At Nissan’s Canton, Miss., plant, there are more than 3,000 workers who want a voice at work to improve conditions and secure decent work for more members of their community. Their campaign for justice has won support both locally and globally.

One of the growing groups backing the Nissan workers is Concerned Students for a Better Nissan. While the group has received great support from students at several colleges and universities, as this video shows, they found a more hostile reception outside a Nissan dealership when they decided to spotlight what workers say are the tactics Nissan is using to intimidate workers who are seeking a union voice.

New technology is keeping more and more workers stuck in low-wage jobs, and it's society's responsibility to make sure those jobs still have dignity and fair wages.

With robots taking over factories and warehouses, toll collectors and cashiers increasingly being replaced by automation and even legal researchers being replaced by computers, the age-old question of whether technology is a threat to jobs is back with us big time. Technological change has been seen as a threat to jobs for centuries, but the history tells that while technology has destroyed some jobs, the overall impact has been to create new jobs, often in new industries. Will that be true after the information revolution as it was in the industrial revolution?

Fast-food and other low-wage workers in more than 60 cities—from major metropolises like New York City to smaller cities such as Missoula, Mont.—walked off the job Thursday as the fight for a living wage and the right to join a union without retaliation continues to grow. Shaniqua Davis, who works at a Bronx McDonald’s and is the mother of a two-year-old, told the New York Daily News:

I’m not going to stay quiet. I’m going to continue to fight....I’ve got a daughter to take care of. I struggle to make ends meet.

On Thursday, fast-food and other low-wage workers in more than three dozen cities will boost their campaign for a living wage and justice with a nationwide one-day strike. The workers and the faith, community and labor groups that back them are calling for a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation.

Emergency medical workers, massage therapists, bus mechanics and home health care workers are among the latest workers to choose a voice on the job with AFL-CIO unions. 

In California and Arizona, some 240 emergency medical services professionals voted recently to join United EMS Workers-AFSCME.

Nine former and one current Walmart worker, protesting what they charge is Walmart’s retaliation against workers who have spoken out for justice or taken part in strikes, took arrest Thursday afternoon after they sat down and locked arms in front of Walmart’s Washington, D.C., federal lobbying office. Two other activists supporting the workers also took arrest.

On Sept. 8, the AFL-CIO will kick off its national convention in Los Angeles. The last time it was held in L.A. was in 1999, when the AFL-CIO announced its historic declaration for a legalization program for all undocumented immigrants, increased workplace protection for immigrant workers and an end to employer sanction laws, which it supported back in 1986 as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The national convention this year in L.A. will also be a historic one. With union density at around 12% (the private sector below 7%), the labor movement today is in a state of crisis. As the recent deep recession, or depression, as some economists have labeled it, has shown us, the labor movement is really the only safety net that we have in this country for the working class.

Walmart’s going to feel some of that infamous Washington, D.C., summertime swamp heat Thursday, when 10 recently fired Walmart workers will be joined by community, faith and union supporters outside the low-wage retail giant’s D.C. federal lobbying offices.

The noon demonstration is the kickoff of a campaign by Walmart workers to end what they say is Walmart’s retaliation against workers for exercising their rights and freedoms, including the right to join unions.

The growing movement for a living wage and justice for fast-food and other low-wage workers will reach another milestone next week with a nationwide strike set for Aug. 29.

Following the success and public support of a walkout in eight cities earlier this month, those workers and the community, faith and labor groups that back them are calling on fast-food and low-wage retail workers across the nation to join them in the fight for $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation.

I’ve seen some pretty outrageous anti-worker opinion pieces written about the contract negotiations at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) over the last two months. But nothing I’ve read is as infuriating as Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle op-ed from Chuck and Barbara McFadden.

In short, the McFaddens assert that workers like those at BART are not deserving of the middle-class wage their unions negotiate.