People Get Ready
9,000 Philadelphia city workers strike
New York City’s Central Labor Council, the umbrella body for the city’s unions, with over 1 million members, got behind Zohran Mamdani yesterday. What a journey—from 1 percent in the polls to a Democratic primary victory to the might of organized labor behind him, as billionaires plot to resuscitate the political corpse of Eric Adams. But there is no US consulate in Aoshima that Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa can be dispatched to so as to unite the anti-Mamdani forces, and the city’s billionaire class may have to stick to trying to obstruct Mamdani’s agenda at every turn in Washington, Albany, and the courts.
News and Views
Philadelphia’s city workers are on strike for the first time in four decades.
The Senate parliamentarian ruled that provisions attacking federal unions could not be included in the GOP budget bill. “According to bill text released by the Senate Budget Committee Saturday, the legislation no longer targets federal workers’ retirement benefits, civil service protections or their labor unions,” Government Executive reports. The Senate passed the bill today — which cuts taxes for the wealthy and will result in millions of Americans losing health insurance and food assistance — and it is now returned to the House. Trump wants to pass it before July 4.
This spring, undergraduates at the University of Oregon went on strike and won a contract that covers all 4,000 student workers at the university. Read a deep dive on the action in The Nation.
Public sector unions in New Jersey are furious with labor-backed Governor Phil Murphy for failing to clamp down on rising health care costs in the state budget, in what amounts to a significant giveaway to insurance companies. It’s hard to not see this as Murphy’s revenge against AFSCME New Jersey and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees, the state’s fourth and fifth-largest non-uniform public sector unions, which were among the earliest backers of US Senator Andy Kim’s successful insurgent campaign against Murphy’s wife Tammy.
Today’s Win
220 autoworkers in Alabama are organizing with UAW.