Category: Seattle Worker

By James Smith The employees of Portland's Providence Medical Center have been arguing for quite some time that the hospital spends too much money on mergers, acquisitions, and executive compensation, and not nearly enough on patient care and employee compensation. It's a pretty easy argument to make once one discovers the CEO of the "non-profit" … Continue reading In the News: Labor News from around the Country

By Hannah Hopkins and Lexi Owens When people went away to the battlefields of World War I, people who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—fight, as well as those who stayed behind, like most women, Black men, immigrants, and other people of color, filled their vacancies in the workforce. For instance, in the Puget Sound, white and Black women … Continue reading The Workers’, Soldiers’, and Sailors’ Council: Efforts to unite the working class in post-war Seattle

By James Smith Despite making billions of dollars a year in revenue, the ambulance company AMR claimed they didn’t have the money to pay their EMTs in Seattle much above minimum wage. The EMTs, who are represented by Teamsters Local 763, were rightfully skeptical of the company’s claims and voted to strike. Because they would … Continue reading In the News: notes from around the Northwest

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By Lexi Owens Bosses love to tell half-truths and say that if workers join a union, the union will force them to go on strike. But our union is completely democratic. No decision can be made without the workers' consent. Workers will go on strike because they decide to go on strike. Applebee’s restaurants’ parent company … Continue reading “The Union will make you go on strike!”: Refuting Myths about Unions

By Hannah Hopkins Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is pictured here standing on a soapbox on the right side of the image above the two large umbrellas. She is addressing a crowd of people in Seattle in 1917 at a rally in defense of IWW prisoners who were imprisoned following the Everett Massacre. At this time, Flynn … Continue reading History Corner: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Visits Seattle

By Maria Garcia There are many ways to effect positive change in the world (activism, electoral politics, legal action, changes in individual behavior, etc.), and all of them have been used with various levels of success in addressing the acute problems caused by our economic system. But any attempt to effect real, permanent, systemic change … Continue reading Revolutionary Unionism

By Lindsay Mimir The Seattle IWW is organizing in no less than seven workplaces in five different industries across the city­­ education, food service, retail, tech, and office workers. Our organizers are working diligently to build up their organizing committees, train and recruit their fellow workers, and win gains on the shopfloor. We just held … Continue reading All Quiet on the News Front (Why your union is organizing underground)

By X390433 ArcelorMittal and US Steel have recently proven once again that no matter how much bosses squeeze us, they will never stop trying to squeeze us more. Despite extracting concessions from their workers for years and having their profits propped up by tariffs, the companies tried to limit pay increases for the United Steelworkers … Continue reading In the News: notes from around the Northwest