Upcoming Events 🗓
Since its beginning last year, EWOC has been able to help hundreds of graduate workers around the country organize. This week we’ll be continuing that work by supporting MIT graduate worker organizing and following up with card signers. No previous experience is needed as training will be provided! Join anytime between 5 and 8 p.m. ET on Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday of this week. Register today!
This weekend, at a rally for the New York Taxi Worker’s Alliance’s Hunger Strike Day 5, Bhairavi Desai countered a popular misconception: “We aren’t organizing out of our jobs, we’re organizing for them.” Surely, responses to workplace turmoil and inhumane working conditions should be in opposition to the current conditions of the job, but building collective power doesn’t just mean quitting and losing our jobs, it means fighting for our jobs, so that our labor may allow us to live dignified lives.
This Striketober, we’re seeing both outcomes in action — with strikes across the country in full swing while a nation-wide labor shortage remains. While it’s understandable for workers to quit bad jobs, they should consider organizing for improvements instead. Fighting to better our workplace is the key to recognizing our collective power as workers; standing up to the boss and demanding what we deserve is the way for us to reclaim our labor. Thinking about quitting? You’re not alone. Try reaching out to us here at EWOC instead, where we’ve laid out 9 steps to take before you quit, as well as how to work towards union recognition.
World of Work 🌍: Striketober Edition! 🎃
USA: The Kellogg’s workers’ strike is now entering its third week. Workers are staying strong, however management has cut off their health insurance in an attempt to break the strike. If you can, please help them keep up the fight by donating to the strike fund.
NY: Taxi workers in New York City have been picketing 24/7 outside City Hall for the last month, to protest the cruel and exploitative debt contracts they’ve been pushed into by city government and Wall Street. In order to fight for the debt relief they desperately need, they have been on a hunger strike for the last week. These workers are determined to win their fight, but they need our help. This thread lists some of the ways we can support them.
USA: The UAW John Deere strike, which is centered in Iowa and the Quad Cities but has also spread elsewhere, is continuing into its third week. Management has resorted to some truly egregious tactics to break the strike, including pursuing injunctions against picketing in certain counties. In a show of solidarity, members of the community have rallied to support the strikers. Help them get the supplies they need to keep up the strike by donating here.
New From Our Blog 🗣
Workforce turmoil is at a record high. Millions are simply quitting, fed up with doing bad jobs for bad pay. On our blog, we make the case for organizing for union recognition instead.
As part of EWOC’s ongoing educational series, we’re highlighting processes involved in workplace organizing, and explaining union terminology. This week, we focused on one of the key aspects of labor organizing: the collective bargaining agreement.
Solidarity,
Team EWOC
