Upcoming Events 🗓
EWOC is looking for volunteers during the Labor Notes conference in Chicago, June 17–19! Volunteers will take on a wide range of tasks including tabling, social media, and helping plan the EWOC social. Sign up to volunteer here today!
Join us tomorrow, June 1 at 8 p.m. ET for an EWOC summer call! We’ll look back on the first half of 2022 and plan ahead for a summer of worker wins. As a bonus, all attendees will be entered into a raffle for some union drip. Register to start your summer off right!
This Sunday, June 5 at 7 p.m. ET, join the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission, DSA National Political Education Committee, and socialist baseball fans across the country for DSA Inside Baseball, a special event about baseball, unions, and the workers that make them happen. Register today!
This week NYC EWOC will be hosting Don’t Quit, Organize, a special training around effective shop floor organizing. Participants will learn about breaking down power dynamics in their workplaces, engaging in collective decision-making with their coworkers, and how to build a democratic organization that can negotiate with the boss and win demands. The trainings will be held over Zoom on Thursday, June 2 at 7:30 p.m. ET and Friday, June 3 at 10 a.m. ET. Register for either time.
In case you missed it, we’re the cover story of the Indypendent this month: “Labor of Love: EWOC is Pioneering a New Model for Empowering Workers.”
If you’re in NYC, be sure to pick up a copy at any one of their many red Indy boxes on the street in Queens, Brooklyn, or Manhattan. Here’s an excerpt:
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many workers over the edge, with employers subjecting them to a litany of unsafe working conditions: crowded spaces lacking social distancing, poor ventilation, lack of PPE, unruly customers, ailing colleagues forced to continue working due to a deficit of paid sick days (or none at all). The list goes on. Millions quit their jobs while other workers remained but began to speak out against poor working conditions. Although the fear of becoming infected with COVID-19 and getting sick or dying was the original spark for protesting employees, many have decided there’s no normal to go back to and want to organize their workplaces.
EWOC was founded in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic by former Bernie 2020 organizers who didn’t want to stop organizing. The initial idea was simple. “Don’t Quit. Organize.” Give workers who want to organize the education and support they need to do so. EWOC employs a gamut of approaches, from one-time petitions demanding workplace improvements to solidarity unionism to the NLRB election process.
In a country where the union-membership rate — 6% of private-sector workers and 10% of all workers — is the lowest it’s been in more than 100 years and an estimated 50 million unorganized workers would like to belong to a union but don’t, EWOC’s approach has been flexible: make use of all paths to worker organization and help workers find the path that best suits their situation.
“When folks are absolutely miserable at work, they should quit. But, overall it would be better for society and the working class if more people stuck it out and organized for improvements.”
World of Work 🌍
Chile: We are in solidarity with the workers in North America. We believe that it’s a battle that must be taken on, but we want to warn you that it requires perseverance. It’s very important that this energy that has expanded into hundreds of stores be transformed into a union culture throughout Starbucks.
US: Private equity firms have conspired to flood the emergency health care market with ER doctors in an effort to cut labor costs — in the midst of what patients will still experience as an acute physician shortage with declining standards of care.
NY/AL/US: This is the lesson the union world should take from the Amazon Labor Union’s accomplishment: Jurisdiction is dead.
CA: It has been nearly two months since 500 Chevron refinery workers went on strike in Richmond, Calif. These workers are fighting for, among other things, higher wages and an end to a hated standby labor policy which forces them to be on call, constantly scrambling their lives around to meet the company’s needs.
Week in Labor History 📚
May 29, 1946: A contract between the United Mine Workers (UMWA) and the U.S. government establishes one of the nation’s first union medical and pension plans, the multi-employer UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund.
Solidarity,
Team EWOC
