by Jo Blocton

Unions are the only space in American society where socialist values of solidarity and “us vs. them” are openly spoken and encouraged, outside of DSA. It is about time for us to take back this space to fight for workers’ rights. Detroit DSA’s Jobs Fair on September 19th was as much about education as it was about encouraging folks to consider new job options.

During the fair, about 60 participants heard from five different union members about why going to work within their fields can create legitimate change for the whole working class, while also improving their individual lives. The purpose was to bring socialists to the front line of the workforce, where we can build political power on all fronts for the working class.

These union trades didn’t come to play; The salaries of union workers represented at the fair start at $58,000 a year. The representative from the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) reported hourly wages as high as $57. The UAW has members on the line at more than $40 an hour. Teachers in one Metro Detroit school district are seeing salary increases of $20,000 within the first five years of teaching, with some districts offering programs to allow paraprofessionals and substitutes to earn their teaching certificate completely for free. Workers representing an organizing effort at a major logistics company are fighting to bring their wages on par with UPS’s top hourly rate of $49/hour.

OBTAINABLE JOBS

Joining a union is not all about the money. These careers present a unique opportunity to make real change, while being obtainable for the average joe. This is where joining the union efforts at workplaces with active unionization campaigns comes into play. We are talking about millions of Americans finally having a say in their working conditions, compensation, and benefits. One targeted company employs over 1.5 million people, as of 2025; if they could achieve a union contract, it would improve the lives of millions of families.

Speaking of families, careers in teaching would also improve the lives of millions, not just teachers but parents and students as well. The teachers union speaker reported a fantastic example in sunny Los Angeles. During the most recent LA teacher strike, the teachers union decided not to include only standard strike demands. The union met with parents and students to find out what they really needed as a larger community. The district had no choice but to capitulate because they were facing pressure from both sides: families and educators.

The teachers were able to reform the law enforcement presence in schools, while simultaneously getting a contract that included wage increases and other benefits. Making this effort with the parents not only allowed the teachers to strike for longer; they were able to organize to make sure the kids were still being fed during the strike.

Teachers unions have the power to fight artificial intelligence in the classroom and prevent the cognitive decline of Generation Alpha. Teaching is an opportunity to grow a more equitable and socialist future for all children — what’s not to love?

WEEKS WHEN DECADES HAPPEN

Joining a union provides a space to radicalize your co-workers and “prepare for the weeks when decades happen,” as explained by our IBEW representative. He spoke on how electricians hold the power of the state’s technology. Electricians can work against Flock cameras and data centers because they are the literal gatekeepers of power.

At the end of the day, the most important part of the Jobs Fair was actually getting socialist bodies into these positions. Participants were able to ask their top two union choices about career opportunities and the Labor Working Group is following up with attendees to help get them these jobs.

At the tables, participants spoke on their personal reasons to make the leap into an organized workplace. Some folks spoke about making a switch to diversify the workplace and others cited wanting to finally work somewhere that they could actually have a say. Once you have a union job, it’s difficult to go back to being treated as a grunt.

One of the best parts of the event? Most participants weren’t DSA members. This event served so many purposes and hit each nail square on the head. May all of these folks get positions in unions, and hopefully join DSA. As best said by our UAW representative, “the way change happens is talking with rank-and-file workers on the shop floor — that’s where we test out our politics.”

[Jo Blocton is a member of Metro Detroit DSA and UAW Local 6000.]

[If you’re interested in getting a job with the intent to organize, contact Metro Detroit DSA’s Labor Working Group.]

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Jobs Fair: It’s Time to Get These Socialists to Work was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Matt Wolfinger

BOSTON – There’s a loophole in our labor laws spreading across the economy. From delivery drivers to nurses, corporations are classifying workers as independent contractors and using the promise of flexible work to cudgel labor rights. 

Nearly 12 million people in the United States, or seven percent of the workforce, describe independent contractor work as their primary source of income, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Independent contractors aren’t protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), so they can’t unionize, aren’t entitled to benefits, a minimum wage, or overtime and can be fired at will. Companies like Uber, Lyft and Amazon have spent hundreds of millions to keep their workers classified as self-employed independent contractors, allowing them to cut costs and indirectly union-bust.

By blurring the line between employee and contractor, employers save money they’d otherwise be required to spend on unemployment insurance, benefits and employer-paid payroll taxes. Meanwhile, workers lcassified as contractors then pay exorbitantly higher taxation to account for both employee and employer contributions. If corporations can successfully “gigify” their industries, they can circumvent responsibilities and laws that would otherwise prevent them from mistreating their workers. 

Uber, Lyft and the Legacy of Gigification

Delivery and rideshare apps like Doordash, Lyft and Uber are poster children for operating in this gray area. Emerging in the shadow of the Great Recession when jobs were hard to come by, companies like Uber, Lyft and the now-defunct Sidecar pioneered the modern understanding of gig work by taking advantage of the dire economic landscape.

In Massachusetts, most workers are considered employees unless a company can prove their work meets three different criteria. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office, the work must be:

1. Done without the direction and control of the employer
2. Performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business
3. Done by someone who has their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work

Companies constantly find workarounds. In one landmark case, Massachusetts residents voted in late 2024 to pass a ballot measure affording rideshare drivers the right to unionize. Notably, neither Uber or Lyft spent a cent to oppose it. In contrast, they paid more than $200 million in California to help pass Proposition 22, a bill cementing California gig workers’ misclassification as independent contractors. 

The reason why these companies did not perceive Question 3 as a threat became clear in May, when over 70,000 Lyft and Uber in Massachusetts drivers successfully voted to certify their App Drivers Union (ADU).  

As the first union of its kind in the country, it’s a big deal—but there’s a catch:  The union ceded on classification. Their official stance is that they’ve chosen to remain independent contractors. This limits the union’s ability to advocate for its members, since benefits like healthcare or a minimum wage are off the bargaining table.

As Working Mass’s Editorial Board reported at the time, Question 3 “allowed drivers to vote for a collective bargaining representative, with which Uber and Lyft would then have to negotiate over wages and working conditions… [but only covers] app workers transporting passengers, leaving out take-out and grocery delivery workers.” As a result, “the system as written allows drivers to vote for or against collective bargaining but does not mandate any driver rights within the “union” once it is recognized.”

This has led to credible accusations against the ADU of company unionism. The ADU’s FAQ page on their website states that remaining independent contractors allows members to “keep our flexibility and independence,” since bosses cannot legally dictate when independent contractors work and do not work. The ADU did not respond to requests for comment on how they reached this decision.

The flexibility messaging is reminiscent of a June 2026 report from the Flex Association, a national association for app-based work, that found that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the 10,000+ app-based workers they surveyed are doing gig work to supplement W-2 jobs. Flex’s 2024 Economic Impact Report found that “exactly half of driver and delivery partners would rather be able to choose their own hours, than receive a 50% increase in earnings with a fixed schedule.” 

While these studies seem to indicate gig workers would largely rather stay as independent contractors and prefer lower pay, there’s two fundamental flaws underpinning their results. First, drivers could advocate for having flexibility to choose their own hours and an increase in pay. There could also be an industry association for app-based work whose members include Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Doordash and Grubhub, Flex is incentivized to only share positive viewpoints on gig work.

In reality, drivers aren’t a monolith—some have become disillusioned with the promises made to them by rideshare companies once the curtain is pulled back and their exploitation becomes indisputable.

In July, a Massachusetts Uber driver filed a class action lawsuit against the company, alleging misclassification of its drivers as independent contractors. Uber uses this misclassification to avoid covering expenses like gas, insurance, and vehicle maintenance, since they were the responsibility of their “self-employed” contractor. It’s argued that the three qualifications in Massachusetts for independent contractor status aren’t met because:

1. Uber controls the routes and pay of their drivers while requiring them to meet a set of standards dictated by the company, so the work is not done “without direction or control of the employer.”
2. The services provided are not “performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business” (Uber is a company providing transportation to riders, which is fulfilled through the labor of their drivers).
3. Drivers do not have “their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work” as Uber sets pay rates, can change them at their sole discretion and requires a set of standards its drivers and vehicles must meet (and can change those at will).

Food delivery and rideshare companies want to straddle the fence on employment, controlling every aspect of how drivers work through algorithms like employees, while stifling their ability to fully advocate for the same rights and benefits afforded to employees in Massachusetts. 

In 2024, More Perfect Union and Rideshare Guy put seven rideshare drivers in a room to see what fares they would be offered for identical trips and found that both Uber and Lyft’s algorithms routinely offered different prices to each driver.

Uber’s average wage gap difference was roughly 12 cents. “You know, to the naked eye, it may not be as much,” driver and Senior Contributor to Rideshare Guy Sergio Avedian told More Perfect Union. However, “A penny’s difference on 2.7 billion trips that Uber does every quarter is the idea.”

The Gig Economy Taking Healthcare

Executives in other industries have observed the chokehold platforms like Uber and Lyft have on their workers once they cannot do their job without it. Taking those lessons to heart, industries like healthcare have spent millions building their own.

When nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) with Brigham Nurses United (BNU) went on a one-day strike in July, the hospital locked them out for 4 additional days as retaliation, hiring 1,300 scab nurses to fill in for the 4,700 nurses on strike. Many of the scabs came from out-of-state, sourced from Colorado-based US Nursing (USN) who specialize in hiring nurses to scab during ongoing strikes. Similar to Amazon, they’ve begun outsourcing the labor to third-parties.

Their website hosts a portal where nurses can apply to fill shifts at hospitals where “Potential Strikes” loom. The nurses taking over these positions are paid comparable wages than the nurses they’re replacing, but their lack of hands-on knowledge that comes from working full time at a hospital can place patients at an increased risk of harm.

The job listings on “gig nursing” apps like Ingenovis Health’s often don’t list the facility in question, but anyone can make an account—no proof of credentials needed. Select “Strike Jobs” and set the location to Boston, MA to find nearly 300 USN listings, many of them starting October 11, for 2-week strike coverage at a hospital with a bed count of 846 and 59,715 emergency room visits.

According to the American Hospital Directory, BWH has a bed count of 846, and their ED’s About page says they “care for nearly 60,000 patients each year.” The listing has since changed from an “Active Strike” to “Potential Strike” with a date of “TBA” after the MNA announced the strike’s postponement.

93 percent of the 4,000 workers with BNU recently voted in favor of an open-ended, indefinite strike, originally slated to start October 14. The decision came after their historic strike in July had yet to yield results at the bargaining table, with negotiations between the MNA and MGB leadership at a standstill. 

The strike has since been postponed pending a vote on what MGB calls its “last, best and final offer,” though the MNA has emphasized that MGB refuses to budge on many key issues or engage in more bargaining sessions.

“Nurses continue seeking improvements on several key issues,” said an MNA spokesperson in a statement, including:

… Limits on MGB’s reliance on temporary nurses to support continuity and quality of care; affordable health insurance with meaningful plan choice; a differential for nurses required to float among units; and a meaningful cost-of-living wage increase.

Another strike is still on table if a contract fails to be ratified, even as MGB planned to once again work with USN to hire scabs for the strike. Since USN pays for each scab’s hotel and travel costs, they’re not classified as independent contractors. However, other gig nursing apps like CareRev have come under fire for allegedly misclassifying users as independent contractors.

These platforms allegedly use a form of dynamic pricing to pay each nurse that looks at a listing an algorithmically generated pay rate, a difference of cents or even dollars apart. It’s unclear how these gig nursing algorithms function, but it’s eerily similar to the ones used by Uber and Lyft. The “gigification” of healthcare has earned gig nursing platforms the name “Uber for Nurses.”

Central to the argument for gig nursing is in response to a so-called “nursing shortage.” But as recent data analysis from Time Magazine revealed, “there are substantively more actively licensed nurses than there are nursing jobs.” Framing the issue as a shortage obscures the real culprit—nurses are refusing to tolerate worsening working conditions.

Dr. Katie Wells, a Senior Fellow at the AI Now Institute researching tech in healthcare, spoke to Working Mass:

When I dug into the history of that, and I looked at all the scholars who had been studying labor markets for nurses, it became very clear that the rise of corporate medicine and the for-profit nature of a lot of hospital systems coincided with the degradation of working conditions for healthcare workers.

Dr. Wells is the co-author of a two-part “Uber for Nursing” study detailing the rise of gig work in the healthcare industry.

Although these platforms can be used to supply facilities with scabs, many are hired to account for lower levels of staffing. These platforms pit nurses against each other in a race to the bottom, where the nurse that wins a shift is the one willing to accept the lowest pay rate. Data the platform collects on nurses, such as credit card debt, helps it identify which nurses are more likely to accept lower pay.

A portion of the travel nurses using these apps are classified as independent contractors. They don’t receive health benefits, despite providing others with healthcare themselves.

These gig nursing platforms have been pushing for legislation that would classify the nurses who use their platforms as independent contractors. They’d be defined as different entities than existing healthcare staffing agencies, as AI Now’s study explains:

“These platforms are trying to convince policymakers that their business model is not that of a healthcare staffing agency, and that they instead should be recognized as a ‘healthcare worker platform’ or a ‘healthcare technology platform.’”

The language is similar to arguments made by Uber to Massachusetts legislators in 2024—that they’re closer to a “travel agency” than a transportation company—giving them the right to keep their drivers misclassified (a European court  saw through this argument). That defense was part of a case brought against Uber and Lyft by then-Attorney General Maura Healey, who alleged they were misclassifying their drivers.

The Classification Fight for Worker’s Rights

In exchange for a $175 million settlement with Uber and Lyft, current AG Andrea Joy Campbell dropped the case before the court could rule whether rideshare drivers count as independent contractors.

Campbell’s deal forced Uber and Lyft to abandon a similar ballot initiative to Prop. 22 in Massachusetts and afford drivers a few benefits. One of those benefits, which seemingly required the companies to pay drivers $32.50/hour, falls apart after reading the fine print.

That pay rate only applies to “active hours,” meaning it counts the time when drivers are either on their way to pick up a rider or taking them to their destination, but not the time in-between, referred to as “online working hours.”

“Time spent between trips, waiting for another ride request, or deadheading back from low-demand drop-off areas is neither compensated, nor counts towards the work time thresholds to qualify for sick time, health insurance stipends, and other benefits,” reporting from Forbes explains.

Drivers have attested online that “staying busy the entire hour is impossible due to the oversaturation of drivers.” By comparing active time to online working hours, Forbes calculated the utilization rate (the percentage of time drivers actually get paid for):

For example, if Uber pays $8 for a 12-minute trip, the driver’s pay rate per active hour would be $40 – above the mandated minimum. But if this is the only offer a driver receives and accepts over the next 48 minutes, the driver’s utilization rate would be 12/60= 20% (low!) and the gross pay per working hour would only be $8 (awful!). So, utilization rate is a critical determinant of driver earnings.

This doesn’t include the burden on drivers of paying for gas and insurance, taking another chunk out of their pay. With employee status, drivers could bargain for a contract to cement a firm minimum wage.

To their credit, Campbell’s office has kept their finger on the pulse of independent contractor misclassification. The AGO’s 2026 Labor day report released by its Fair Labor Division shows that in the last year, 1,500 workers across 60 companies were misclassified, leading to more than $2.1 million in penalties and restitution.

“When workers are misclassified as independent contractors instead of employees, they are denied basic workplace rights, including guaranteed minimum wage, overtime pay, timely compensation, accrued sick leave, and more,” Campbell’s office stated in an emailed statement to Working Mass. “Addressing this harmful practice and ensuring that every worker receives the protections they deserve is one of my top priorities.”

But until a firm decision is reached on how to classify rideshare and delivery drivers, a comprehensive answer on gig workers’ rights and the next steps organized labor will need to take will remain in limbo.

There aren’t signs that federal reclassification is on the docket anytime soon, making the state level (for now) the best way forward. Although Campbell’s settlement took a similar bill to Prop. 22 off the ballot, gig work platforms have proven they’ll spend millions to tip the scales in their favor. Gig nursing platforms aren’t introducing legislation in Massachusetts that would reclassify their business like they have in other states, but that could always change.

The conversation surrounding independent contracting finds itself in a sticky spot: many gig-workers prefer the flexibility provided by the work, and use it to supplement their income when their W-2 pay doesn’t cut it. Flexibility is attractive to workers, Dr. Wells explained, due to a lack of stable, guaranteed hours and a set schedule across the labor market. Knowing their schedules ahead of time gives workers more autonomy—scheduling a doctor’s visit or picking a child up from school becomes much easier.

“I think the reality is that there is a problem with existing labor markets in so many of these sectors and, at large, that has real purchase,” said Dr. Wells. “It has so many things at play that it means people are willing to trade all kinds of protections for the allure or the possibility of flexible schedules.”

The national minimum wage has sat at $7.25 since 2009, and the lack of universal healthcare is smothering everyday Americans in medical debt. The leading reported cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. is medical debt, and we’re the only major country without a form of universal healthcare.

A long-term pathway to ending the exploitative nature of gig work and doing away with the independent contractor classification needs to come alongside ensuring workers don’t need to take on extra work to afford basic necessities, and without the threat of medical or student debt held over their heads.

In a world where everyone is guaranteed a living wage and health benefits aren’t up to the whims of your employer, gig workers could stick with their 9 to 5 or even keep driving if that’s what they’d prefer. It may sound like a pipe dream, but the system as it stands puts the working class at a severe disadvantage. Drivers can choose to pick their main job that now pays them a living wage or stay a driver, earning a living wage and receiving the same health benefits that their other job afforded them.

As companies celebrate record profits, the workers who generate that value see none of it reflected in their own paychecks. It’s undeniable that working as an independent contractor provides unmatched levels of autonomy, but that should not come at the cost of the benefits and workplace protections afforded as the bare minimum to every other worker in the country.

“The rise of [gig nursing] is a symptom of really broken labor conditions,” Dr. Wells said.

That’s how I try to think about it. And so when people say, ‘Well, let’s fix gig nursing,’ I think, ‘No, let’s fix the conditions that gave rise to gig nursing.’

Matt Wolfinger is a data journalist and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post When Workers, Driving Customers or Saving Lives in the ER, Become Independent Contractors appeared first on Working Mass.

By Dominick C. On Sunday, September 13th, a crowd of a few dozen organizers and tenants living at 150 and 154 Belmont Ave. swelled outside their buildings. Their voices rang […]

By Andrew W. Socialism is for everyone, and education provides power to the people. That’s why every issue of Garden State Socialist features this column, Socialist Stories: a short, educational […]

In the early 1970s, when many student activists were migrating from campus to industrial jobs to promote working class radicalization, no labor film was more influential than Salt of the Earth.

This pioneering docudrama was made two decades earlier by a producer, writer, director, and several actors who were unemployable in Hollywood, due to McCarthy era-blacklisting.

This left-wing creative team recruited a cast of workers and their families from the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) to play themselves in a fictional account of a long strike at the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. 

Local 890 members knew something about red-baiting too. Shortly before their 1951 fight for better conditions and an end to wage disparities between Anglo and Chicano workers, Mine, Mill was expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), along with the left-led United Electrical Workers (UE) and west coast longshore union, the ILWU. In 

In real life, and later on screen, the key to the success of this mining community struggle was the militant participation of strikers’ wives, mothers, daughters and sisters after their own mass picketing is enjoined by a local judge.

In Salt of the Earth, this picket-line replacement strategy, which challenged and changed traditional gender roles in a socially conservative company town, is heatedly debated by film’s two lead characters. 

Blacklisted and Deported

Playing the role of Ramon Quintera, Juan Chacon, an actual IUMMSW local president, initially objects to the strike activism of his fictional wife Esperanza, played by Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas (who was deported for making the film). Other members of an entirely male and largely Latino workforce are similarly conflicted about the emergence of a vocal and empowered women’s auxiliary.

When Esperanza and her fellow female pickets are arrested, she takes her small baby behind bars with her. The resulting boisterous jail house protest—which prefigures southern civil rights and peace movement tactics in the 1960s--forces the sheriff to release them all. The miners’ subsequent defense of the Quintera family--when the company tries to evict them--becomes a turning point in the long strike which ends in a contract settlement.

Berkeley journalist and now first-time novelist Barry Bergman was among the many young radicals much inspired by this now iconic depiction of Mexican-American labor struggle.  Before Bergman relocated to California and began a long career as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, and communications specialist for UC Berkeley and numerous non-profits, he worked for several years in a copper smelter near Tucson.

That experience as a rank-and-file member of the United Steel Workers (USW)--which gobbled up the IUMMSW, after years of raiding it--led to his writing Proles. (Serving House Books). Bergman’s novel is a funny, moving, and historically accurate account of workplace “colonizing”—or “salting” as it’s called today-- told from the point of view of the author’s fictional alter-ego. 

Via a college course entitled “Celluloid and Social Change,” Simon Bussbaum learns about a film called City of Emeralds. He is captivated by its depiction of “dirt-poor Chicano miners in the Southwest” and their humble but charismatic leader, Naldo Galvin.

Art Imitates Life

Simon does further research and discovers that Galvin—like the real-life Juan Chacon in the 1970s—has become a dissident in the Steel Workers. The former strike organizer—and Salt of the Earth co-star-- is now rallying his co-workers against “a class collaborationist union which muscled its way into zinc and copper mines in the Sun Belt” by marketing itself as a labor-management partner, rather than a class struggle foe.

The bookish film buff from Queens (the author’s hometown as well) leaves anti-war politics behind for a very different blue-collar life in open shop Arizona. Arriving for his first shift at Cobra Copper Company (aka “ThreeCo”) near Turcson, Simon walks into a scene lifted from the film that inspired his turn toward the working class.

“Outside the giant garage doors that opened out from the smelter’s shell, hundreds of men clustered in small groups, coveralls gone or dangling at their waist. Some were standing, others lying on bare ground or using their hardhats for seats. A handful were shirtless, glistening in the sun. It might have been a disorderly line at the Fillmore East, save for the work clothes and industrial boots.” 

A new co-worker, a “hard-looking Chicano with a missing tooth, a Fu Manchu mustache and a cobra tattoo on his right forearm” tells Simon what’s going on.  “It’s a ‘wildcat,’”  explains Snake, who seems happy to follow the crazy "white dudes” who started it all by “waving their arms, walking out, and shouting, ‘Join us!”. 

Other hard hats in the now idle crowd are pissed off about losing a few hours pay. “Anarchists,” one grumbles. “Commies and agitators. They don’t like it here, can’t blame them for that. But you can’t strike till the contract’s up. That’s the law.”

A manager addresses the crowd with a bull-horn and repeats the same message. “This is an unlawful work stoppage. Your local union has not authorized this action, and joins us in ordering you to immediately cease and desist. This is your final warning.”

A Tactical Error?

The “cadre” organization members--who have inducted Simon into their small circle at a local radical bookstore--are among “the twelve people pegged as troublemakers and fired.” After this “tactical error,” Simon attends his first Steelworkers local union meeting. There, he encounters bureaucratic lethargy and business union routine familiar to many rank-and-file activists, then and now.

Only a smattering of members show-up—at a VFW hall with an “American flag on the pole outside the building and another hung on a wall behind the podium.” Much time is spent on the financial report and a reading of minutes from the last meeting. The biggest agenda item is the e-board’s unanimous decision “not to pursue grievance arbitration cases for employees who were terminated.”

As the union treasurer explains, this will result in “a big savings for the local because we could not have prevailed in defending an action that went against the ‘no strike’ clause in our own contract.” (“Good riddance,” blurts out the local’s business manager, “a pudgy man in a short sleeved white shirt,” who gavels the meeting to a close soon thereafter.)

Bergman’s workplace descriptions are equally on target. Some resemble the best passages in The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s fictional account of job hazards in mid-western meat-packing plants a century ago or in Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Voung’s new novel about low wage work in 21st century New England.

“The smelter, known as ‘Freako,’ was a cavernous, ramshackle Big Top featuring spark-spewing furnaces, splashing cauldrons dangled from the cranes like murderous marionettes, rapids of liquid fire tumbling down in harrowing dayglow ribbons. Danger was everywhere, lurking beneath the dull roar and the rotten eggs stench. Everything black and orange, darkness and firelight, a waking nightmare Halloween that left him in terror of any possible misstep.”

Unfortunately, the hottest shop floor issue is not the threat of being scalded to death or maimed and killed in many other ways.  It’s ThreeCo’s controversial decision to hire its first female laborer, a feisty former high school athlete, who is a half-Latino and a single mother. It’s 1973, after all, and the era of equal opportunity is dawning. 

As the fictional reincarnation of Esperanza, Samantha Tanager is not just showing that she can, in a pinch, take a man’s place on the picket-line; she’s going to join them on the shop floor, in a fire-resistant orange jump suit, aluminum hard-hat, and steel-toed boots. But the sudden arrival of a “fetching copper miner’s daughter,” as a local newspaper describes her, proves to be very triggering for Bullock. 

He’s the big, tobacco-chewing redneck with “a natural talent for cruelty” that Bussbuam is assigned to work with. Already suspicious of Simon’s rather obvious East Coast Jewishness and college boy ways, Bullock views “Tanager’s admission to the sacred sanctum of the smelter as sacrilege, a grievous affront to the Code of the Working Stiff, Nonferrous Division.” 

Besides, he believes that Samantha is a lesbian. (Spoiler alert: much to Simon’s love-struck chagrin, Bullock’s gaydar is right.)

Casual Racism

Simon’s New Left idealism is now further tested amid Freako’s “dark, depraved beauty, which reeked of musty maleness that gave rise to a loose-knit, shambling ‘esprit de corps, wrapped in a kind of casual racism and sexism so expansive, so deeply rooted, it had started to feel—Simon not being of this world, and without standing perhaps to judge his co-workers’ cultural values—like just another flavor of assholism.”

When that “assholism” takes the form of a nasty campaign by Bullock to make Tanager’s life miserable on the job, Simon’s own personal class struggle ends in a parking lot brawl between two “union brothers.” It doesn’t end well for the new hire and little resembles more heroic scuffles, between labor and management, in Salt of The Earth. 

But it does lead Bussbaum to bid blue-collar life adieu and head for the greener pastures of California. (Tanager and her female partner leave for the more tolerant Texas oasis of Austin.)

Proles was definitely not written as a how-too manual for members of the Rank-and-File Project, a present-day effort to “recruit, educate, and support a new generation of activists who will join the fight for working-class power by taking union jobs on the shop floor.” 

But the book should be required reading, in such circles anyway, due to its deft exploration of the nexus between the personal and the political. Any left-wing “salt” trying to befriend un-class conscious (and sometimes weird) co-workers, while dealing with draining night shifts, imperious managers and not much nicer union bosses, will find humorous respite in Barry Bergman’s fictional rendering of his real-life experience with the “salt of the earth” in Arizona fifty years ago.

We, the undersigned DSA chapters of the State of Minnesota, denounce and strongly condemn the escalation of xenophobic rhetoric that the Trump administration is intentionally directing at our communities. The President’s recent othering and dehumanizing of Minnesota's Somali communities encourages violence, both from his supporters and the violent and unaccountable national security state.

Minnesota is stronger because of our Somali and other immigrant communities. Immigrants are our friends, co-workers, teachers, community leaders, and more. As Minnesotans, we know who we are and we won’t fall for dishonest actors spreading disinformation and hateful, divisive rhetoric about our immigrant neighbors. No Minnesotan should feel unsafe or unwelcome because of their faith, heritage, or background. We stand in solidarity with our Somali and immigrant neighbors, and the Minnesota 15 who are facing retaliatory punishment for standing alongside our community. 

This past winter, armed agents of the fascist federal government attempted to tear down our communities by force. But Minnesotans’ depth of organized resistance cannot be dismantled. We have organized by the thousands across race, class, and faith to effectively defend our neighbors and communities. We built a decentralized network based on the collective awareness and shared vision that we all deserve to live, thrive, and be protected in our places of work, worship, and homes. We have shown the world that the vast majority of Americans will not tolerate our communities being turned into high tech laboratories of surveillance and occupation. We have shown the world that we will not accept having our hardworking neighbors terrorized and disappeared out of their homes. 

In response to our show of street power, fascist politicians are once again using lies about immigrants in an attempt to incite fear, violence, and division. They think this tactic will help them win the upcoming midterm elections, but we are united in our vision for justice, liberation, and a better world. They fear our movements because we are powerful, principled, and we are angry. 

As the Minnesota chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, we encourage our members and our neighbors to keep showing up for one another. Join your neighborhood group, host a community dinner, check in with a friend, get plugged into rapid response, and of course, join DSA and organize your community!

Stay strong. Solidarity and sincerity forever.

SIGNED: Twin Ports DSA, Twin Cities DSA, Brainerd Lakes Area DSA, St. Cloud DSA, Red River Valley DSA, Southeast Minnesota DSA

Policy gains are unlikely so long as Trump holds the presidency — but a historically large socialist bloc in Congress could demand changes to how the House is run that would shape the body’s post-Trump trajectory.

The post Socialists in Congress Should Hold the Speakership Hostage appeared first on Democratic Left.

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On November 3rd, voters will go to the polls and face nine ballot questions, some of which will have significant impacts on working people in Massachusetts. At the October General Meeting, RVDSA members approved the following slate of positions: Vote Yes on 1 to expand public records laws to apply to the Governor, State House, […]

by Vincent Lima

In our September General Meeting, members of ROC DSA wisely rejected a proposal that would restrict their right to vote on certain key decisions. The rejected proposal appeared to be part of a broader movement to shrink the voting base of DSA.

Our process for considering applications for the endorsement of candidates for elected office has been tweaked from time to time, but the main steps have remained:

1. The candidate submits an application signed by a certain number of ROC DSA members. The application includes a questionnaire. The signature requirement signifies some baseline level of support and at least hints at the candidate’s ability to collect signatures on a petition. In reality, the chapter does not passively await applications, but the application is what formally kicks off the process.
2. The Electoral Working Group vets the applicant. The group is open to all members. Thus, all members can engage on this level, but no member is required to do so. The EWG makes a recommendation regarding endorsement and forwards the package to the Steering Committee.
3. A candidate forum is scheduled. Every member is welcome to listen to and interact with the candidate. This process should include deliberation. In other words, members should be able to discuss their thoughts about the candidacy in light of the forum and in light of the chapter’s broader strategic goals.
4. The Steering Committee, which is the chapter’s elected political leadership, makes a recommendation.
5. A ballot is sent to all members to vote Yes or No on the endorsement. Crucially, the ballot includes links to the candidate’s application, the minutes of the candidate forum, and the recommendations of the EWG and Steering Committee.

The step that has been made contentious is the last. The proposal was to restrict voting on the endorsement to members who attended the deliberative meeting. This proposal to restrict the vote is made in the name of democracy.

I will turn to Marx for a moment—not because he is necessary for this argument but because some advocates for limiting the franchise claim to be Marxists and argue that a universal franchise is a mockery of democracy; it is merely “bourgeois democracy.”

Marx appreciated “bourgeois democracy” for extending the franchise (the right to vote) but noted accurately that not everyone has the time and inclination to engage in the democratic process.

“Universal Suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class,” Marx wrote in the New-York Daily Tribute in 1852. In Capital, vol. 1 (1867; trans. Paul Reitter, 2024), he added (p. 235),

A worker self-evidently lives [their] whole life as nothing but labor-power. Thus, by nature and by right, all [their] disposable time is labor-time that belongs to capital’s process of self-valorization. Time spent on human and intellectual growth or social functions and interactions or the free play of vital physical and mental powers, or even time spent resting on Sundays—it’s all just a waste!

Lenin, in State and Revolution (1917), elaborated: “Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that they ‘cannot be bothered with democracy,’ and ‘cannot be bothered with politics’; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”

Thanks to organized labor and popular movements, many of us have more time for “public and political life” than the workers described above. Still, to say, “If you can’t make the meeting, you can’t vote,” is not to take a Marxist position.

The counterargument is that democracy is not just about voting; it is more about process than outcome. Indeed, it is crucially important to provide every opportunity for members to participate in the process. But voting is not a reward for participation; it is an element of participation.

How do we make it possible for comrades who have to engage in social production and reproduction to participate in the democratic process? Or, in normal-people language, if you have to make a living and take care of yourself or your dependents—by going to school, caring for a child, looking after an elder, going on vacation, or whatever you will—do we tell you, “Too bad; you are canceled”?

How do we include everyone? Our hybrid meetings are a great step. You can’t attend in person? Attend remotely and save the time and expense it would take to commute, or participate while keeping an eye on the baby.

Our Slack debates are not great; they often consist of walls of text dominated mostly by a handful of men with time on their hands. But Slack is still an available venue for debate.

Offline conversations, too, are part of member engagement. Say I pick up the phone and contact a fellow member to say, “Mary is running and I think we should back her. What do you think? OK. Don’t forget to vote when the ballot comes!” That is exactly what we should be doing to involve people in our campaigns!

Showing up to meetings is but one form of involvement. I do it. Maybe you do it. But it’s not for everyone. Some members may not have the time, as discussed above. Others may just not want to do it. Maybe listening to another speech “in favor” is more than they can bear. Maybe Robert’s Rules get under their skin and all they want to do is knock on doors and talk to their neighbors about socialism. I embrace them and welcome them and insist that they have a vote.

The post Expand or Contract? On Member Voting Rights first appeared on Rochester Red Star.