations, the indictment cited some of the individuals’ participation in assemblies of trade unionists and other workers held at the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis as evidence that the activists participated in a criminal conspiracy.
All 15 of the people indicted are charged with “conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer,” which activists describe as an effort to use draconian charges to crush Minnesota’s widely celebrated organizing against the armed federal agents who descended on the state this past winter.
“Trade unionists active in worker assemblies are among those who were arrested,” says Kieran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250. “The trade unionists I’ve known for years are stand-up people who believe in solidarity. They believe an injury to one is an injury to all. They are outstanding union activists in their union and workplace, and I’m proud to know all of them.”
Marcia Howard, the president of the teacher chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE) Local 59, confirmed that trade unionists are among those detained. “I find it telling that they are going after unionists, including educators I know of right now, that they are going after workers. I’m really pissed off,” she said.
Howard is withholding the exact number of trade unionists and their union roles out of concern for their privacy.
“I think this is intended to make workers shy away from being vociferous in their opposition to state sponsored violence by saying things like, ‘Fuck ICE and ICE out.’ They want us to get to a point that we’re scared to say the things we should be able to say, then fuck everything,” Howard added.
Later in the afternoon, MFE said in a statement, “This morning, DHS agents arrested a member of our union at her home.” The statement added that “this administration and Justice Department have repeatedly misrepresented facts about the occupation and the tens of thousands of good neighbors who opposed it, so any allegations made against our member should be viewed in that light.”
Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, told Workday Magazine, “Working people from all walks of life across Minneapolis and its suburbs stepped up for their neighbors throughout Trump’s Operation Metro Surge. Tens of thousands of Minnesotans exercised their constitutional rights throughout this past winter—foundational American freedoms such as the rights to peaceably assemble and advocate for change. Today’s federal indictments impacted several of our union members who used their voices alongside many other workers to call for an end to ICE’s so-far unaccountable violence.”
At the AFL-CIO convention in Minneapolis earlier this month, Minnesota’s labor movement was honored for its robust organizing against ICE, which included participation in food distribution to members in hiding, rapid response networks, and a mass economic shutdown on January 23, under the banner of “No Work, No School, No Shopping.”
Worker assemblies were part of this broader organizing landscape. Several of these gatherings have taken place since December 2025. Hundreds of workers, both union and non-union, joined together to discuss ways to organize against ICE, to build community and labor ties, and to debate resolutions on topics ranging from solidarity actions on May Day to US wars.
Knutson describes them as “an attempt to create a democratic space for workers to be part of decision making about how the workers’ movement participates in the anti-ICE resistance, and in the labor movement in general.”
“Most union members can go to their union meetings if their unions have meetings and participate this way, but this was a way of doing that across different unions, across different industries, across different trades, in a way that’s directly democratic, to talk about and discuss and debate issues, you know, it wasn’t a front group for any one political trend. A number of unions sponsored it.”
These latest federal arrests on first amendment protected activity are part of a broader attack on Trump’s political enemies he has ramped up in recent months, with a specific focus on “antifa,” the “left,” and advocates of the rights of transgender people.
The Saint Paul Federation of Educators Local 28 released a statement Tuesday afternoon condemning the crackdown: “As a union that responded to Operation Metro Surge by sharing information about how to protect immigrant rights, building mutual aid networks, advocating for ways to keep community safe by advocating that constitutional and statutory right of our students, their families and our members be observed in all instances, and engaging in peaceful protest, we see this action by the Department of Justice for what it is: another attempt to threaten Minnesotans into silence and complicity.”
Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham also released a statement, proclaiming, “This past winter, the Trump administration tried to break Minnesotans’ solidarity and basic sense of decency by flooding our state with armed agents. They failed. Now they are trying to break us in the courtroom. They will fail again.”
By Sarah Lazare and Amy Livingston
|
24 hours ago
Sarah is the Editor for Workday Magazine.
Minnesota Trade Unionists Among Those Targeted in Federal Indictments of ICE Observers
workdaymagazine.org
Minnesota trade unionists active in worker assemblies are among the 15 people indicted by the federal government today, as part of a sweeping crackdown on organizing in opposition to the ICE and Borde…
Amazon Is Using AI to Disempower Workers. The US Labor Movement Must Fight Back.
Amazon is using AI in terrifying ways to disempower workers. We must fight back
truthout.org/articles/amazon-is-using-ai-to-disempower-workers-the-us-labor-movement-must-fight-b…
.
By Jonathan Rosenblum , TRUTHOUT
PublishedJune 6, 2026
Kentucky Amazon air cargo workers and community supporters protest for rights at work, 2023.
Kentucky Amazon air cargo workers and community supporters protest for rights at work, 2023.
CALVIN PRIEST
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Beginning June 7, the AFL-CIO quadrennial convention gathers in Minneapolis with the stated aim of organizing “in unity and clarity of purpose to empower working people.”
That clarity of purpose ought to include a real commitment to take on the biggest and most important organizing challenge that unions face in this era — Amazon.
Thus far, notwithstanding some inspiring individual sites of struggle, the U.S. labor movement has failed to get Amazon to the bargaining table.
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Nationally, union density last year was a measly 10 percent, continuing a historic decline, and that’s not even counting the members lost when Trump ripped up union contracts covering nearly a million federal workers.
That leaves tens of millions of workers to organize, but none are more crucial than the 1.5 million workers and contractors at Amazon.
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Ninety years ago, General Motors was capitalism’s trailblazer, emulated by other industrialists seeking to hone productive efficiency, worker exploitation, and profit extraction. GM workers organizing under the CIO banner and resourced by unions that stood to gain no new members themselves from the project — like the United Mine Workers — pushed back against that exploitation, struck, and won new standards. They heralded in a period of mass organizing, the modern heyday of labor’s power.
Amazon is today’s General Motors. What happens to Amazon workers — good or bad — will happen to workers everywhere.
Amazon is a test bed for the future of work for all of us. Employers everywhere are seeking to imitate the behemoth’s labor model of exploitation, job instability, and — terrifyingly — the deployment of AI technologies to discipline and disempower workers.
Amazon is perfecting contracting out, just-in-time labor, and speedups. Its 250,000-plus U.S. drivers are all contracted out, either to a host of small businesses called delivery service partners (DSPs), or hired as independent contractors. That way Amazon can deny responsibility when drivers get injured, ask for more money, or try to unionize. Warehouses operate on a lean-labor model. Normal full-time warehouse schedules are four consecutive 10-hour shifts, but Amazon often cuts workers’ hours any time production slows, even in the middle of a shift, wreaking havoc on already tight family budgets. Then, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Amazon imposes mandatory overtime — an extra hour a day, plus an additional required workday every week — bringing the workweek to a brutal 55 hours and disregarding the effects on workers’ personal and family lives.
Amazon is today’s General Motors. What happens to Amazon workers — good or bad — will happen to workers everywhere.
Through its aggressive introduction of robots — now over 1 million — Amazon is replacing workers and forcing those remaining to work faster. It’s no wonder that Amazon workers get hurt on the job so often, and that the company’s serious injury rate is nearly double the rate of its warehouse industry peers.
Then there is AI. I know a bit about this directly, as I’ve worked for the last year and a half as a part-time Amazon delivery driver. The delivery service partner I work for is a fair employer, but it is not the problem; Amazon is, because while drivers technically are not employed by the company, we all are subject to its tracking and oversight.
When I’m in the Amazon truck, every movement I make is tracked with technology and evaluated by AI programs — where I am, which packages I’ve delivered, and whether it’s keeping pace with the algorithm that Amazon has determined I must meet. Readouts at the end of every shift show how each of my deliveries compared to the timing prescribed by Amazon’s algorithmic standard. We are evaluated every week on whether we took accurate photos on delivery, delivered the packages exactly where the customer requested, and got good or bad customer feedback. Through the system, drivers who don’t “make rate” or who don’t meet Amazon’s prescribed standards don’t stay employed.
Netradyne’s AI-driven “Driver•I” camera mounted in an Amazon delivery vehicle.
Netradyne’s AI-driven “Driver•I” camera mounted in an Amazon delivery vehicle.
What’s enabling this level of oversight? Big Brother: the “NetradyneDriver•i,” your ride-along buddy in the van. Camera lenses point in all directions, continually measuring your speed and distance. Netradyne also tracks whether or not you are making a complete stop at every stop sign, using your turn signal, avoiding lane drift, braking, accelerating, or cornering too fast. It watches your eye orientation and movement. Whether you yawn. If you look away from the road for too long. All of these data points are ingested into an AI system where technology, not a person, is evaluating your behavior every second. Netradyne boasts about this as “physical AI deployed at scale.”
Employers everywhere are seeking to imitate the behemoth’s labor model of exploitation, job instability, and — terrifyingly — the deployment of AI technologies to discipline and disempower workers.
In Reddit chat groups, Amazon drivers around the country now report being fired not by a human, but by AI.
For warehouse workers, Amazon has harnessed the same surveillance technology to make sure that workers’ pick, pack, and sort rates meet its algorithmically determined standards, that their scans are perfect, and that they’re minimizing “time off task” — like going to the bathroom. Everything is measured and tracked. And if you don’t “make rate,” then first you get counseled, then disciplined, then fired.
In many warehouses, Amazon utilizes security officers and local police to enforce “an organizational culture of near-carceral obedience — what amounts to a ‘militarization’ of human resource functions,” a recent academic report found. “It feels like we’re coming into prison, and they’re trying to make sure we don’t escape,” the report quotes one worker as saying.
This workplace dystopia is being perfected at Amazon, then exported to other employers — in factories, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, construction sites, laboratories, and offices.
This is the bleak future we are handing to our children — unless we organize Amazon at scale and fight back.
Amazon is not just a problem for those of us in the logistics industry. From a humble online book seller, Amazon has transformed in a generation to disrupt other industries. Its avariciousness is only growing. Amazon today operates 532 Whole Foods grocery stores and is rapidly building out its grocery delivery network. This is the next major industry that the company intends to upend.
Through Amazon Web Services, the company is now a dominant global provider of computing power, storage, networking, analytics, and security. Amazon makes its own Trainium AI chips, directly competing with Nvidia. Amazon produces and distributes film and television shows through its Amazon MGM Studios. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Amazon One Medical is a primary care health service with online and clinic care, and it’s moving aggressively into the prescription drug market with Amazon Pharmacy. Through its Ring subsidiary, Amazon today dominates the home security market, and it provides other leading consumer electronics such as Alexa and Kindle.
Can a company that big and expansive, a behemoth with nearly $3 trillion in market valuation, be beaten?
Yes, it can. But as a report published on June 4 emphasizes, it will take a herculean, all-in effort by the entire U.S. labor movement to beat back Amazon — not just the valiant but fragmented efforts we have seen thus far.
In Reddit chat groups, Amazon drivers around the country now report being fired not by a human, but by AI.
The report, Renewing Labor and Winning at Amazon, which I coauthored along with Michael McQuarrie and Benjamin Y. Fong, and which was published by the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University, documents how in contrast to the 1930s, when CIO organizers were able to throttle production by striking at a few key production sites, the Amazon organizing project must aim wider. With a network of hundreds of warehouses, sort centers, and air cargo facilities, “the company has the agility to redirect package flow to other facilities, keeping the supply chain intact” and render single-site strikes largely irrelevant, the report notes, concluding that “today’s labor strategists need to recognize that in order to be successful, organizing must disrupt Amazon’s supply chain flow.”
That means organizing throughout entire regions or sections of the company’s supply chain. The report highlights two strategic regions in particular. The first is centered in the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire just east of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where most of Amazon’s imported goods flow before being disbursed to warehouses nationally. The second comprises the Northeast region, which is home to a huge concentration of Amazon customers. The Teamsters union already is organizing in both of those regions, where workers doggedly have been taking on the company. But the scale of organizing to date is not equal to the challenge. In the company’s massive JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, the Amazon Labor Union, now part of the Teamsters, won a historic union representation vote in 2022. Four years on, notwithstanding persistent worker organizing, Amazon has yet to agree to recognize the union and bargain.
Hundreds of inside organizers — political activists who have taken jobs at Amazon to “salt,” or organize from within — have developed sophistication in organizing at Amazon in recent years, and must play an important role in any national campaign. The same is true for existing logistics, grocery, health care, and other union members. “UPS and DHL Teamster members have been especially effective organizers, sharing with Amazon workers a common language and common concerns about the supply chain work process, speedups, technology, and the problems posed by management,” the Renewing Labor and Winning at Amazon report notes. “They, along with union members in other sectors, can easily point to wins they have achieved through collective bargaining and striking that differentiate their working conditions dramatically from those of the Amazon workers.”
While organizing must be centered in the warehouses and geared toward building mass strike actions, the labor movement must envision — and fund — an all-encompassing campaign that draws in the public, other businesses, governments, and regulators. That’s because Amazon’s impact goes far beyond the workplace, and it will take pressure both inside Amazon’s supply chain and throughout society to force the company to deal with unions.
Tens of thousands of Amazon trucks pollute the air, harm public health, and degrade public roadways, and the tax breaks demanded routinely by Amazon starve local governments of the resources needed to provide public services.
“Communities in warehouse concentration areas, such as California’s Inland Empire, are ripe sites for uniting workers and community members in common campaigns against both exploitation in the warehouse and also against the externalized burdens that Amazon imposes on the community at large,” the report notes.
Amazon utilizes security officers and local police to enforce “an organizational culture of near-carceral obedience — what amounts to a ‘militarization’ of human resource functions.”
Because the National Labor Relations Board is not an effective pathway to force Amazon to bargain, unions must advance state and local ballot initiatives to advance key worker and community demands. This is not a novel concept. Fifteen years ago, the Fight for $15 drew on the power of ballot initiatives to win raises for millions of workers. Some went on to build unions in their workplaces. Today, the call could be “Fight for $30,” a number frequently cited by Amazon workers as the bare minimum they need to survive.
Initiatives also could set safety standards for workers, ban the contracting-out of Amazon delivery drivers, and restrict data center siting.
Another initiative idea involves taxing robots. This would replenish revenue that governments lose when Amazon swaps out humans — who pay payroll taxes and who also contribute to sales tax revenue when they spend money in the community — with robots, who do neither of those things. Initiatives could also require Amazon to pay into a publicly controlled affordable housing fund to offset the destruction of housing that warehouse expansion causes. Or they could require Amazon to pay for health clinics and air cleanup, to compensate for the pollution that is caused by the daily movement of Amazon trucks and train cars.
These and other initiative ideas disrupt Amazon’s business model of exploitation and can be powerful mechanisms for drawing workers and community members together in common cause and in the ultimate demand for union recognition and contracts.
In some cases, ventures that challenge Amazon’s business model can be run as legislative campaigns instead of initiatives. In New York City, a coalition of union members and community activists is pressing City Council to pass the Delivery Protection Act, which would require Amazon to hire drivers directly and improve safety standards. That’s a good start. Now imagine Delivery Protection Act campaigns being waged simultaneously in 20 cities.
Workers at Amazon’s air cargo hub in northern Kentucky strike in July 2024.
Workers at Amazon’s air cargo hub in northern Kentucky strike in July 2024.
JONATHAN ROSENBLUM
Unions also should exploit frustration that third-party vendors and sellers have with Amazon. Individuals and small businesses trying to sell their products on the Amazon platform find their margins squeezed by the behemoth. Some companies have accused Amazon of stealing their ideas and then launching competitor products. Vendors like the DSPs are continually on tenterhooks, their contracts with Amazon subject to cancellation with almost no notice. A creative Amazon campaign can find common cause with these unlikely forces by launching local and state fights to rein in the behemoth’s power against individual sellers and small businesses.
Amazon “has a corporate dynamism and infrastructural flexibility unmatched by any other contemporary company,” the report notes. “But sheer size and wealth does not make it invincible. Indeed, the speed and complexity of Amazon’s supply chain make it a vulnerable organizing target as well as a challenging one. A well-resourced and multi-dimensional campaign can secure union recognition and contracts at Amazon.”
What constitutes a “well-resourced” campaign? Unions currently spend in aggregate about $10 million a year on Amazon organizing, with the lion’s share of that coming from the Teamsters. That is simply not enough to beat a company with 1,500 U.S. worksites and more than $120 billion cash on hand. To organize 80,000 workers in LA, or 100,000 on the east coast, or 50,000 in Florida, or the tens of thousands in other regions, I think we will need at least $100 million annually for at least a decade to fund thousands of organizers, both inside and outside Amazon facilities, along with a robust campaign infrastructure to build a new CIO-style industrial organizing movement.
That may seem like a lot of money, but consider that the U.S. labor movement assets today are around $35 billion, a 225 percent increase in the last 15 years, and that U.S. labor leaders spent more than $400 million on the failed Biden-Harris candidacy.
Collectively within labor, the resources are there to mount a serious Amazon campaign. Whether or not to take on the fight is a political choice.
This can’t be a fight taken on by just a handful of unions. It must be an all-in effort. Some 90 years ago, leaders in the United Mine Workers and other unions made a pact to organize workers in the auto, steel, electrical, and rubber industries, because they knew that without mass organizing, the entire working class was in jeopardy. This weekend, as AFL-CIO leaders meet in Minneapolis, unions stand at the same parlous crossroads. Let’s hope they make the right choice that their predecessors did 90 years ago.
Amazon Is Using AI to Disempower Workers. The US Labor Movement Must Fight Back.
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Amazon is using AI in terrifying ways to disempower workers. We must fight back.