Labor Movement
800 Workers at a Pork Plant Get Covid-19: The Company Is Responsible
Workers at the massive Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota are suffering one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 in the United States. Dangerous working conditions spread the disease. The company knew this but forced workers to keep producing with no regard for their safety.
Daniel Nath
April 28, 2020New: Get Left Voice Delivered Straight to Your Inbox
The uptick in class struggle and the crisis surrounding COVID-19 means staying up to date with the news from a working-class, internationalist perspective is more important than ever. Sign up for our newsletter using the box in the right hand sidebar to keep up with our coverage.
Left Voice
April 23, 2020Airlines Demand Flight Attendants Hide Their COVID-19 Status
Flight attendants and other at-risk essential workers are not only being asked to die to protect their bosses’ profits, they are being asked to lie to their co-workers and communities about it, putting even more people at risk.
Rebecca Margolies
April 21, 2020Building Black Hawk Helicopters in a Pandemic
As the coronavirus crisis was heating up in mid-March, Connecticut workers representing over a dozen unions, as well as unemployed workers, formed the Connecticut Workers Crisis Response group. A Plan of Action was drawn up and hundreds of workers have signed up to their list of demands. One such worker is Vinny Caizzi, a machine repair technician at Sikorsky Aircraft, and here is what he has to say about the crisis and the workers’ response.
Ioan Georg
April 18, 2020Police are Not Essential Workers
As most facets of daily life in NYC grind to a halt due to COVID-19, racist police violence against Black and brown New Yorkers on the subway continues. MTA workers who are organizing for their own safety in the face of high rates of infection could join those necessary calls to demands that would keep all New Yorkers safe. The NYPD is inessential during a pandemic and at all times.
Rebecca Margolies
April 17, 2020Healthcare Workers Across the Country Protest for PPE Over Profit
Yesterday, hundreds of healthcare workers took to the streets in protest of the despicable actions of the healthcare industry, demanding PPE over Profit and saying that the whole system is broken. Some called for the nationalization of healthcare under worker control.
Kimberly Ann
April 16, 2020Neither Trump nor Cuomo: Socialist Healthcare Workers Tell Us How to Fight the Pandemic
Capitalism has birthed a nightmare. Nearly two million people around the world have already fallen ill as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals like ours have been completely overwhelmed by the rush of patients. The bodies of the dead are being held in refrigerated trucks. Those who can’t be identified are buried in mass graves. Unemployment may already be as high as 13 percent in the U.S.
Tre Kwon
April 14, 2020Southern Labor Is the Key to Change in the United States, and hence North America, and the World
Despite its long history of often reactionary politics, the US South was and remains central to broader labor struggles across the American continent. Below, political scientist Mike Goldfield argues that the possibilities for a Southern labor upsurge are stronger than ever.
Michael Goldfield
April 13, 2020Workers in France Take Over McDonald’s to Distribute Food
Workers at a McDonald’s in Saint-Barthélemy, France took the restaurant under their own control so they could distribute boxes of food to people in the neighborhoods of north Marseille who have been living in increasing misery since the beginning of the Covid-19 confinement. The management of McDonald’s in France opposes the action, while at the same time they want to reopen restaurants everywhere with no regard for employee health.
Révolution Permanente
April 13, 2020Rank-And-File Healthcare Workers Call for National Day of Action
A national network of rank-and-file activists is organizing a National Day of Action on Tax Day, April 15. We reproduce their list of demands and their call to action.
Left Voice
April 10, 2020