Subjects Archives: Strikes

The protests that started with the national strike called by Colombia’s central union on November 21 to protest pension reforms and the broken promises of the peace accords have persisted for two months and grown into a protest against the whole establishment. And the protests have continued into the new year and show no signs of stopping.

Since the middle of December, France has been gripped by a wave of large scale strikes. In this article the French collective Plateforme d’Enquêtes Militantes analyses the composition of the strikes, and the potential for its continued escalation.

Millions of Indians hit the streets today in support of the general strike and as part of nationwide coalition-building efforts to resist the policies of the right-wing Modi government.

France’s mass strikes have mobilized millions, persisting into a sixth day, in an attempt to forestall severe cuts to the social gains of the working class.

The strikes have enabled the workers to feel their real strength. These two strikes give us a sign of the role the trade unions, the most powerful organizations of working people, will play in the future.

ORGANIZERS ARE EXPECTING huge numbers to turn out for the Global Climate Strike, beginning on September 20 and continuing through September 27. It builds on the first global climate strike, which took place on March 15, and attracted an estimated 1.6 million young people, who walked out of class at schools on every continent.

The week from September 20 till September 27 has been designated as the week of the ‘Climate Strike’. It is an unprecedented event in its ambition to disrupt business as usual.

Activists of All Ages, Labor Groups, Faith Leaders, Businesses and More Join Youth-Led Climate Strikes in Intergenerational Demand for Climate Action

Under the Sanders plan, federal contracts could be revoked or denied to low-wage employers, union busters, and companies that engage in offshoring (read: most American companies). Making federal funds contingent on “good behavior” is a powerful means of leverage.

“Time is running out. This decade is our last chance to stop the destruction of our people and our planet… This is why we strike.”

The recent seven-day strike by the Oakland Education Association (OEA) was eerily similar in key ways to its 26-day strike in 1996. What happened in both cases was that union members and community allies won on the picket lines and in the streets but got a draw, at best, at the bargaining table.

Greta Thunberg has called for a world-wide strike on Friday September 27-for children and adults. Here’s how to make this a reality.

To help this movement win, we should ask why others lost. We should ask, for example, why Occupy, despite the energy and sacrifices of so many, came to an end, while the institutions it confronted remain intact.

What if they succeed? We know what the ‘success’ of structured parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain led to. Maybe a horizontal federation of autonomous base-groups attempting to re-invent democracy could do better.

Today marks the latest international day of action for the student climate strike movement. The task ahead is to channel the energy and radicalism of the strikes into the labour movement and fight for a social alternative.

The authors are the lead organizers of U.S. Youth Climate Strike, part of a global student movement inspired by 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg’s weekly school strikes in Sweden and other European countries.

Corporate media absolutely won’t tell you this, but this year’s Los Angeles teachers strike is the latest chapter in the long running struggle against the privatization of public education in the U.S

I don’t remember where I was on September 12, 2012. I was in Chicago, but I wasn’t in the streets when the approximately 26,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) walked out of school and onto the picket lines.

Last spring a teacher uprising swept the red states. Today it reached the West Coast, as the 34,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles began a long-anticipated strike in the nation’s second-largest school district.

In a massive display of social opposition, more than 50,000 teachers, school personnel, parents and students marched in downtown Los Angeles Monday on the first day of the strike by educators in the nation’s second largest school district.