Labor Rights News Thread

[firestar464]

[firestar464]

[firestar464]

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[firestar464]

[caltrek]

Dairy and Meat Industries Push for Access to H-2A Farmworkers While the Trump Administration Slashes Their Pay
By Grey Moran
January 16, 2026

Introduction:

(Sentient) As immigration raids escalate, the Trump administration has vowed to overhaul and expand the H-2A agricultural visa program. This could open the door for the dairy and meat industry to participate in the program, which recruits workers from foreign countries — the vast majority coming from Mexico — to work on U.S. farms. This would establish a workforce of virtually unlimited, low-wage workers — with very limited rights, prone to exploitation — for the meat and dairy industry to tap into whenever there is a labor shortage.

As it stands, the H-2A program is limited to seasonal agricultural workers, who work in the U.S. for up to 10 months per year. This excludes most of the year-round jobs on livestock operations, but this could change as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, lawmakers and agricultural industry groups push for the H-2A program to grant year-round visas. It’s a move that would require congressional approval, but the Trump administration has repeatedly expressed support for this change under pressure from the meat and dairy industry.

“Dairy production is a seven-day-a-week, year-round endeavor. Our cows require constant, daily care and handling. Unlike most other agricultural production, there is no ‘season’ in dairy production,” said Harold Howrigan in testimony before the Senate in February 2025, as the second Trump administration launched its first immigration raids. “Unfortunately, this nation’s single agricultural visa program, the H-2A program, focuses on a seasonal or temporary need for workers, and excludes dairy farms with year-round needs from participation.”

The meat processing industry has also been vying for H-2A farmworkers, which would require additional regulatory changes to accommodate. The program is currently only open to agricultural industries as classified by the Department of Labor, which does not include any food processing industries. Instead, some meat processing plants employ H-2B workers, a visa program for non-agricultural seasonal employees.

The H-2A program has been hailed by lawmakers and agriculture industry groups as a “legal solution” to labor shortages, which have worsened as the Trump administration carries out mass deportations. Yet the program has drawn sharp criticism from farmworker and human rights groups for creating conditions of exploitation, as evidenced by the program’s long history of wage theft, human trafficking, and other abuses.

Read more here: https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-and-me ... mworkers/

[caltrek]

The Federal Retreat on Child Labor Enforcement Threatens America’s Children
By Todd Larsen, Reid Maki
January 21, 2026

Introduction:

(Other Words) Just when America needs stronger child labor protections, the Trump administration is seemingly abandoning enforcement altogether. A disturbing new analysis from Good Jobs First reveals that enforcement cases for a range of workplace violations declined by 97 percent last year.

And a review by the Child Labor Coalition found just two press releases about child labor enforcement in the year since President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2025 — compared to two per month in the last two years under Biden.

This retreat comes at a perilous moment. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 28 states across the nation introduced bills to weaken child labor protections in recent years. This follows a 283 percent increase in child labor violations between 2015 and 2023, creating a perfect storm that leaves young workers dangerously exposed.

This isn’t bureaucratic negligence — it’s the systematic gutting of worker protections.

In spring 2025, the Trump administration identified 21 offices for closure within the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division — and is slashing staff at the agency responsible for enforcing federal child labor laws. Even before the current administration took office, there was just one inspector for every 202,000 workers.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/the-federal-ret ... hildren/

[caltrek]

Portland Grocery Workers Score Big First Contract Win
By Johanna Brenner
January 22, 2026

Introduction:

(Labor Notes) Workers at the upscale grocery chain New Seasons have won a first contract, after more than three years of organizing.

The contract covers 850 workers at the 10 stores in Portland, Oregon, that have joined the New Seasons Labor Union. The chain has 22 stores in Portland and Vancouver, Washington.

The union won major raises. The lowest-paid members will see an immediate raise of 16.5 percent. More than 95 percent of members will make more than $20 an hour, with the median wage rising to $23.37. New hires will start at a minimum of $19, which will rise with annual cost-of-living adjustments.

The three-year contract also lets cashiers choose to sit while they work, establishes just cause discipline and a grievance procedure, and maintains employer-provided health insurance for workers who work at least 24 hours a week. New Seasons had wanted to raise the threshold to 28 hours.

The union also won a guarantee of 12 hours’ rest between shifts. Workers will get two consecutive days off per week, and won’t be made to work more than five days in a row, except during a holiday blackout period.

Read more here: https://www.labornotes.org/2026/01/por ... ract-win

[caltrek]

On Eve of Strike, Kaiser Nurses Sound Alarm on Patient Care
By Mark Kreidler
January 22, 2026

Introduction:

(Capital & Main) A stinging new report from a union stuck in going-nowhere labor negotiations with health giant Kaiser Permanente makes clear the union’s position: Kaiser, sitting on $67 billion in reserves, can well afford to address glaring staffing shortages and close pay gaps that the union says were years in the making.

Will the report move the needle in negotiations? Not likely. And that almost certainly means that a massive employee walkout against Kaiser, the second such job strike in four months, will go off as planned on Jan. 26.

With more than 31,000 registered nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other health professionals involved, the strike has the potential to significantly disrupt Kaiser patients’ experiences, including the likely cancellation or rescheduling of some appointments and elective surgeries. A five-day strike last October prompted Kaiser to bring in 6,000 contract nurses and clinicians.

This strike is open-ended, meaning its impacts could be felt for weeks or months. Nurses say they hate that idea for their patients — but it may be the only way to focus Kaiser’s attention on the chronic staffing issues that they say negatively affect those patients on a regular basis.

“I see the end result of the poor staffing every single day,” said Zach Pritchett, an emergency room nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles. “What I’m seeing in the ER are Kaiser members who can’t get appointments for months at a time with their own primary care physicians — so they wind up here.”

Read more here: https://capitalandmain.com/on-eve-of-s ... ient-care

[caltrek]

As expected:

More Than 31,000 Nurses and Health Care Workers Strike at Kaiser Permanente
By Mary Kekatos
January 25, 2026

Introduction:

(ABC) Tens of thousands of nurses and health care workers at Kaiser Permanente facilities across California and Hawaii went on strike on Monday morning.

More than 31,000 workers across at least two dozen hospitals and hundreds of clinics run by the non-profit health care system walked off the job at 7 a.m. PT, marking the largest strike of health care professionals so far this year.

The striking workers, who are members of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP), said they are fighting for safe staffing levels and fair wages and compensation.

UNAC/UHCP said many Kaiser facilities are currently experiencing staffing shortages, which is leading to delays in care and a risk of errors, as well as burnout and turnover.

The union also states that Kaiser is seeking wage cuts and a reduction in benefits and retirement, including active medical coverage and pension benefits.

Read more here: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/31000-nu ... pilot.com

[caltrek]

Production Workers at Big DC Concert Venues Vote to Unionize
By Caitlin Huston
January 29, 2026

Introduction:

(The Hollywood Reporter) Production workers at Washington, D.C.'s popular venues 9:30 Club, The Anthem, The Atlantis and Lincoln Theatre have voted to unionize.

In an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board onsite at the venues on January 15 and 21, 80 percent of stagehands, audio engineers, lighting technicians and other concert production workers chose to be represented by International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 22. Box office workers voted unanimously to be represented by IATSE Local 868. In total, about 150 workers took part.

All the venues are operated by I.M.P., which had until Jan. 28 to challenge the results.

The move comes after more than 300 production staff had announced an intent to unionize in October, including production staff as well as employees in food services, box office and those staffing the door. Food, beverage and staffing workers who were looking to organize with food service union UNITED HERE Local 25 were voluntarily recognized in November, but other staffers had to go through an election process with the National Labor Relations Board.

The 9:30 Club, which opened in 1980, has helped launch bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana and R.E.M. The Anthem, which opened in 2017, holds up to 6,000 concertgoers

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/channel/sour ... ef6c66217

[caltrek]

In Spain, Amazon Workers Win with Quick-Hit Walkouts
By Alfonso Martínez Valero
March 2, 2026

Introduction:

(Labor Notes) At an Amazon fulfillment center in Spain, we used a flurry of brief walkouts late last year to force the company to improve wages and time off.

We struck for three days in November and in December in a series of “flexible strikes,” timed to hit production with intermittent walkouts during the holiday “peak” season. On December 22, the union committee announced a settlement, negotiated through government mediators.

The facility, RMU1 in the city of Murcia, employed 2,000 workers at the time, and our union the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) was one of four unions that represented them. [European countries don’t have the same “exclusive representation” system as the U.S., so multiple unions can have a presence at the same worksite. –Editors]

About 75 percent of the workforce, made up of workers from Spain and immigrants from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Morocco, participated in the strike, reaching beyond the ranks of the CGT to include other union members.

Our experience shows what’s possible, even at a multinational corporation designed to neutralize organizing. Building from below, workers can organize a well-planned strike—over the objections of more conservative unions—draw on their knowledge of the production process, hit the company where it hurts the most, and wrest real gains.

Read more here: https://www.labornotes.org/amazon-work ... strategy

[firestar464]

[caltrek]

Workers in Colorado Have Shut Down One of the Nation’s Biggest Meatpacking Plants
By Ted Genoways
March 19, 2026

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) On Monday at 5:30 a.m., more than three thousand employees at the JBS beef packing plant in Greeley, Colorado, officially walked off the line. Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, the union that represents the plant, had begun the first major meatpacking strike in more than four decades, effectively shutting down one of the largest meat processing sites in the country. About 7 percent of America’s beef comes out of this single plant on a normal day. But now, thousands of workers—mostly foreign-born laborers from Haiti, Somalia, Burma, and Mexico—formed a picket line across the street, singing in Haitian Creole, chanting through a megaphone in Spanish, and wearing placards that read PLEASE DO NOT PATRONIZE JBS.

They were walking out to protest stalled wage negotiations and poor working conditions. A recent class action lawsuit brought by Haitian workers at the plant claims that they have been segregated onto a night shift and forced to work at “dangerously fast speeds.” Last month’s strike vote was nearly unanimous—evidence, the union says, of worker frustration.

By mid-morning outside the plant, just three semis carrying cattle for slaughter sat idling on the side of the highway—a far cry from the usual long line of trucks, known among workers as “Death Row.” The cattle pens north of the plant were virtually empty. Production was at a standstill. But the company seemed to want to downplay the significance of the stoppage. “This morning,” a JBS spokeswoman told me via email, “many JBS Greeley team members chose to report to work rather than participate in the strike called by UFCW Local 7, and we expect that number to continue increasing in the days ahead.”

But the scene outside the plant didn’t seem to support that optimism. JBS had erected fencing around the employee parking lot, and security personnel in company windbreakers stood at entry checkpoints, scanning IDs and waving through any workers who chose to cross the picket. There weren’t many of them. Union members had voted almost unanimously to strike a couple of weeks earlier. Workers on the picket parted to let the cars enter but speculated that these were probably managers at the plant.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... greeley/

[caltrek]

Immigrant Women Food Workers Face Unique Threats on the Job
By Eleanor J. Bader
April 2, 2026

Introduction:

(The Progressive) According to Mónica Ramírez, founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women, an Ohio-based organization that works to support immigrants working in the food service industry, “there is a direct correlation between increased sexual harassment in the workplace and talk of immigration enforcement.”

In fact, Ramírez tells The Progressive, since the start of the second Trump Administration and the ramped up operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), conditions for immigrant food service workers have deteriorated. “Perpetrators think they can do whatever they want, that their victims will not report abuse because they are so afraid of being fired, arrested, or deported,” she says. “We know that some bosses have threatened to call ICE when their workers complain about workplace conditions, sexual harassment, or verbal abuse. We’ve also heard many reports of sexual violence in detention facilities and, although we don’t have hard data on men pretending to be ICE agents and abusing women, we have anecdotal evidence, and have heard many reports, that this is happening all over the country.”

Moreover, while violence against female agricultural and food service workers has escalated since 2025—in factories, fields, food processing plants, catering halls, and restaurants—Ramírez says that women in every corner of the sector have long complained about and documented sexual harassment and sexual abuse in their workplaces.

Time magazine, for one, reports that between 65 and 80 percent of women farmworkers told interviewers that they’ve experienced some form of sexual violation on the job, from unwanted touching to suggestive comments to rape in the fields. This is also true in other parts of the industry, regardless of immigration status: A recent survey by Restaurant Opportunities Center United found that 80 percent of female servers who rely on tips were subjected to sexual harassment from bosses, customers, or coworkers.

Workers also report exploitation and abuse in food processing plants. Magali Licolli, cofounder and executive director of a woman-led Arkansas advocacy group called Venceremos, tells The Progressive that “fear of ICE has made it harder than ever to organize.” Licolli says that Venceremos, which works to improve conditions in non-union poultry plants, has continued to push for improved workplace conditions.

Read more here: https://progressive.org/latest/immigra ... 20260402/

[Yuli Ban]

You know I often wonder how on Earth people haven't realized that much of all this was never actually a meant to be leftist victories. Say what you will about colonialism and whether it's hypocritical of white Americans to care about illegal immigration, but the entire debate always felt off to me precisely because the people coming here to do these jobs really only ever served capital's interest, which is why it's mostly capitalists who are supporting it while simultaneously raging against it (because this is profitable and keeps them in power). The benefits are, roundly, an entirely new underclass of labor that they can pay far below minimum wage (which is already grossly too low). Sad thing is, it's still a higher wage than many would see in their home countries, but it's by any definition naked exploitation. The culture war of "no human is illegal" vs "send em all back" is the point, it completely sidesteps the actual class conflict at play, considering the people coming in often wind up trapped in such extremely stressful destitution and social hostility (often and especially by other immigrants), the populace at home either wind up with fewer jobs (the whole "they do the jobs Americans won't do" is so nakedly cynical— the reason Americans won't do those jobs is because the capitalists elect to pay those jobs pisspoor wages, which is NOT a good thing that somehow became a defense of mass immigration by folks I assume meant it in good faith but don't fully grasp the dynamics), and the end result is what you see today in the White House

I mean I get the HUMANITARIAN side of it, that's not the problem, and not what I'm against (again, case in point, many migrants literally take the risks they do because what they have at home is WORSE, as hard as it can be believed). It's mainly arguments I keep seeing among some defending this on legitimately dialectical grounds, which falls apart almost immediately, and typically reads to me more like hostility towards American whites and established Hispanics. And yet, that sort of discourse is, I think, the entire point: criticizing mass immigration policies becomes racialized, which makes it a greater faux pas to be against, while also rallying the white nationalists around it (despite loads of said white nationalists literally BEING Hispanic). No one asks "why are these undocumented workers doing labor for literally slave wages at risk of deportation if they speak up even slightly?" if it's framed as either a humanitarian gesture or as purely the left's fault for even allowing it, meaning the actual people largely responsible for this face no consequences and, in fact, suggesting they should causes a number of people to freak out and accuse you of wanting to destroy our prosperity.
Or in many cases "Trump should go after them too, but he needs to focus on the illegals!" It's weird, you'd think if you wanted to stop a hose from spewing water, you'd turn off the spigot, not try to force the water back into the hose and then stick your thumb into the nozzle, but apparently that's communism, onee-chan, how dare you suggest wealthy people be held accountable for low wages and offshoring.

If we seriously cared about stopping illegal immigration, we would have done so long ago; the example I keep using is Serbia and Bosnia in 1992, and how the Serbs expelled almost every Bosnian Muslim in 48 hours. Somehow America can't do the same, despite having comparatively cyberpunk levels of technology? Which tells me the systems being built probably aren't actually meant for immigrants...

[weatheriscool]

Amazon Teamsters Become First Union to Win Bargaining Order Against E-Commerce Giant

Source: Teamsters

Ruling from National Labor Relations Board Orders Company to Recognize Teamsters

(WASHINGTON) – In a historic decision, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that Amazon illegally refused to recognize the Staten Island-based Amazon Labor Union-International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1 (ALU-IBT 1) and ordered it to begin negotiations with the Teamsters.

“Four years ago, Amazon workers at JFK8 won an NLRB election. Now, on this monumental anniversary, they have become the first group ever to force the company to recognize their union, and they did so as Teamsters,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “This fight is far from over but this ruling from the NLRB is an historic victory for Amazon Teamsters nationwide and a testament to worker power.”

Over 5,000 warehouse workers at the JFK8 facility in Staten Island formed their union on April 1, 2022. In June 2024, they officially affiliated with the Teamsters Union, which officially chartered ALU-IBT Local 1. Over the past four years, NLRB has repeatedly found that Amazon has illegally and willfully ignored the union’s legitimacy while attempting to coerce JFK8 Teamsters into ending their organizing efforts.

“Amazon’s strategy these last few years has been to delay, delay, delay – and the NLRB confirmed it because the law is not on their side,” said Randy Korgan, Director of the Teamsters Amazon Division. “Amazon Teamsters know that this company will try to do anything it can to worm out of its responsibilities. The Teamsters will continue to build worker power at Amazon and hold the company accountable wherever it violates the law.”

Read more: https://teamster.org/2026/04/amazon-tea ... rce-giant/

[caltrek]

Meatpackers End Strike at JBS Slaughterhouse with Promise to Return to Bargaining
April 6, 2026

Introduction:

(Democracy Now!) In Colorado, about 3,800 workers at the world’s largest meat processing company are returning to work following the first major labor strike in the U.S. meatpacking industry in over four decades. Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 walked off the job in mid-March to protest unfair and dangerous labor conditions at the JBS plant in Greeley. They’re looking to address low wages, a lack of personal protective gear, and discrimination against the slaughterhouse’s majority-immigrant workforce. The union agreed to call off the strike after JBS agreed to a new round of contract talks set to resume on Thursday.

Read more here: https://www.democracynow.org/2026/4/6/ ... rgaining

Edit: Mother Jones also had a recent article on this topic: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... snt-over/

[caltrek]

Could Mexico and the U.S. Have Solved the Migration Crisis 50 Years Ago?
By Irvin Ibargüen
April 6, 2026

Introduction:

(Zócalo) We often assume that the history of Mexican migration to the United States is a simple story of a “sending state” eager to export its unemployed and a “receiving state” struggling to hold back the tide. But 1970s history reveals a different, more tragic reality: a moment when Mexico proposed a bilateral economic solution to keep its people at home, only to be met with American indifference and a retreat into unilateral policing.

The migration Mexico tried to address in the 1970s was largely of American making. During World War II, the United States came to Mexico requesting farm and railroad workers. Mexico agreed, but with conditions: guaranteed wages, housing, and protections against discrimination. The resulting Bracero Program brought millions of Mexicans to the U.S. as guest workers beginning in 1942. When the war ended and Mexico wanted to wind it down, the U.S. repeatedly insisted on extensions; American growers had become dependent on the labor.

Conclusion:

Mexico’s vision of cooperation crashed against U.S. unwillingness to prioritize migration as an international economic phenomenon. The U.S. instead defaulted to treating migration as an internal security, legal, and cultural problem to be solved punitively: expanding the Border Patrol, building fences, and launching raids that treated Mexican migrants as fugitives rather than jobseekers.

Today, we are living in the wreckage of that failed bilateralism.

Read more here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/cou ... n-crisis/

[caltrek]

Bay Area Pediatricians File to Unionize
April 9, 2026

Introduction:

(Popular Resistance.org) Palo Alto, Calif. – Nearly 110 pediatricians working for the Packard Children’s Health Alliance (PCHA), part of Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, have filed to unionize with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD). The pediatricians provide care to children across 27 clinic locations throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay region.

“I’ve wanted to be a pediatrician since I was six years old. Now, as an early career physician, the delivery and structure of medical care is very different even from what I knew it to be while pursuing that goal,” said a pediatrician leading the organizing effort. “For me, unionizing is an important step to continue to keep physicians in the conversation about how these changes in medical care affect our patients, our relationships with their families, and the quality of care we’re able to give to these children. It’s important that medicine not be reduced to just another product to market and sell, but that it remains a collaboration between a care team and the families they serve. We need to have a voice to advocate for this.”

The decision to organize comes after years of growing concern among the physicians that corporate pressures on healthcare are steering administrative decisions further away from the patients and families they serve. By forming a union, the pediatricians aim to establish a collaborative partnership with administrative leadership to shape policies that put children and families first, preserve the integrity of the patient-provider relationship, and uphold the standard of high quality care that every child in the region deserves.

“Healthcare is undergoing significant changes in how care is structured and delivered. Physicians must have a seat at the table as those changes unfold,” said Dr. Stuart Bussey, UAPD president. “These pediatricians are unionizing to ensure that clinical decision-making reflects the voices of those who know their patients best. The families who bring their children to the doctor deserve to know that their physicians are active partners in shaping that care.”

Read more here: https://popularresistance.org/bay-area ... unionize

[caltrek]

Virginia Public Workers Make Headway on Bargaining Rights
By Lee Abbott
April 14, 2026

Introduction:

(Labor Notes) After a years-long campaign by unions, Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to extend collective bargaining rights to nearly half a million state, county, and municipal government employees.

Union recognition has been denied Virginia’s public employees since 1946 when the state legislature passed a joint resolution against public sector bargaining to defeat a Black hospital workers’ organizing drive at the University of Virginia. A 1977 state Supreme Court ruling affirmed the ban, which was later codified by legislation in 1993.

With Democrats in control of the governor’s office and both houses of the General Assembly, in 2020 the state allowed local governments to opt in to collective bargaining. Since then, tens of thousands of teachers, school bus drivers, and city workers have won union contracts.

Campaigns across the state sought to expand on these initial victories, winning collective bargaining for some city and school employees in Richmond, Fairfax County, and Prince William County, among others. However the 2020 legislation created a complicated patchwork, because local governments were allowed to reject union recognition petitions. Likewise, the topics unions could bargain over, like wages and benefits, were not consistent from city to city—each government could determine what it would allow unions to negotiate over.

NEW EXPANSION

When a Democrat won the race for governor in 2025, unions were able to build public support to push through the legislation. They included SEIU, the teachers’ unions, the United Electrical Workers (UE), the Firefighters (IAFF), Transit (ATU), and the United Campus Workers of Virginia. The law extends unionization rights to 28,000 home healthcare workers.

Read more here: https://www.labornotes.org/2026/04/vir ... g-rights