“The white collar crime syndicate known as Corporate America is hereby put on notice that the working people of America have had enough!”
—Sean O’ Brien, Labor Notes 2022
“Fuck Jeff Bezos!”
—Christian Smalls, Labor Notes 2022
Suddenly, it seems, organized labour is cool again. On Twitter, leftists have taken to calling the months ahead #HotLaborSummer. Twitter is a poor barometer of, well, anything, but looking at the last few years, there has been an obvious spike in labour militancy and general interest in unions.
The 51-year-old agency has been losing both power and credibility over recent decades, and SCOTUS’s recent ruling undermines it even more.
West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency completes a trifecta of long-sought court victories for the right. What New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v Bruen did to gun control and Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization to reproductive rights, West Virginia v EPA has done to climate.
It’s not rising workers’ wages that are causing spiraling inflation — it’s corporate profiteering.
Anyone observing the political debate about inflation in the UK could be forgiven for thinking that rising prices were being driven by rising wages. Politicians and technocrats from across the political spectrum have taken it upon themselves to chastise workers for demanding wage increases in line with inflation.
Hundreds of workers at a Toronto warehouse belonging to The Bay, a subsidiary of Hudson’s Bay Co., have gone on strike, demanding a retroactive pay increase for working in grueling conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the midst of inflation that is now soaring.
Tens of thousands of workers demonstrated against the rising cost of living, with many linking the crisis to the NATO’s war and Russia policies. Many demonstrators condemned the US-led NATO alliance and its involvement in the Ukraine war. Many linked their dire economic straits to the EU’s sanctions regime on Russia and with the NATO’s rush to arm Ukraine.
Protesters demanded that their leaders “spend money on salaries, not on weapons,” and chanted “stop NATO.”
