Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, outlined a slew of union demands in a letter addressed to FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Stan Kroenke, calling for fair working practices and a public statement against ICE's presence at the games.
Under a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, federal authorities had detained Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and the brother of dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue. 'I didn't know what to do at first, but we had this community, and I told them this news,' Mbengue says through a coworker who is translating his French.
A video posted by an Instagram account bearing Abdulkarim's name shows him lighting a goods on fire in the warehouse while taking aim at his company. 'All you had to do was pay us enough to live,' he repeats in the clip.
The farmworkers who feed all of us should be able to also feed themselves and their families with the wages they make. Instead, this administration is unlawfully cutting their wages and transferring billions from workers to employers. We need to do what is right for our farmworkers and stop these wage cuts.
The new contract covers July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2028, and was ratified by 99% of voting union members on March 23. The agreement includes a 3% retroactive raise for this school year, a 4% increase for next school year, and a one-time bonus of $600 to $1,000.
Within the workplace, the content and conditions of work are largely controlled by employers who often have an interest in degrading the quality of work, both to increase productivity and to increase their control over employees in the workplace. Outside the workplace, employers have both an incentive and the power to undermine measures that would improve the quality of work through the political process.
New Yorkers filed 1,269 suits under the Federal Labor Standards Act against employers for violations such as underpayment and unpaid overtime, significantly outpacing other states.
The labor of this kind of organizing was invisible and deeply exhausting. In a precarious workplace, where a so-called 'performance review' could amount to job loss, organizing meant building a bridge while standing on it.
Losing staff could be detrimental to the projects we worked on, and there was a growing dissatisfaction with how meetings were run. These mostly one-sided discussions left the quieter half of us feeling pushed aside, like our thoughts didn't matter much. If things stayed this way, I worried the good people on our team would start quitting one by one.
I think it's really a best case scenario. What I can say is that it was evident that the picket that we held on Thursday was absolutely instrumental in getting us over the finish line. The unions, which are units of the United Auto Workers, represent academic student employees, student services and advising professionals, as well as research and public service professionals across the U.C. system.
Members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), affiliated with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, went out on a strike to protect their health insurance and pension benefits. Dania Muñoz, a nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, explained that the private hospitals she and others were taking on are 'some of the top paid hospital systems in the country.'
A friend recently told me a story that made this reality impossible to ignore. Her elderly parents live near an elementary school not far from the nation's capital. For several years, they had been quietly raising money to provide groceries and basic supplies for families whose children were going hungry. When Republicans suspended SNAP benefits, the need surged overnight. What had been a steady act of care suddenly became an emergency response.
But beyond their sky-high resale price, the viral collectibles may come with a steep humanitarian cost as well. As The Guardian reports, New York-based labor rights group China Labor Watch (CLW) has accused the toys' maker, Chinese toy manufacturer Pop Mart, of employing 16- and 17-year-olds without offering them the necessary labor protections required by Chinese law. The group also alleges that these young workers aren't given adequate health and safety training, among other labor rights violations at the company's factory in Jiangxi province.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: The way the LGA has conducted pay negotiations has been nothing short of a disgrace. Craft workers who do difficult and highly skilled jobs deserve better than the LGA playing politics with their livelihoods and imposing a poor pay offer without negotiations. They will have Unite's full backing throughout this dispute which is of the LGA's own making.
The strike is a response to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota. In the days since, calls for a nationwide shutdown have spread rapidly across social media, shared by activists, nonprofits, and everyday people urging a halt to economic activity. Celebrities including Pedro Pascal, Edward Norton, and Jamie Lee Curtis have amplified the message to their followers.
Donaldson calling on Brits to "go on strike for a week" from 2 to 9 February, the right-wing activist says that "native Brits must always come first." On his website he explains that mending "immigration" is not "anywhere near as complicated as politicians pretend." He is calling on the government to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and to "deport" all illegal immigrants from the UK and those who commit sexual and violent crimes.
The reporting landed on the same day that a group of Senate Democrats launched an investigation into Chavez-De-Remer's policy moves at the Labor Department, accusing her agency of showing "disregard for workers' lives" by "rolling back protections that keep workers safe and hobbling the agency that is tasked with overseeing worker safety."
People gather for National Day of Truth & Freedom at Union Square on January 23, 2026, in New York City. 1199SEIU frontline healthcare workers, faith leaders, students and community members stood in solidarity with Minnesota, after community groups, faith-based organizations, and unions in the state came together to call for an "economic blackout," as part of National Day of Truth & Freedom to stand against corporations profiteering from Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) actions.
