Bill Finkle will brave COVID-19 and drive around Kansas City all day Tuesday, giving free rides to seniors who need a lift to the polls. Finkle passionately believes both in giving citizens every opportunity to vote and in properly counting every ballot cast. Yet while ordinary citizens...
Nick Miclaus realized just how much his Goodyear colleagues appreciated rigorous COVID-19 safety measures when they started recommending them to friends and family working at other companies. Yet Miclaus, the United Steelworkers (USW) safety coordinator for Goodyear plants across the U.S., knows that his efforts to...
Tom Michels worked 31 years at LTV’s iron ore mine in northern Minnesota—and had already started making retirement plans—when the company’s bankruptcy wiped out his job and most of his hard-earned pension. Michels took a series of odd jobs to make ends meet until he became...
Jackie Anklam realized that Donald Trump was failing the American people when her father died of complications of COVID-19 in a Michigan hospital that ran short of personal protective equipment (PPE) for its workers. What outrages her more is that, several months later, Trump not only...
As a union griever, Jason Haynes fought constant battles against employers ever ready to cheat workers out of overtime pay and other hard-earned benefits. He’s also seen firsthand how greedy corporations and their Republican cronies relentlessly erode labor protections at the state and national levels, making...
Robert B. “Bull” Bulman stood up to FreightCar America because of the poor pay and hazardous working conditions at its Cherokee, Ala., factory. But the company savagely retaliated with threats to close the plant and relocate to Mexico. Then, after thwarting the union drive, FreightCar America...
Bob Kemper recalls the hope Donald Trump intentionally stirred in 2016 by pledging to revive manufacturing and keep factories busy producing steel, aluminum and other materials for a major infrastructure overhaul. Kemper knows that seductive rhetoric won over many Americans, including some of his co-workers at U.S. Steel’s...
Kristi Serwin knows that Americans clamoring for social justice and decent treatment of working people can correct the nation’s course only with a fair, accessible election. But she’s also observed the nation’s dire shortages of poll workers result in long lines and force the closure of...
American Red Cross workers travel from one community to another conducting the blood drives that save countless lives in emergency departments and operating rooms. But they struggle to perform that vital work while keeping themselves safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many health care employers, the...
Joel Buchanan’s stomach turned when he watched poll workers deny ballots to Latinx voters ostensibly because the names and addresses on their driver’s licenses didn’t match those on election records. And his blood boiled when election officials closed polling stations in poor neighborhoods, deliberately disenfranchising citizens...