Last year, more than 70,000 workers walked off their jobs in New Zealand – the highest number of people on strike since the late 1980s. The reasons for the strike wave are political and economic.
Seattle shipyard workers in 1919 as they walk off the job.
Museum of History & Industry
Two labor negotiation experts explain how a 2015 dispute that seemed intractable got resolved, with important lessons for the partial government shutdown.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the picket line at the Scripto plant in Atlanta, Ga., December, 1964.
AP
Most people think of Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights leader who led the nation in addressing the evils of systemic racism. What many don’t know is that he also championed labor unionism.
Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) members stand on picket line in Halifax in October 2018 after a call for a series of rotating 24-hour strikes.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ted Pritchard
Ordering Canada’s postal workers back on the job may hurt Justin Trudeau. CUPW could direct its anger directly at the Trudeau Liberals ahead of the 2019 federal election.
Twenty-nine-year-old Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman to be elected to Congress, talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Striking 20th-century garment workers wore their best dresses and hats to send a message that they had the right to be taken seriously and have their voices heard.
Canada Post workers walk the picket line during a rotating strike in Halifax on Nov. 13, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Ottawa has ordered postal workers back on the job, but is it constitutional? We should be circumspect about intervening in the bargaining process and skeptical about claims it’s in the public good.
Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has not fulfilled agreements it made with academic staff in Nigeria’s public universities.
EPA-EFE/ Felipe Trueba
Government remains the major funder of universities. But it hasn’t met its obligations even though many institutions face serious infrastructure decay.
Barbed wire surrounds the the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Valuing the skills and contributions of our educators and reversing the high rates of turnover is critical and can only be achieved through fair pay and rewards.
Moliere Dimanche would use anything he could scrounge up – pieces of folders, the back of commissary forms, old letters – as canvases.
Moliere Dimanche
From solitary confinement, Moliere Dimanche started drawing on anything he could find. The result was a series of fantastical, allegorical images that depict abuse, racism and profound isolation.
TGI Friday’s employees are joined by McStrikers during a demo in Covent Garden.
Wil Chivers
A new generation of workers are joining trade unions and using social media to hold big employers to account.
Academic freedom therefore encompasses the freedom to research the topics we choose, to draw the conclusions we find compelling from the evidence and analysis we undertake, and to speak publicly on those matters.
Shutterstock
Academic freedom is routinely recognised as an important principle that is enshrined in a range of governance policies - but staff at one university say it is under threat.
Strikes are a common sight in South Africa. Data helps to put them in context.
Nic Bothma/EPA
Emmanuel Macron is driving through his neoliberal agenda by relying on French police forces renowned for their violence against ethnic minority citizens, protestors and migrants.
A strike around a specific employment issue can easily develop a momentum of its own and become a catalyst for a much wider expression of dissatisfaction.