By Steve Wishnia 

A Senate bill to regulate employers’ use of software to monitor workers and algorithms to evaluate them and set their pay has won support from unions representing app-based workers, despite its apparently slim chances of passage.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part II of Phil’s two-part story about a community of Montagnard tribesmen who fought alongside US Special Forces in the Vietnam War, were abandoned for 20 years, and ultimately allowed to immigrate to Greensboro, North Carolina many years later. That’s where Phil met them working at a Kmart warehouse and started organizing. Part I is here in case you missed it. 

When the date for the long-awaited hearing on the forklift issue eventually arrived, Hin Nie and several Montagnard workers joined me in a Marriot Hotel conference room. The arbitrator requested to meet with both parties in the lobby to acquire a better understanding of this most unusual issue before we went on the record.

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of Phil’s two-part story about a community of Montagnard tribesmen who fought alongside US Special Forces in the Vietnam War, were abandoned for 20 years, and ultimately allowed to immigrate to Greensboro, North Carolina many years later. That’s where Phil met them working at a Kmart warehouse and started organizing.

Montagnards were an ethnic minority of ancient warrior-tribes living in the central highlands of Vietnam, who considered themselves a separate nation with their own languages and religion. Having suffered a long history of persecution by the Vietnamese, they were recruited during the 1960s by American Special Forces to engage a common enemy. The Montagnards’ warlike upbringing and intimate knowledge of local terrain made them invaluable assets and the military guaranteed their protection regardless of the war’s outcome. They were dramatized in a somewhat exaggerated fashion by the movie Apocalypse Now.

By Joe Maniscalco

Amazon Labor Union co-founder Chris Smalls on Saturday called for a national day of action against both the AFL-CIO and the International Longshoremen’s Association [ILA] to protest what Smalls said is their complicity in Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people of Gaza.

Editor’s Note: This piece from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee is republished here courtesy of the author.

By Bill Barry

To err is human, to be a union organizer is to make mistakes. We all do it, so don’t sweat it. Here are some tips to try to avoid the next one.

By Time Sheard & Len Shinel

We often hear that working class folks in conservative communities are hopelessly drawn to the dominant storylines of the wealthy and powerful. That they don’t want to know about labor or “people’s” history.

By Steve Wishnia

In a ruling the American Federation of Government Employees [AFGE] denounced as “a setback for fundamental rights in America,” a federal appeals court in California on August 1 lifted an injunction preventing the Trump regime from terminating collective-bargaining rights for an estimated two-thirds of the federal workforce.

By Joe Maniscalco

A few weeks ago, Work-Bites took a look at the white paper warning labor leaders about profit-driven Medicare Advantage plans and how they are just “another Wall Street privatization scheme of raiding public funds for private profit.”

By Steve Wishnia

Eight state labor federations, including the Texas and New York branches of the AFL-CIO, have joined together to protest President Donald Trump’s push to have Texas gerrymander its congressional districts to enable Republicans to gain five seats in the 2026 elections.

By Joe Maniscalco

Amazon Labor Union co-founder Chris Smalls is expected to be coming home to Newark International Airport tomorrow morning after reportedly being seized and beaten by Israeli military forces while taking part in a humanitarian effort to bring baby formula and other aide to the starving people of Gaza.

By Joe Maniscalco

The secretary-treasurer of IBT Local 808 in New York is calling on his union leadership to press for the release of Amazon Labor Union co-founder Christian Smalls after Smalls was reportedly seized and beaten by Israeli military forces this week while helping to bring food and other aide to the starving people of Gaza.

By Joe Maniscalco

This week, California farmworkers protesting the recent death of 57-year-old Jaime Alanís García after he broke his neck fleeing militarized ICE agents in Ventura County on July 10, chose to observe the “Huelga para la dignidad,” or “Strike for Dignity.” Most, however, did not.

And the reason they did not has everything to do with Trump administration policies designed to perpetuate an unrepresented class of workers in this country consigned to a state of virtual slavery.

By Bob Hennelly

The tragic death of Jaime Alanis, a farmworker, who was frightened into hiding when federal ICE agents laid siege to a state-licensed cannabis farm in the agricultural area of Ventura County, needs to prompt more of a response from organized labor that registers nationally.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part III of Phil’s bittersweet story of the Local 1077 Whiteville Choir. Read Part I here and Part II here. 

Two weeks later I made my annual pilgrimage to the Great Labor Arts Exchange in Washington, this time accompanied by Melvin Chambers who was treated like a celebrity. One of the guests handed her song lyrics written by an anonymous composer during the recent Detroit Newspaper strike, explaining that the words were set to the legendary pop song, “Dancing in the Street.”

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part II of Phil’s bittersweet story of the Local 1077 Whiteville Choir. Part I is here.

A few weeks later I drove to AMI Recording in Burlington with the master and graphics in hand, making sure the owners understood I was going to be a significant, ongoing customer if they met my demands. I placed a rush order for five-hundred copies to be picked up in time for the choir’s new album to make its debut at the union’s Southern Regional convention in Atlanta on June 7. The cost came to $675 and including studio time and various miscellaneous charges, the project was only $300 over budget.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of Phil’s bittersweet story of the Local 1077 Whiteville Choir.

During April 1995, the North Carolina District of ACTWU held its yearly conference in Greensboro’s spacious union hall. The delegates and staff were blown away by the choir providing entertainment. The twenty-three singers and one electric keyboard player named Kenneth Stanley all worked at the Whiteville Apparel suit factory in Eastern North Carolina and were members of Local 1077.