Gay Semel is a retired union-side labor lawyer and a democratic socialist for more than six decades.
Starbucks and Amazon’s current anti-union strategy is an effective one: infinite delay. Employers can’t always stop workers from winning a union election, but labor law currently allows them to buy time to kill union support.
We’re in the midst of an uptick in union organizing in the US. But that organizing can’t turn into permanent gains for workers without a functioning National Labor Relations Board. And the board is suffering from a severe underfunding crisis.
Mike Parker, who died earlier this month, was far from a celebrity. But in his six decades on the Left and in labor, he was everywhere, from the Berkeley Free Speech Movement to auto factory shop floors to independent leftist electoral campaigns and the rebirth of American socialism.