Free trade deals have been a disaster for working people. Without a progressive, worker-centered vision for trade policy, Trump’s chaotic and corrupt approach to tariffs and trade will be the only game in town. Join us to discuss building a trade agenda that strengthens unions, fights corporate power, and offers a fair deal to working people around the world.
A huge portion of your tax money goes to the Pentagon. This money, used to wage unnecessary wars, could be spent instead on programs that support the real needs of workers. Besides taxes, we pay for excessive militarism in other ways: lost benefits, deaths, and trauma. Yet labor has often endorsed wars. How can we get our unions to endorse cuts to military spending? How can labor and anti-war veterans work together?
Unions can advance democracy, especially in authoritarian times and places. To do so, the unions must act not just as organizations representing a narrow sector of workers but as social movements with much wider aspirations. Mass strikes, even general strikes, are now on the progressive agenda. Fom Milan to Minneapolis, and from Seoul to San Juan, hear how these strikes have been organized and made politically potent, and how they're reviving working-class institutions.
Privatizing public schools and public colleges is a long-term goal of the right, including market fundamentalists, neoliberals, the religious right, and white nationalists.This participatory workshop will help school and campus workers recognize both covert and overt forms of privatization that are steadily replacing bargaining unit work and eroding worker autonomy, and provide case studies of how school and campus unions have begun to organize against privatization.
Are you tired of greedy corporations and executives taking and taking... and leaving us crumbs? This interactive workshop focuses on how billionaires and bosses try to divide working people so that we will fight each other instead of them, and how we can build a strong working-class movement to stand up to their money and power. You'll leave able to run similar political education workshops for members of your own union.
Big mergers and corporate consolidation are opportunities for companies to cash in big, but often threaten workers and consumers alike. Hear how unions in the railroad, grocery, health care, and news media industries have navigated mergers.
Nearly 1 million people in Minnesota joined a political strike January 23, demanding that ICE agents stop occupying their state. Tens of thousands turned out for May Day demonstrations across the country. And the United Auto Workers has put out a call for a May 1, 2028, national strike. The next leap is to prepare for open-ended and full workplace strikes, not one-day partial strikes, and to hit the big companies nationally rather than a handful of name-brands in one state. Hear how unions are building momentum towards contract alignments and possible large-scale strikes in 2028.
