Labor Notes

Dolly Parton’s song, “9 to 5,” has endured as a beloved anthem for nearly half a century. What many people don’t know is that the direct inspiration for the song—and the hit movie—was the 9 to 5 working women’s movement that began in Boston in the early 1970’s. It was the movement that inspired the song and the movie—and the song and the movie gave the movement a giant boost. In 1972, I was one of ten women office workers who started sitting in a circle on our lunch hour talking about our jobs.

Two years into the second Trump administration, rank-and-file union members are fighting an extraordinary effort by billionaires to consolidate power. Members of the Labor Notes network—nurses, auto workers, Amazon warehouse workers and drivers, federal workers, teachers, members of the building trades, grocery and meatpacking workers, and many others—are going out on strike, building mass demonstrations, strategizing in democratic spaces, and revitalizing their unions.

Eighty public transit workers in Jackson, Mississippi, have won a tentative agreement with MV Transportation, after a grueling five-week strike. The transit workers represented by ATU Local 1208 garnered public support and were able to win most of their major demands. One of their most important victories was that they fought off a proposal for microtransit, a form of private on-call transit service that would have brought in drivers without a commercial driver’s license at a lower-tier wage.

No contract? No Starbucks coffee at the union hall. Seeking to pressure Starbucks to finally sign a contract with its 12,000 unionized baristas, Starbucks Workers United announced a boycott of the chain August 25. In addition to individual customers, they are asking organizations and unions to stop patronizing the coffee giant, including avoiding catering and sponsorships, until they get a contract.

United Auto Workers members are voting by mail ballot for their top officers, for the second time in the union’s 91 years. Ballots went out August 21 and are due back by October 5. The contest will decide whether President Shawn Fain, who became famous for leading 2023’s Stand-Up Strike against the Big 3 automakers, will be able to continue the union’s about-face from its previous employer-friendly ways.

This article has been updated from the version originally published August 11. –Editors The agricultural machinery maker John Deere tested the mettle of the United Auto Workers this summer, probing for softness as the union heads into a leadership election. Voting ‘no’ on August 23, members essentially told Deere to stick it. Deere had hoped to extend its six-year contract to eight years.

“The number one takeaway is that the times in the NALC, they are a-changing,” said Margo O’Neill of Branch 352 in Des Moines, Iowa, who attended her first Letter Carriers convention August 3-7 in Los Angeles. “It was quite different than any convention that I’ve been to,” said retiree activist Jamie Partridge of Branch 82 in Portland, Oregon, who has been attending since 1988.

Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the U.S., and is a “right-to-work” state with only 4 percent of its workers in unions. But since July 13, Highway 80 near Jackson has been lined by chanting picketers. They’re on strike at JTRAN, the city’s public transit system. Around 1,000 people rely on JTRAN’s services daily, and Transit (ATU) Local 1208 represents its 80 bus operators, mechanics, cleaners, and customer service representatives.

Just as unions couldn’t function without stewards, unions also need member-volunteers to work on all sorts of committees, petition campaigns, direct actions, and more.

Yesterday news broke of a sweeping undercover investigation by the Department of Homeland Security in Minnesota early this year to infiltrate and surveil meetings and obtain the financial records of nonprofit groups and two of the country’s largest unions, the Communications Workers (CWA) and the Service Employees (SEIU). This investigation was behind the indictments of 15 people in June.