The wave of unionization continues apace across the United States and elsewhere in the world, but there’s often much less attention paid to the part of the process that comes after the winning of a union election: the bargaining of a contract. It can seem like the hard part is over when the votes are counted, but our guest this week reminds us that the hard part is just beginning. If that sounds daunting, well, Jane McAlevey is here to share her knowledge of how to make that hard part, if not easier, at least to help you succeed. McAlevey is a longtime organizer and organizing theorist, the founder of the massively popular online trainings, Organizing for Power, supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, and the author and co-author of several books and many reports and articles on the art of worker organizing. Her newest book, with Abby Lawlor, is titled Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations, and she joins us to talk about using big, open, democratic bargaining tactics to win major gains at the table and in the contract.
We also check in with Donna Murch of Rutgers AAUP-AFT on the multi-union, 9,000-worker strike at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and hear from Katie Wells on a new report on the conditions of Doordash drivers. And we hear about the firing of a union leader (and former Belabored guest) at Planned Parenthood North Central States, and the junior doctors and nurses’ strikes fighting to save the British National Health Service.
