This week's #ThrowbackThursday focuses on posts about the past, present, and future of worker collective action. Featuring posts about the last Teamsters UPS negotiation in 1997, the push for union organizing in the cannabis industry now, and the potential for workers to use ChatGPT as a tool for collective action in the future, this post acknowledges efforts of workers through three eras.
Labor Artifact: Teamsters Video from 1997 UPS Negotiation (posted on June 25th, 2023)
The Power at Work Blog is delighted to lift up this 1997 video --- Actions Speak Louder Than Words --- when the Teamsters and UPS were negotiating another of their nationwide collective bargaining agreements. Those negotiations led to a 15-day strike, but Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman mediated and eventually helped the parties reach an agreement. In addition to its retro 1990s vibe, this video discloses the Teamsters' reaction to UPS's efforts to implement a new management strategy that allegedly would "empower" workers. Note how the management representative in the video trips over the word "empower."
“It was everybody standing together for the first time”: The Case for Union Organizing in the Cannabis Industry (posted on April 23rd, 2023)
As a new and emerging industry, cannabis is a case study in modern-day collective action. Companies involved in cannabis, from farms to dispensaries, are making billions of dollars as more states legalize their products. The problem: as the industry expands, so has cannabis workers’ need for union representation. By bargaining for higher wages and better benefits, unions hope to ensure long-term employment for their members and their co-workers—moving the needle of cannabis employment from “job” to “career.”
ChatGPT: A Powerful Tool for Worker Collective Action? (posted on February 6th, 2023)
ChatGPT is a new artificial intelligence tool that can understand and automatically generate human-like text. It has been trained on a massive corpus of text data from the internet, allowing ChatGTP to generate coherent and contextually appropriate responses to a wide range of questions and prompts. While some may fear ChatGPT as a threat to job security, we see it as a powerful tool for workers, especially for helping them to bring change in the workplace.