Forum, Reading

Japanese workers and unionists have faced union busting and the privatization of Japan Rail which was instituted to smash the militant unionism which organized a national strike in 1975 against the Vietnam war.

The Bolivian working class and their unions have a long history of fighting against exploitation and imperialism. From water privatization to the theft of their natural resources they have had general strikes with the natonal unions and people’s community organizations.

The drive by the tech billionaires to use AI to capture and scrape data from the internet and use this to profit from the data threatens all workers including writers and artists. This pane will look at the effect of AI in these industries and what workers and people can do about it.

Non-profit and NGO unionization is the fastest growing militant wing of the labor movement. Despite being ignored by the left media, these new mostly self-organized independent unions are taking on the “due gooder” myth of long hours, low wages and bad bosses—and they’re winning.

The fight against racism in the US has been historically tied to the fight of the working class for power. Hubert Harrison is one of the most important theoreticians and political activists in the Black working class movement and in solidarity with socialists like Eugene Debs who led the Socialist Party.

The Teamsters is one of the most powerful unions in the United States, but it is under assault by AI, union busting at Amazon and massive closures at UPS. How workers organize a fight to defend their jobs and fight for a democratic union will be the focus of this panel.