British Columbia: Hard Rock Casino strikers win solidarity

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018

COQUITLAM, British Columbia — Some 400 members of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union, who have been on strike since May 11, voted by a 55 percent margin July 4 to reject a new proposal by Hard Rock…


B.C.: Hard rock miners strike to demand union rights for temps

Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018

WILLIAMS LAKE, British Columbia — Some 210 hard rock miners are on strike in this province’s Cariboo region in a fight to strengthen and unify their union. The strike began May 23, three hours after Imperial Metals Corporation, the mine’s…


1,000s of workers protest for gov’t-funded pensions

‘Our lives are worth more than a pound of coal’
Vol. 82/No. 28 - July 30, 2018
Miners, Teamsters, bakery workers, others protest pension cuts July 12 at Ohio Statehouse.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Thousands of union members — coal miners, Teamsters, bakery workers and more — and their supporters rallied at the state Capitol here July 12 against any cuts in their pensions. Members of the United Mine Workers, a…


Strikers chase scabs from Ontario salt mine

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018
Striking salt miners in Goderich, Ontario, members of Unifor Local 16-0, put up barricades beginning July 4, forcing bosses to remove scab replacement workers from the mine.

Chanting “solidarity” and “don’t come back,” striking Compass Minerals salt miners in Goderich, Ontario, lined the entrance to the mine July 6 as about 30 scabs filed out of the mine with their faces covered. The replacement workers had been…


Massachusetts natural gas workers fight National Grid lockout

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018

BOSTON — When 1,200 natural gas workers, members of United Steelworkers Locals 12003 and 12012, showed up for work across Massachusetts June 25, they discovered they had been locked out by National Grid company bosses. In spite of the unions’…


Illinois Teamsters end strike at American Bottling, make gains

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018

NORTHLAKE, Ill. — “We won a victory. The new contract is good for us,” Mike Gnagni, one of some 140 truck drivers who just ended their 40-day strike against American Bottling Company, told the Militant. American Bottling is a subsidiary…


Vermont nurses call strike for wages, staffing

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Nurses at the University of Vermont Medical Center are holding a two-day work stoppage July 12-13 to demand a 24 percent wage increase, fuller staffing to assure patients’ health and safety and a $15 minimum wage for…


Hundreds celebrate life of ILWU fighter Byron Jacobs

Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018

LONGVIEW, Wash. — Some 500 people gathered at the Cowlitz County Event Center here July 6 to celebrate the life of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 member Byron Jacobs. Jacobs was killed June 28 when a line on…


Unions rally in fight for gov’t-funded pensions

All workers need pensions at union-scale pay
Vol. 82/No. 27 - July 23, 2018
United Mine Workers rally, Lexington, Kentucky, June 2016, protests cuts to pensions, health care.

Car caravans and busloads of active and retired union members from across the Midwest and beyond are gathering in their thousands at the Ohio state Capitol in Columbus July 12. They’re demanding that the government fund the pensions for hundreds…


The class-struggle road for workers to win political power

Vol. 82/No. 26 - July 16, 2018
Truckers sign up by the hundreds for Teamsters union during over-the-road organizing campaign, June 1937. “As significant forces are set into motion,” writes Socialist Workers Party and union leader Farrell Dobbs, “increasingly sharp clashes with the bosses result, during which the workers begin to shed class-collaborationist illusions and acquire class-struggle concepts.”

Below is an excerpt from the “Afterword” to the new, enhanced edition of  Teamster Bureaucracy, the last of four books by Farrell Dobbs on how Socialist Workers Party members and other militant workers engaged in a series of strike battles…