When management wants concessions, its bargainers say, “This won’t hurt a bit.” When the union puts forward demands, they say, “Way too expensive!” Learn how to cost out their demands and yours, from an experienced bargainer. A must for anyone who sits at the bargaining table. Must bring a laptop with Excel.
In the history of unions in the U.S., there have been very different conceptions of what constitutes a union. Some of labor’s key breakthroughs required breaking with overly rigid definitions. This workshop will look at some of those breakthroughs and how different kinds of “unions” came about. Then we’ll discuss which kinds are most relevant to rebuilding the labor movement today.
Are you beating your head against the wall trying to get other workers involved? This workshop is for you. Hear success stories from those who’ve turned their workplaces around and turned apathy into action. Learn practical organizing tools for engaging your co-workers, taking action, and getting results.
Fighting grievances isn’t only about how well you argue your case. It’s also about organizing members to build pressure on management. This workshop for stewards and union reps will focus on how to win creatively without going to arbitration—or sometimes without even filing a grievance. We’ll discuss the do’s and don’ts of settling grievances as well.
A basic overview of workers’ right to engage in concerted activity, followed by group work on various scenarios. This two-part workshop will draw on Bob Schwartz’s books Legal Rights of Union Stewards and No Contract, No Peace. What can you do to put pressure on the boss? What can’t you do? Part one of a two-part workshop.
For stewards: Supervisors have strategies to put you off, trip you up, or get around the contract. Share tactics for dealing with the different types: tough guys and sweet talkers, flamethrowers and procrastinators, and everything in between. Expect to role-play.
Directly confronting the boss over workplace issues is a great way to make the union visible and vocal—with the added benefit of resulting in victories that matter. This workshop will teach participants the step-by-step process of organizing a march on the boss!
Even when there’s not a hot issue riling people up and the contract isn’t expiring for another two years, how can we keep our co-workers engaged and fighting on issues that matter?
Organizing ABC’s tell us to find issues that members feel strongly about that are possible to win. Health and safety hazards often fit this formula. They have the added value of the moral high ground and, often, a way to connect with the community. Join us to learn how to identify hazards, arrive at effective demands, and choose action steps. Discuss the differences between management and worker approaches to health and safety issues and solutions. We will present case studies that the group will use to arrive at demands, plans, and action.
Employers from the Fortune 500 to City Hall are looking to dump traditional pensions and retiree benefits. Learn how unions are fighting back to defend their pensions, what information you’ll need to extract from management in bargaining in order to hang on to what you’ve got, and how recent changes in the law may affect your retirement. We’ll review the distinct issues facing employees in public pension programs, those in the private sector participating in single-employer pension plans, and those in multi-employer plans.
How can unions help create a social movement to take on Wall Street’s economic and political dominance? CWA’s Runaway Inequality program has trained hundreds of union members—and now a growing number of allies—about the expanding power of corporate America, how that power has harmed working families and resulted in greater economic and racial inequality, and what we can do to upend this power grab. Participants get a crash course in the rapidly growing gap between the super-rich and ordinary workers in this interactive, four-hour workshop. Part 1 of a two-part workshop.
How do you get great press for your campaign? In this hands-on workshop, two experienced labor editors will walk you through scenarios including building relationships with reporters, upending the boss’s media narrative, and cooking up creative campaign actions that journalists won’t be able to resist. We’ll discuss real-world examples of media done right—and wrong. You’ll leave with practical skills for pitching, press releases, and protecting rank-and-file sources.
Your organizing database is a critical tool for building power, increasing your day-to-day capacity and giving you a bird’s-eye view of your membership you wouldn’t otherwise see. But why is it so hard to find one that works for you? The answer is that all unions are different. To find the right database for you, you’ll have to evaluate your union’s structure, resources, workflow, and most importantly, its organizing plan. You’ll walk away from the workshop with the first steps underway.
Have you ever gone into negotiations unprepared, or gotten caught off guard by your employer’s demands for concessions? This workshop will cover how to build a campaign around what’s happening at bargaining, and how to push back against management’s tactics by going from defense to offense.
WORKSHOP LIMIT 10. Participants need to have attended the Costing the Contract workshop at 1 p.m. This workshop is for participants who will be part of a bargaining team this year. Participants need to have their contract, cost of health care, cost of retirement plan, and straight time and overtime hours worked. Bring your pay stub from the end of the year 2017. In this tutorial we will work out costs for an individual worker rather than for the whole bargaining unit.
Labor Notes has been putting the movement back in the labor movement for almost 40 years. Come hear why Labor Notes exists and is growing, what we do nationally and locally, and all the ways you can plug in! If this is your first time at the Labor Notes Conference, then this is a great way to kick off the weekend.
Health care workers can strengthen their bargaining position by representing larger numbers of workers at the same hospital or chain. Hear from member organizers who helped organize non-union departments and hospitals into the union. Learn how to motivate members to get involved in union drives, and how to talk to non-union workers.
Soon the Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME is expected to impose “right-to-work” conditions on the public sector nationally... but that doesn’t have to mean game over for your union. Get organized in this interactive training. You’ll bone up on the terminology, learn how to talk with your co-workers about membership, and hear how unions have adapted and built power even in a mandatory open shop.
The prison-industrial complex affects our schools, communities, and workplaces. Hear what workers are doing to fight the expansion of police powers and presence in schools and neighborhoods, and to ensure that the formerly incarcerated aren’t permanently excluded from jobs and opportunities.
How does racism show up in our workplaces, and even in our unions? What are some strategies to confront it through our bargaining, organizing, union culture, and community connections? And what can you say to union sisters and brothers who aren’t convinced racial justice has anything to do with union politics? This is an abbreviated version of a workshop that’s sparking lots of conversation among Washington State Labor Council affiliates.
How can you get started transforming your workplace culture so that gender violence and harassment are no longer tolerated? In this workshop we’ll talk about how to identify the problem and what to do when it’s happening to you or someone you work with—but also about proactive organizing strategies to challenge gender inequality and violence at their root.
Your workplace may feel like an unorganized mess, but the truth is you’re not starting from zero. There’s organization there already—though it might have nothing to do with the union. Learn how to map out the existing networks in your workplace, identify the leaders in those networks, and then knit them together into an organizing committee. Based on the popular book Secrets of a Successful Organizer.
Fighting grievances isn’t only about how well you argue your case. It’s about organizing members to build pressure on management. This workshop for stewards and union reps will focus on how to win creatively without going to arbitration—or sometimes without even filing a grievance. We’ll discuss the do’s and don’ts of settling grievances as well.
To cut costs, employers are imposing aggressive discipline policies like zero tolerance. Unions must be equally aggressive in insisting on time-honored just-cause principles. This workshop will help you to prepare and present grievance and arbitration cases, raising defenses such as disparate treatment, lax enforcement, and double jeopardy. A model request for information will be distributed.
States are swimming in red ink, and politicians across the spectrum are putting public services on the chopping block, making teachers, bus drivers, and librarians out to be Public Enemy No. 1. This workshop will explain how state and local budgets got to be such a mess, why politicians are slashing and burning instead of reversing a generation of tax cuts, and why no one is talking about the elephant in the federal budget—military spending. We’ll examine what public sector unions need to do to get out of this bind.
Join workers from across the tech industry to hear about ongoing campaigns and strategize about organizing the industry in the years to come. Participants will include software developers, mechanical engineers, e-commerce warehouse workers, security guards, and more!
Friday April 6, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Lindbergh
The 13-day statewide teacher strike in West Virginia riveted labor activists around the U.S. How did they do it? What did they learn? Can the struggles in West Virginia spread to spark a national teacher uprising? Come hear stories from six teachers who were on the front lines.
As the militarization of the Pacific Rim region spikes up and the U.S. presence grows, workers and citizens are feeling the pinch of increased suppression of civil liberties, budgetary austerity, and an atmosphere of anxiety. Leaders of progressive union federations in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines will discuss these effects and how labor is responding.
Privatizers are out to decimate mail services and postal workers alike. Join activists from the NALC, APWU, Mailhandlers, and CUPW for an organizing meeting to build a strong network to defend public postal services in the U.S. and Canada.
Friday April 6, 2018 5:00pm - 6:30pm PDT
Sky Harbor
The technology industry is at the heart of the contemporary economy, changing the organization of work and our communities. Since Trump’s election, workers are starting to fight back and learning what may be necessary to truly “disrupt” tech. Hear software developers, warehouse workers, and others in the industry discuss their experiences and strategize about organizing wall to wall.
Food workers are at the forefront of fights to raise labor standards and take on corporate giants in the fields, meat processing plants, and restaurant chains. Now food workers are also mobilizing for widespread May Day actions, building on last year’s massive Day Without an Immigrant. Come hear how food workers are organizing, and get connected with others planning May Day actions in your area.
April 4 marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. In commemoration, we’re showing this moving documentary film, which recounts the two months leading to his death as he lent support to the 65-day strike by 1,300 Memphis sanitation workers. 56 minutes, 1993.
Beyond campaigning on bread-and-butter issues, with the right combination of internal dialogue and action, unions can build a shared sense among members of who’s to blame for the problems we face and what kind of movement for change we want to build. Panelists will discuss how they’re using popular education to foster conversations among members about racism, economic inequality, and big-picture strategy.
With everything from social services to public education on the chopping block, hear how unions and community groups are banding together to protect services and build sustainable alliances. Learn what unions are doing to forge lasting ties and beat back austerity.
This workshop will provide a basic introduction to the National Labor Relations Board, and what to expect at the Board under the Trump administration. How is the Board organized at the regional and national level? How and when should workers use the Board? What should they expect? What’s the difference between an unfair labor practice and a grievance, and when does it make sense to file each? When should we use the Board on substantive issues? What’s happening at the Board under the Trump administration, and what should workers and unions be aware of when going to the Board over the next few years?
This workshop will look at strategies that move workers’ control from the field of ideas to the front lines. Black workers in Mississippi, immigrant workers in Chicago and New York, and tire workers in Jalisco, Mexico, all came to the co-op conclusion after offensive moves by employers. What brought them there? How have they organized their co-ops and how do they work? What are their plans going forward?
Have you ever wanted to learn how to record and edit sound? At this workshop, you’ll learn how to use free open-source software (Audacity) to record and edit a short interview, which will give you the basic skills to use audio in your organizing for a range of purposes—from worker interviews to a podcast. This is a practical workshop. Following an introduction to the software, you will be asked to work together to record and edit your own short interviews, with support from the workshop leader. Optional: bring a laptop.
Your organizing database is a critical tool for building power, increasing your day-to-day capacity and giving you a bird’s-eye view of your membership you wouldn’t otherwise see. But why is it so hard to find one that works for you? The answer is that all unions are different. To find the right database for you, you’ll have to evaluate your union’s structure, resources, workflow, and most importantly, its organizing plan. You’ll walk away from this workshop with the first steps underway.
How can digital strategies link up with traditional organizing campaigns? Hear how locals and rank-and-file members can use social media. including Facebook and Twitter, to communicate with other members and the public about their campaigns, promote issues, and put pressure on bosses and politicians.
In response to increasingly precarious industry conditions, journalists across the country have organized in significant numbers in the last few years to win union representation. Hear how a new generation of media workers—whether digital or print, legacy or start-up—are joining together to transform their workplaces.
Hear from members who’ve run rank-and-file campaigns—and won! How to build an effective campaign team, increase your visibility, identify voters, deal with negative attacks, avoid common mistakes, and get out the votes.
Learn how to build a member-focused campaign long before your contract expires. Member mobilization, campaign escalation, creative tactics, and other building blocks of a good campaign will be discussed, including bringing in community allies and taking the fight directly to management.
Ideally, public workers prevent outsourcing in the first place. But when it happens, suddenly a new group of private-sector workers appears. Friends or foes? Hear from charter-school teachers and workers in private mail facilities who have organized for their own union rights and work standards. They’re teaming up with public-school teachers and postal workers to raise standards and avoid being pitted against each other.
How do campus unions bring together different unions—service workers, faculty—to support each other’s demands? What if some employees are unionized and some are not? How do you win over public opinion? How do you find the administration’s weak spot? What is students’ (very large) role?
Inspired by the statewide West Virginia strike, teachers and school support personnel in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona are organizing actions at school and preparing for possible walkouts. Hear inspiring stories and draw lessons from rank-and-file activists on the front lines of this growing movement!
Using a lively boycott, postal workers in the U.S. recently halted the outsourcing of their work to the low-wage office retailer Staples. Meanwhile Canadian postal workers used community canvassing and creative direct action to save door-to-door delivery. While privatizers attack, postal unions are fighting to expand and improve public postal services to serve the common good through measures like postal banking, vote by mail, and “greening” postal vehicles.
The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a profound reawakening among educators to how institutional racism damages colleagues, students, and communities. Learn what educators are doing to bring the Movement for Black Lives into public schools—fighting to hire more Black educators, showing solidarity to Black students, and making expansive demands for racial justice.
With hundreds of wildcat strikes erupting in China year after year, the government has refined its response. Ten years ago workers saw their legal rights grow and wages rise. But the new tack is crackdown, repression, and criminalization of labor activism. Hear from grassroots activists in China and Hong Kong about how workers’ forms of resistance are evolving too.
In every country, teachers are the most unionized sector of workers, and the ones most motivated and empowered to defend the universal right to free public education. Hear how teachers in Mexico, France, and the U.K. are resisting the privatization and charterization of schools, pushing back against gentrification that abandons communities of color and immigrants to failing schools, and defending the rights of education workers to dignified and decent employment.
For-profit medicine is squeezing health care workers like never before. But nurses, social workers, and other front-line caregivers are linking patient care to the fight for safe staffing, day-in and day-out on the job and through contract negotiations. Hear strategies from four states.
The Trump Administration and Congress have begun dismantling the federal government: step 1 is a push to break federal unions. But AFGE, NNU, SEIU and other unions are fighting back with a campaign to save the Veterans Administration from privatization. Local organizers and veterans will describe the campaign and how allies can join the fight.
With Republicans in power, health and safety laws are more likely to be attacked and less likely to be enforced. This workshop will explore how the political climate could affect organizing strategies around health and safety.
Outside of wages, health care costs are the most expensive item on the bargaining table. Disputes over coverage are the biggest cause of strikes, lockouts, and concessionary bargaining. The share of health care costs paid by American workers has gone up every year since 1982. This workshop will discuss long-term trends in health care bargaining, how Trump policies have increased the pressure on decent union-negotiated benefits, and what some unions are doing to gain bargaining leverage on this issue and build community support for the right to decent health care.
Bosses may tell you to just put up with it, or learn to deescalate—but organizing gives you power to change the outcome. Learn about the hazards, the hierarchy of controls, and what you can do to prevent violence at work.
There are giants astride the earth—Amazon foremost—who are attempting to manage huge swaths of the global economy through highly integrated retail commerce chains. But, as with all distribution networks, they rely on logistics, transport, and storage systems that guarantee speed and accuracy, inevitably creating tremendous stress and speed-up for workers. Hear directly from warehouse workers in Poland, Italy, and the U.K. who are organizing at these critical points of distribution.
How are unions responding to the spread of temp agency work? Can temps be brought into the house of labor? Union and worker center activists will share experiences of bringing temp workers into existing bargaining units and of winning temps to the union side in our organizing campaigns.
It goes far beyond the open shop. Big business has a nationally coordinated strategy to “defang and defund” the labor movement. Come hear how unions are reckoning with forced recertification campaigns, business-backed member opt-out campaigns, the loss of dues deduction, and even the loss of collective bargaining.
Very soon the Supreme Court is expected to impose the open shop on the entire U.S. public sector. Such a law can leave unions vulnerable to further attacks. Hear how unions are preparing for the worst and building up their internal organizations. Done right, your strategy should not only boost membership but also get more members engaged in the union.
Workers don’t just organize for themselves, but often for their families. Hear how unions are advocating for family-friendly workplaces, through campaigns to make sure that workers have affordable childcare and that childcare itself is a living-wage job.
Join the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and Massachusetts Jobs with Justice to learn about their rapid response network, getting non-immigrants involved to support worker and immigrant justice. The Sanctuary in the Streets network has a 24-hour emergency hotline, 2,000 members, and over 20 congregations organized via the Interfaith Sanctuary and Solidarity Network.
Are you beating your head against the wall trying to get other workers involved? This workshop is for you. Hear success stories from those who’ve turned their workplaces around and turned apathy into action. Learn practical organizing tools for engaging your co-workers, taking action, and getting results. Based on the popular book Secrets of a Successful Organizer.
Únase a Dignidad Obrera y El Centro de Justicia para los Trabajadores del Noroeste de Arkansas en este taller donde compartirán cómo desarrollan lideres que puedan luchar en su lugar de trabajo y ganar, basándose en recursos del libro de Labor Notes, Secretos de un organizador exitoso. En este taller interactivo, aprenderá a identificar los asuntos claves en su lugar de trabajo y construir campañas para abordarlos. El taller es solo para los que hablan español. [Workshop for Spanish speakers only.]
Understanding how arbitration really works may lead to better preparation in the early steps of grievance handling. Learn about interpretation of language, evidence, and “arbitration rules” that stewards and activists need to pay attention to early on. This is a research workshop. Participants will look for answers in The Common Law of the Workplace, a National Academy of Arbitrators handbook.
Surprise, creativity, and humor can be the keys to rank-and-file engagement. Whether you’re facing a contract campaign, a privatization battle, or a dormant membership, these tools can be scaled to fit your situation. Discover the talents among your members for song, humor, creative props, and theatrics. Participants will learn the principles of creative organizing, share examples, and develop tactics they can take home. Solidarity and laughter make a potent mix!
A bullying principal can create a environment of fear that affects teachers, school staff, and even students. School tyrants rely on well-known tactics: targeting, divide-and-conquer, harsh retaliation, favoritism, and secrecy. This workshop will offer concrete, tested, and accessible steps you can take to build up collective courage among colleagues and challenge the culture of fear in your school.
More employers are hiring outside administrators to manage FMLA programs, and these administrators often stretch or misconstrue the law to deny leaves or justify discipline. Attorney Robert Schwartz will answer your questions on rights and procedures, certification and recertification, return to work, and employer and employee notices. Attendees should have a basic knowledge of the Act. If possible, they should have a copy of the instructor’s 2017 guide: The FMLA Handbook, available at the Labor Notes literature table ($20).
Racism and sexism divide working people on the job and in our unions. These topics can also be polarizing and uncomfortable to talk about. This interactive workshop, led by longtime union leaders and organizers, will discuss how to listen like an organizer, find common ground, challenge racism and sexism, and build unity.
The cliché has it that those who don’t study the past are condemned to repeat the same mistakes. But what does that mean in practice? Are union victories—and failures—from earlier eras really relevant for workers right now? How can labor history be of value to activists engaged in current struggles? This slide presentation and workshop will touch on previous organizing efforts, ranging from Haymarket through the CIO era, to spark a discussion about how we should think about history, and how the past can help chart a path forward for labor today.
How can unions help create a social movement to take on Wall Street’s economic and political dominance? CWA’s Runaway Inequality program has trained hundreds of CWA members—and now a growing number of allies—about the expanding power of corporate America, how that power has harmed working families and resulted in greater economic and racial inequality, and what we can do to upend this power grab. Participants get a crash course in the rapidly growing gap between the super-rich and ordinary workers.
Do you ever get the feeling that when hospital management says “quality,” they mean something different than you do? Are you spending more time clicking through computer screens than caring for your patients? “Lean Production,” aka the Toyota model, is all the rage in health care. Restructuring schemes disguised as teamwork are another way management tries to take power away from health care workers. Learn to decode buzzwords like “continuous improvement” and recognize the underlying systems of management-by-stress, standardization, deskilling, outsourcing, and technological surveillance that are transforming workplaces for the worse. Help your co-workers recognize what’s behind employee participation schemes and how to defend your union when the consultants come calling.
Unions historically negotiate with employers. What happens when the workers are the company owners? This discussion will operate as a focus group where unionists voice their interests, concerns, and hopes for this model of workplace democracy. Your ideas will inform a presentation by the Union-Coop Council of the U.S. Federation of Worker Coops to union leaders, staff, and rank and filers around the country, in an effort to add coops to our organizing tool box.
The biggest gains among union membership in 2017 came among workers under 35. Hear some examples of great organizing by young workers, including AT&T Mobility workers who waged the biggest mobilization in company history, including a 3-day strike; baristas in Ithaca, New York, who are pioneering a model to organize the town’s hospitality and service industries; to young nurses and postal workers working to welcome those new to the job into the union.
A hundred years ago, IWW members like Joe Hill understood they could insert messages into popular songs to inspire and educate. We’ll share examples of parodies we’ve sung with health care, railroad, and Walmart workers, highlight aspects of the song craft used to make them, and touch on the practicalities of using songs to support union organizing. If you’re looking for inspiration to create a new song for your campaign, this workshop is for you!
Ever wanted to write for Labor Notes magazine or our Canadian counterpart Rankandfile.ca? When you discover a good tactic, uncover a problem, or win a righteous fight, we want to help you share the news. If it’s the first time you’ve written a published article, no problem! Come learn do’s and don’ts, what editors look for in a story, and how to get started.
It’s easy to drown in all the corporate information you can find on the Internet. Learn how to drill down to the specific information you need and how to find the primary sources, then learn how to summarize and make sense of what you’ve found. The goal is to move from research to campaigns.
Panelists will explain how they are organizing and fighting for wage increases, better benefits, and working conditions in environments where collective bargaining is illegal or currently impossible. Even without the legal protections afforded to many unions, these activists are making gains!
Power inside our workplaces is critical to labor’s future. Management frequently restructures work, introduces new technologies, and promotes ideologies that undermine our collective voice. If your management has introduced new technologies or restructuring programs like lean, 5S, Six Sigma, or continuous improvement, come learn a strategy developed by labor educator Charley Richardson. Though Charley died in 2013, his work continues to build worker solidarity and union power.
This class is advanced and is intended for chief negotiators or those interested in becoming committee spokespersons. We will cover how to develop and maintain a bargaining agenda that keeps members invested in the campaign. We will discuss information requests, NLRB charges, and avoiding impasse as tools to keep management on the back foot, as well as crafting final settlements and return-to-work agreements.
What we demand at the bargaining table, we desire for all—and sometimes the key to winning a stronger contract is pressing our demands politically. Hear how unions are bolstering workplace fights with campaigns at the ballot box. These unions and worker centers are using legislation like $15-an-hour or health and safety standards to take issues off the table and win gains for more workers.
Winning your election is just the first step—and usually not the hardest. Reformers everywhere run into challenges they didn’t anticipate and deal with forces beyond their control. We’ll hear firsthand from union leaders who’ll share secrets of their reform successes and lessons they’ve learned from their setbacks.
While some building trades unions enthusiastically signed on to the Trump administration’s “America first” political program, others chose a different path: resistance. Come hear how unions in the trades are pushing beyond divide-and-conquer strategies to unite with local communities and fight for a progressive vision of immigrant rights and good jobs.
What you can win at the bargaining table depends on what you do away from it—on the job and in the streets. Panelists will share strategies, challenges, and how our unions have grown through some of our biggest current and recent fights.
Employers in the public and private sectors are keen to dump traditional pensions and retiree benefits, and even to make drastic cuts to the pensions that workers have already earned. Learn what unions and retirees are doing—or should be doing—to defend pensions, and how some workers are bucking the trend and beating back pension cuts.
The strike is back, among telecom workers, teachers, and mineworkers, to name a few. Hear how strikers planned their actions, got members on board, along with community and labor allies, and found the pressure points.
It’s not enough to keep playing defense, especially as divide-and-conquer tactics pit workers against the public. Hear about local campaigns where unions worked together, took on big targets, and made big demands, not just for their own members but for the community as a whole. These coalitions went beyond the bargaining table.
With school shootings gripping the headlines, hear teachers’ perspectives from urban and suburban school districts. We know arming teachers and further militarizing schools is not the answer, but how can educators work with students and parents to improve the climate in our schools and make them safe for all?
Our schools are often “siloed,” with workers divided by department, job title, grade level, or bargaining unit. Hear how unions are beating divide-and-conquer, uniting teachers, paraprofessionals, nurses, counselors, and bus drivers in joint campaigns to improve wages, working conditions, and students’ education.
If you don’t like how things are going in the union, build a group that can take over and change them. Hear from folks who’ve built their group by taking on management, getting members involved, and then running for office.
Like anywhere else in the world, Japan is seeing more precarious work and a widening income gap. Unstable working conditions often get forced upon women, the elderly, and society’s weakest members. However, workers are not silenced. Hear reports of strikes and collective actions from a union of elderly women working at Tokyo subway kiosks and the Japan Postal Workers Union, and meet the labor lawyers association that’s supporting organizing and education.
Farmworkers in Latin America are in the crosshairs of transnational corporations and their own governments. Disastrous free-trade agreements have brought anti-union repression, environmental destruction, and declining living standards. Leaders of key union struggles in Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico describe members’ heroic and highly dangerous resistance.
European unions face many of the same issues as their American counterparts: a growing employer offensive; how to bring young members in; and a fight against precarious work. Plus, they’re fighting far-right movements that are gaining steam in many working class communities, while trying to organize immigrant workers. Hear reports from Italy (from the union at Ducati and Lamborghini), from Norway’s construction sector, and from the resurgent British labor movement.
The Trump administration’s push to renegotiate NAFTA has forced the labor movement to choose between two bad options: corporate free trade and nationalist protectionism. How can unions fight to put labor rights and union protections first, as part of a broader package that also addresses immigration and commits countries to raising wages and working conditions every where? How do we make cross-border solidarity a reality?
Public hospitals serve our most vulnerable community members, yet budget-slashing politicians are quick to scale back services or let them close. Hear how nurses are fighing to defend patients and expand funding.
The body and workplace maps that health and safety activists use can be useful for organizers too. In this workshop we’ll use colors, string, plastic layers, and more to make layered maps that go beyond showing hazards. They include often-invisible social information: lines of communication (management, the union/organizing drive, the grapevine), where people like to be and the “hot zones” they avoid, and how people move around on the job. When this information is visible, we see a workplace with “new eyes” and can discover routes to change and organizing possibilities.
As health care costs keep climbing, employers everywhere are demanding concessions. How can unions connect the dots between the fight for health care justice on the job and the fight for health care justice in the community? How can our contract fights support the push for a national single-payer solution to our collective health care problems?
The package business is booming, as ordering everything online becomes the norm. Public and private parcel companies influence each other’s standards and sometimes even handle the same packages in a complex supply chain. Panelists will compare their workplace concerns—including workload and staffing, unsafe conditions, supervisory harassment, and growing temporary workforces—and discuss strategies to fight back, in bargaining and through shop floor action.
Airports are sometimes described as “cities within cities”—clusters of tens of thousands of workers, spread across many public and private employers, working ‘round-the-clock shifts. Add the intensely tight scheduling of airline flights and you can see the opportunities for well-organized workers to use their leverage to build power. Hear from baggage handlers, flight attendants, and gate agents about their organizing drives and a fight for a first contract, and from workers fighting privatization in the air traffic control industry.
When you’re working without a union, it can feel impossible to take on workplace problems. What if you lose your job? But organizations are finding ways to help even tiny groups of workers win changes through small collective actions—while staving off retaliation. Hear from worker center leaders on how they are organizing committees in their workplaces and strategically using the NLRA’s “protected concerted activity” provisions to fight for higher wages and better conditions.
Soon the Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME is expected to impose “right-to-work” conditions on the public sector nationally... but that doesn’t have to mean game over for your union. Get organized in this interactive training. You’ll bone up on the terminology, learn how to talk with your co-workers about membership, and hear how unions have adapted and built power even in a mandatory open shop.
There was a time when illegal strikes were common in the public sector, and legislators would think twice about supporting anti-union legislation out of fear of facing down thousands of workers in a grassroots rebellion. This workshop will examine the history of public sector union militancy and what lessons it has for us today.
An interactive workshop where participants will learn dynamic stories from women’s fights, including in the steel, auto, and clothing sectors, and discuss current struggles.
Many queer and trans New Yorkers work in low-wage retail jobs. Workers with these identities have long played leading roles in retail struggles. Join our panel with Babeland and Pleasure Chest workers and organizers to hear insights from union struggles with queer and trans workers and learn about the power of queer politics in organizing drives.
Why does labor keep coming up short in Southern organizing drives? What are the obstacles and opportunities facing Southern organizers? This panel will consider how labor can overcome shrinking budgets, declining membership numbers, and hostile political attacks to make inroads in the South.
With threats against DACA and news of workplace I-9 audits replacing former “no-match” letters, how do immigrant workers protect themselves and how do unions ensure they can proactively protect immigrant members? Learn about the rights of DACA workers, and how all immigrant workers can organize to defend their rights under threats of federal immigration action.
Your workplace may feel like an unorganized mess, but the truth is you’re not starting from zero. There’s organization there already—though it might have nothing to do with the union. Learn how to map out the existing networks in your workplace, identify the leaders in those networks, and then knit them together into an organizing committee. Based on the popular book Secrets of a Successful Organizer.
¿Hay problemas en su lugar de trabajo? A lo mejor la paga es muy baja, las condiciones son inseguras o su jefe tiene a alguien con quien usted trabaja en la mira… y usted está listo para hacer algo al respecto. En este taller interactivo, basado en el libro de Labor Notes, Secretos de un organizador exitoso, aprenderá como tener una conversación para organizarse, identificar lideres, e inspirar a sus compañeros y compañeras de trabajo para luchar juntos a pesar de sus miedos. El taller es solo para los que hablan español. [Workshop for Spanish speakers only.]
For stewards: Supervisors have strategies to put you off, trip you up, or get around the contract. Share tactics for dealing with the different types: tough guys and sweet talkers, flamethrowers and procrastinators, and everything in between. Expect to role-play.
A revitalized labor movement needs members to take the lead in organizing. Hear from three unions who’ve developed models where members are the ones organizing non-union workers and leading internal organizing. This workshop will be of interest to anyone who wants to do more organizing themselves, and to union leaders who’d like to follow such a model.
Learn how stewards can enforce their legal rights to solicit and investigate grievances, use information requests, and defend members at disciplinary interviews and grievance hearings.
It’s not enough to tell your co-workers to “get involved” or say, “We need to be unified.” Using a new organizing campaign as a model, this workshop will look at how you identify, support, and nurture new leaders. You’ll learn the steps to identify potential stewards, develop rank-and-file leadership, and build steward councils.
In the past few years labor has grown significantly more active on the climate crisis and the fight against “extreme energy.” Side by side, union members and climate activists have won key victories against pipelines, coal and gas export terminals, and fracking. But at the international level, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement locked in more emissions and temperature increases, which have catastrophic implications. What are union activists doing to build a sustainable world, and how can rising union activism connect with the global struggle?
Bernie Sanders’ campaign helped to open up the discussion: the ideas of socialism are more popular now than at any time since the 1970s. Among young people, socialism is more popular than the present system. Historically, socialists have played a big role in the labor movement. How did they think about how their political ideas affected their organizing? What does that look like now? What is socialism, anyway? This educational workshop is intended for those who are not socialists or who are just becoming socialists, rather than for those who are already well-informed.
From corruption scandals to contract concessions to high-profile organizing losses to the failure to protect members, the challenges facing the United Auto Workers are immense. Members will meet to discuss what can be done in preparation for the upcoming convention.
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
O'Hare A
Members from building trades unions will meet to share success stories and challenges from our locals and industries. How do we address declining market share, double-breasting by union contractors, get more young members involved, and build community coalitions? We’ll also discuss how to get more building trades members involved in the Labor Notes network.
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
O’Hare C
It’s Bernie Sanders, the British edition: The unexpected rise of Jeremy Corbyn and a reenergized pole of progressive rank-and-file unionism within the Labour Party are exposing the sharp division between bureaucratic “tops” and many Labour politicians on the one hand, and leftist, activist young workers on the other. The panelists, activists within major U.K. unions, will talk about these evolving political questions.
April 4 marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. In commemoration, we’re showing this moving documentary film, which recounts the two months leading to his death as he lent support to the 65-day strike by 1,300 Memphis sanitation workers. 56 minutes, 1993.
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
O'Hare B
Are university financial woes caused by a lack of money or by a disagreement about how to spend it? How can campus workers represented by different unions work together on both contract and issue campaigns? Discuss how campus workers, grad student workers, faculty, and students are fighting layoffs, wage freezes, furloughs, and tuition hikes, and for just and inclusive universities. Strategize about how to build coalitions to go on the offensive against corporatization and union-busting on our campuses.
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
North Central
The past few years have seen high-profile organizing victories in both digital media and more traditional companies. What does the future hold for union journalists? What are the key issues that unite the industry? What tactics and strategies are journalists employing to mobilize their newsrooms? How are journalists addressing the pressures to remain “objective” in their roles as union activists?
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Sky Harbor
Between shifts in technology and corporate deal-making, big changes are underway in the telecom industry that are impacting our unions. Come discuss the challenges we’re confronting at Verizon, AT&T, the cable companies, and beyond. How are we mobilizing and organizing? What do winning strategies look like?
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Heathrow A
Increased surveillance, outsourcing, and attacks on pensions and health benefits are putting the squeeze on transit workers. But there’s also a growing spirit of resistance, and efforts to ally with passengers and communities to push for enhanced public transit systems. Join a discussion of these challenges and opportunities with bus drivers and other transit workers from across North America.
Are you in a workers cooperative? Is your union or worker center organizing or supporting workers co-ops? Are you curious about how unions and cooperatives can work together for democracy and workers’ power? Come share experiences, resources, and ideas.
This training is for union staffers who believe in member-driven unions. How does that commitment shape your approach to everyday organizing work? How do you strike the right balance between challenging members and following their lead? What are the common pitfalls staff can fall into? What do you do when the long-term principle conflicts with the urgent need to get something done?
Public education is under attack from budget-slashing politicians lined up with corporate privatizers, but across the country teachers are organizing and allying with their communities to fight for the schools students deserve. Come to this meeting to discuss issues in your own local, learn about new approaches to contract campaigns, share effective actions, and compare strategies. What do you need to do this work well in your own local?
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Rosemont B
Unionists from different countries don’t get many opportunities to meet directly. This discussion will focus on building sustainable methods to exchange experience, analysis, and strategies of solidarity. How do we carry out global support for strikes and union campaigns, build networks, and share tools?
Nurses from around the country will meet to share experiences and strategies. Hear how nurses are changing their organizations, and how nurse unions are fighting for safe staffing levels, transforming their practice and the health care system.
Saturday April 7, 2018 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Rosemont C
Employers spend incredible sums to hire union busters, who run thorough campaigns to keep workers divided and defeat unionization drives. Learn their playbook of tactics, how much it costs, and most importantly, how to bust the busters.
Union Time: Fighting for Workers’ Rights follows the story of workers at the Smithfield Pork Processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, who fought for safe, fair working conditions— and won. The core of the film is the voices of the Smithfield employees, many African American and Hispanic, who showed amazing courage in standing up to a multinational corporation. As employee Wanda Blue puts it: “I just had to get the fear out. Once I got the fear out of me, I was good to go. There wasn’t no stopping me.”
Listening is the primary tool in every organizer’s kit. This workshop will dive deep into how organizers can hone this skill. Learn how to handle your co-workers’ fears and discouragement, elicit members’ best thinking during union meetings, and ask the right questions that lead to better perspectives.
Come learn everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the market forces that shape our lives at work, at home, and at the supermarket. This workshop includes theatrics!
Teachers, university workers, and public employees are all under attack—so grad employees are getting hit from all sides. Share success stories and discuss how we can better connect.
Students have a history of organizing in solidarity with campus workers and workers around the world who produce collegiate apparel. Undergrad workers—students employed on their campuses—are also organizing unions of their own. How can student activists, student workers, and campus workers collaborate to fight for workers’ rights on campus and beyond?
Come see short films brought by the Japanese delegation about important labor struggles in their country, including the fight by the Tokyo Metro Kiosk Ladies, a symbol of the struggle against casualization of the workforce. The president of the Tokyo Metro Kiosk Ladies union will attend.
Saturday April 7, 2018 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
United A
Health care workers around the U.S. are dealing with a raft of issues, including unsafe staffing as well as mergers, privatization, speed-up, the continuing fallout of the attacks on the Affordable Care Act, and attacks on our health care at the bargaining table. Share your experiences and hear from others.
Saturday April 7, 2018 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Rosemont C
Manufacturing was once the heart of the U.S. economy, and it’s still where employers test the waters with major structural changes to labor relations. The largest manufacturers are systematically attacking workers’ living standards. How can we defend ourselves? Let’s discuss what we’ve done.
Saturday April 7, 2018 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
O'Hare B
Join Black activists to discuss what unions are doing and could do to address the issues affecting Black workers and communities most. How can we get our unions in gear and how can we build stronger connections across unions?
Join Latino/a activists from unions and worker centers to discuss the issues we’re confronting in our workplaces and communities in the Trump era and how our organizations are fighting back. We’ll strategize about how to build a stronger labor movement in the Latino community.
Saturday April 7, 2018 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
O’Hare C
Queer working people, despite having won enormous victories, face a deeply challenging environment. Hostility at the top levels of government, the lack of workplace anti-discrimination legislation in large parts of the country, and a resurgence in homophobia, transphobia, racism, and sexism are present realities. Join other LGBTQ+ activists and allies as we discuss responses and ways to move ahead.
Saturday April 7, 2018 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Hartsfield
The momentum that started with the Bernie Sanders campaign has continued to grow. Come learn about how local and national unions are linking up with Our Revolution in campaigns to break the agenda of the billionaire class, expand workers’ rights, win universal health care, and renegotiate bad trade deals.
Sunday April 8, 2018 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
United A
What’s a union to do when the employer is on the edge of shutting down—save the company, or bargain the closing? This workshop focuses on getting to the truth of your employer’s claims, including understanding your legal rights to information when the claim is made, and how to bargain counters to concessions. It is useful to have been in the Costing the Contract workshop.
This class will teach you how to build a bargaining agenda around the core needs of your membership, then transform it into an all-out campaign. We will discuss internal organizing, bargaining surveys, the role of the committee, and how to develop campaign slogans and materials to bring your message to members, management, and even the general public. In short, how to build power and get results.
Getting elected was the easy part—running the union brings a new set of challenges. Hear from experienced reformers about how to turn things around at your workplace, get members involved, and move a program. Learn what pitfalls to avoid and what steps are essential to lead effectively at your worksite and union.
Panelists will discuss specific experiences with lockouts in manufacturing, mining, and education. Each panelist will describe the strategy they took to deal with the lockout. In certain circumstances, a boss-imposed walkout may be converted into a plus for workers.
How are teachers organizing against all the bureaucratic obstacles that get in the way of our teaching and students’ learning? Administrators impose data collection, metric measurements, useless testing, meaningless meetings, and constantly changing top-down curriculums... all of which limit teachers’ autonomy, including their time to prepare lesson plans and engage with parents. Hear how educators are pushing back!
How can educators and unions fight proactively for the resources schools need—and identify where the money should come from? Teachers unions around the country are targeting banks with mercenary practices, corporations that shield their profits from taxation, and governments that starve public services when they go “broke on purpose.”
Hear how teachers in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. are waging fierce battles to defend their collective bargaining rights and public education standards against attacks by corporate elites and right-wing politicians.
Unionists and labor allies from Japan, China, Korea, and the Philippines will meet with their Asian-American counterparts to discuss key struggles and how to build solidarity strategies between our countries. One specific ambition is to organize a regional meeting among our networks in Asia within the year.
When we talk about health care access and quality, too often we ignore mental health and stigmatize patients who need help the most. Hear from counselors, nurses, and community activists who are fighting to keep clinics open and staffed so mental health care can be available to all.
The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign put the demand of “Medicare for All” into mainstream politics. How can labor activists work with others to advance this demand and win health care justice for everyone?
Sunday April 8, 2018 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Rosemont D
In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, many people are still living without electricity or water. Meanwhile Puerto Rico has moved to privatize its schools and its electric power authority. Unions in Puerto Rico and mainland U.S. unions have been playing crucial roles in on-the-ground relief and recovery efforts, as well as leading the fight against disaster capitalism and privatization.
Women work in every industry and lead many unions, but we’ve still got a ways to go. Connect with other women workers to talk about what strategies we’re using to tackle the issues we still face on the job (and sometimes in the union)—including the pay gap, discrimination, harassment, isolation, family-unfriendly policies, and barriers to developing our leadership.
Everybody has complaints and frustrations, but an organizer has the power to turn problems into opportunities. Learn how to sort through the issues you hear from co-workers, bring people together, and make a plan to solve them. Based on the popular book Secrets of a Successful Organizer.
How do we build campaigns around grievances at work, so that through solving the problem we also build the union through collective action? This workshop will highlight examples of how workers have used grievances to organize—and organized beyond grievances. Learn the steps to shift grievances from individual problems to collective solutions.
Do you have an inactive or stagnant Labor-Management Committee? We’ll identify common experiences, examine why these dynamics arise, and pinpoint how they benefit management. Learn what tools union leaders can use to achieve our objectives in these meetings.
Health and safety campaigns can unite co-workers in action, grow the union, and produce concrete victories that make a difference to people’s lives. This workshop will focus on the nuts and bolts of organizing for workplace improvements.
Local fights are winning higher wages and new legal rights. But how do we make sure new and existing laws are both enforced and support ongoing worker organizing? From a worker-driven lawsuit against New Mexico’s DOL, to wage theft campaigns in Nashville, to innovative train-the-trainer and social media organizing in Ontario, hear how worker centers are using enforcement campaigns to build power for low-wage workers.
Business leaders and politicians sell privatization as the path to efficient, low-cost services. Unions need our own vision for improving public services, not just defending our jobs. Hear success stories from unions that are pushing back through bargaining, community outreach, and political organizing.
Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast brings you regular news and analysis from the world of work. Hear labor journalists and Belabored hosts Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen record a special Labor Notes Conference episode as they interview union activists about organizing outside the law.
It’s easy to drown in all the corporate information you can find on the Internet. Learn how to drill down to the specific information you need and how to find the primary sources, then learn how to summarize and make sense of what you’ve found. The goal is to move from research to campaigns.
Bargaining shop by shop can lead to unequal contract standards. That’s why some unions are bringing members from different worksites and employers to the same bargaining table, or raising shared demands to press employers for the same standards. Hear how unions lined up expiration dates, planned campaigns together, and acted in sync to build power beyond a single worksite.
Bargaining doesn’t have to be conducted in secret or behind closed doors. You can build momentum by opening up bargaining to a larger group of members, and even the public. Embarrass your bosses in front of a bigger audience!
When bargaining is done in secret or with limited input from members, rank-and-file activists can feel powerless to stop concessions or even make progress towards getting a contract. How can members influence their own bargaining representatives as well as their bosses? Hear from activists who have organized at the shop floor for a fair contract.
This workshop will offer examples to help you analyze your school worksites, identify potential supporters, talk to them, assess their interest and capacity, and bring them together to start building “boss fights” that can make things better.
There’s a reason why union-busters want to change the way teachers are evaluated: to push out veteran educators and weaken unions. When evaluations are tied to standardized tests, both teachers and students are set up to fail. Learn how unions are fending off unfair eval systems—or when they’re imposed, mitigating the effects and supporting teachers.
This workshop will explore participants’ experiences with safety incentive programs, injury discipline/“accident repeater” policies, and behavior-based safety observation. The common thread is blaming workers for so-called “unsafe behaviors” rather than eliminating hazardous conditions. We’ll examine the pitfalls of these programs and discuss strategies for preventing and ending them.
Privatizers are out to decimate mail services and public sector workers alike. Join activists from the Letter Carriers, American Postal Workers Union, Mailhandlers, and Canadian Union of Postal Workers for an organizing meeting.
Sunday April 8, 2018 10:45am - 12:30pm PDT
Ronald Reagan
Limits on collective bargaining and union rights are bad for workers, but it’s not game over. Hear from workers in open shops and right-to-work states on how to keep members in the union, engaged in campaigns, and winning on issues.
Today 1 in 167 U.S. adults identifies as transgender... probably including some members of your union. What contract language can you bargain to address members’ needs in areas like health insurance, bathroom access, and workplace discrimination? Hear from people who’ve done it—including Wisconsin campus workers, California grad employees, and New York retail workers.
What actually counts as workplace sexual harassment under the law? What are your obligations as a union rep to both victims and alleged perpetrators who are union members? This workshop answers nuts-and-bolts questions about unions’ role in ending sexual harassment at work (and in the union hall).
When bosses and politicians try to play one group of workers against another, we need to have each other’s backs. Panelists will describe building solidarity between Native American and Latino workers in rural Arizona, among homecare workers in Boston, among hotel workers in Stamford, and across worker center members in New York.
Unemployment, underemployment, and stagnant wages disproportionately affect Black workers. Hear what these unions and worker centers are doing to protect Black workers on the job, secure living wages and safe working conditions, and ensure that there are jobs in the future.
Immigrant workers are not only organizing for fair wages and workload, demanding union recognition, and taking wage thieves to court. They’re also fighting back against audits that put people out of work and raids that tear families apart. Learn how unions and community groups are standing together to defend workers targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Everybody has complaints and frustrations, but an organizer has the power to turn problems into opportunities. Learn how to sort through the issues you hear from co-workers, bring people together, and make a plan to solve them. Based on the popular book Secrets of a Successful Organizer.
Grievances aren’t the only tool to solve problems or contract violations. In fact, not every problem is a grievance. Hear how members have built campaigns that solved problems at work and got members involved in the action.
If stewards are the backbone of the union, and we don’t have any, where do we start? It’s not enough to tell your co-workers to “get involved.” This workshop will examine different ways to develop stewards, and how ongoing structures like stewards councils can strengthen existing on-the-job networks and ramp up member-to-member communication and activity.
Surprise, creativity, and humor can be the keys to rank-and-file engagement. Whether you’re facing a contract campaign, a privatization battle, or a dormant membership, these tools can be scaled to fit your situation. Discover the talents among your members for song, humor, creative props, and theatrics. Participants will learn the principles of creative organizing, share examples, and develop tactics they can take home. Solidarity and laughter make a potent mix!
Many activists with political convictions have chosen to devote their lives to working in the labor movement, either as rank-and-file workers or as staff. Baby boomers inspired by the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam War chose labor as a strategic place to make radical change. Members of Gen X and milennials cast their lots with labor too. This panel will reflect on the experiences of three generations.
Hear about worker-focused political efforts, both inside and outside the Democratic Party, including some that have won office. How were these efforts built? How do they sustain themselves? What is their relationship to the local labor movement? What are the pros and cons of an electoral strategy?
Looking for a job where you can help build the troublemaking wing of the labor movement and transform society? Don’t assume you should become a union staffer—hear from young people who’ve taken a different path. They’ll talk about long-term strategies for being a union activist and surviving hard jobs at the same time. Learn where networks already exist.
The United Auto Workers has suffered several high-profile losses in the South, including at Nissan and Volkswagen in 1989, 2001, 2014, and 2017. The union has yet to win a wall-to-wall union vote at any non-U.S. automaker in the South. Why does the UAW keep losing & what will it take to start winning?
Where’s our economy headed? What new organizing opportunities are there for labor in the 21st-century economy? What vulnerabilities in globalization can workers exploit to win concessions from companies—and possibly win even more profound changes?
With health care, transit, schools, and secure jobs on the chopping block, hear how unions, worker centers, and community groups are banding together. A “community coalition” where a union just says “support our fight” only goes so far, but these groups are discovering issues they have in common and forging ties that last.
