Upcoming Events 🗓
We are excited for the return of the Socialism Conference this September on Labor Day weekend in Chicago! Join fellow EWOC members there for a weekend full of exciting panels and organizers from around the country.
EWOC will be hosting a panel about our organizing and the revival of the American labor movement and will be joining a DSA panel on rank-and-file power in the labor movement today! We’ll also host a workplace organizing training on Saturday at 5 p.m. during the meet-up sessions for conference attendees and we’ll have literature and merchandise at the DSA table. If you’d like to volunteer with us that weekend, please sign up for a tabling shift or join us at the training.
The Socialism Conference is a four-day conference featuring dozens of panels, lectures, and workshops addressing left history, theory, and strategy. The conference will facilitate exchanges between existing activists and organizations and welcome new layers of organizers to rebuild our radical traditions and movements. A new generation of socialists, abolitionists, unionists, and activists will be there to build collaboration and discuss vision and strategy.
Exciting panels about the labor movement will include “When We Fight: The Teachers’ Strike Wave in Retrospect” with Dan Denvir and Jesse Sharkey, “Class Struggle Unionism” with Joe Burns, and “Fight Like Hell: Labor’s Past, Present, and Future” with Kim Kelly.
DSA panels will include “The Crisis in American Politics: Socialists and Liberal Democracy,” “Socialists in Defense of Abortion Rights,” “A Movement for Our Class: Socialists and Multiracial Organizing Today,” “Building the Party: An Inside-Outside Strategy for Organizing Beyond Elections,” “Solidarity with Brazil and Latin America’s Pink Tide,” “The Longer Road to a Green New Deal,” and more!
Featured speakers at Socialism 2022 will include Robin D.G. Kelley, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David Harvey, Harsha Walia, Barbara Ransby, Derecka Purnell, Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, Mohammed El-Kurd, Anand Gopal, Kate Aronoff, Hadas Thier, Steven Thrasher, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, Naomi Murakawa, Dave Zirin, Sophie Lewis, Kali Akuno, Donna Murch, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and others!
The Socialism Conference is brought to you by Haymarket Books, the Democratic Socialists of America, and other endorsing left publications and organizations. Visit socialismconference.org to learn more and register today!
World of Work 🌍
MA: Workers at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) are striking for a fair contract this Friday, Aug. 19. They are fighting to address pay inequality issues and overall low wages. Attend if you can and donate to their strike fund.
IN: Indiana University graduate students continue their fight for union recognition. The Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition (IGWC) is getting ready to vote on Sept. 25 to continue a strike for union recognition. IGWC previously went on strike in April for four weeks before suspending the strike in May. Indiana University recently increased the minimum campus stipend, but IGWC says that does not go far enough.
MO: Boeing workers in St. Louis avoided a strike and approved a new three-year contract. The contract mostly focused on the workers 401(k) plans but also included a 14% wage increase. The contract includes a $8,000 lump sum that can be tax-deferred to their 401(k). It also continues a 4% automatic 401(k) contribution from Boeing that was proposed to be removed in 2023.
MA: Starbucks workers in Brookline are now on day 29 of their strike. Collectively, there have been over 55 strikes in 17 states. Starbucks Workers United estimates that the strikes have cost Starbucks $375,000.
USA: Three hundred journalists at Reuters walked off the job today to demand a fair contract renewal. Management has offered 1% increases annually, effectively significant pay cuts, despite soaring revenues and profits, all predicated on the intrepid, sometimes dangerous work of its journalists.
Week in Labor History 📚
August 13, 1892: In Grundy County, Tenn., coal miners took the Tracy City stockade, freeing the state convicts being held there by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railway Company (TCI) for forced labor in the mines. The practice of leasing state convicts to private companies for cheap labor had been in place since 1866 and had been used by TCI to stop free workers’ attempts to strike and organize since 1871. By freeing the prisoners, mine workers cut off the company’s access to scab labor, allowing them to strike for better pay and work conditions. The attack on the stockade led to the deployment of state militiamen and was one of the final events of the armed labor conflict known as the Coal Creek War.
Solidarity,
Team EWOC
