Hi friends,
I didn’t forget about Labor Day. I just have a fluid notion of the calendar, which also explains why I’m posting on Wednesday.
The United Auto Workers are preparing for a strike when their contracts expire next week. Negotiations are ongoing.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have dragged on and on; still, the public is in support of striking writers and actors!
A poll conducted by Data for Progress found that two-thirds of likely voters support the strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, and 86 percent of supporters will stand with the unions even if that delays the return of their favorite movies and shows.
The writers are beginning the fifth month of their strike. As the executive director of WGA-East said,
“Everyone who works for a living understands what it’s like to get squeezed economically, to face threats from disruptive technology like AI, to try to hold one’s own against huge corporations motivated by their own profit rather than their employees’ well-being.”
Come out tomorrow to support striking writers. See details in the graphic.
Americans take our entertainment very seriously. The labor issues that writers and actors face are serious AND they pale in comparison to the varieties of exploitation visited on immigrant workers.
On Monday, Democracy Now! broadcast Amy Goodman’s interview with labor organizer Saket Soni, whose new book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America chronicles an extraordinary story of human trafficking.
Soni recounted to Goodman the phone call he got in 2006 from one of hundreds of workers who were brought to the US to work on the Katrina clean-up, housed in trailers on a toxic waste dump and held against their will.
[T]hese workers who came from India were among the first workers that would be a rising workforce, workers who we now call the resilience workforce, the workers who — largely immigrant, largely undocumented, mostly vulnerable — the workers who rebuild after climate disasters, the workers who continue to clean up, repair, heal and rebuild after hurricanes, floods and fires.
Soni’s book is about the extraordinary escape of the workers who contacted him. Soni has since established Resilience Force, to build
a strong, stable, inclusive, million-strong workforce that will be able to perform year-round climate preparation and adaptation work, as well as rebuild after disasters.
This workforce will help drive more just recoveries, ones that increase economic and racial equity, rather than worsening existing inequalities.
And they will be a force for social cohesion, forging relationships across lines of class, race, immigration status, and political affiliation—the kinds of bonds on which true resilience depends.
Join us in unlocking a new era of climate prosperity, one that puts workers in the center of rebuilding our nation—and our democracy.
Support the necessary and visionary work of Resilience Force.
with love,
L