“The World Depends On Us”: Our Favorite Labor Stories of 2023

Today, we have a round up of our favorite stories we’ve published in 2023, brought to you by Workday Magazine editor Sarah Lazare.

“The world depends on us, on our labor. And we have the right to decide what kind of world it’s going to be.”

As we enter 2024, I reflect on this quote from the late Leo Robinson, Black longshoreman and leader in the ILWU, who played a key role in organizing Local 10’s 1984 boycott of goods shipped from apartheid South Africa. 

We face a world beset with cruel injustice, from the harms of human-made climate change to mass displacement crises in Congo and Sudan to the horrific treatment of migrants and refugees here in the United States to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, which has killed 20,000 Palestinians. 

US workers, themselves, are under attack, facing historically low union density, the fissuring of workplaces, aggressive union busting campaigns, and soaring inequality. 

But at the same time, workers are ascendant: In the United States, union enthusiasm is surging, as are rank-and-file union movements for militancy and democracy. It’s no coincidence that the UAW, now helmed by reform challenger Shawn Fain, not only won significant gains in its strike against the ‘Big Three’ Automakers, but is also making plans to organize plants across the country, and now speaking out in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. This union is joined by growing numbers of working people in the United States who oppose Israel’s bloodshed, with more and more unions (though not all) demanding a ceasefire, their members and elected officers issuing statements, taking to the streets, and lobbying elected officials.

In Minnesota, we are seeing a cross-sectoral campaign to win broad social demands, backed by 13 unions, workers’ centers, and community groups, which is expected to escalate this spring. And there are plenty of other contract battles ahead. The struggle for workers to “decide what kind of world it’s going to be” is being waged on Amazon warehouse floors and in UPS trucks, on auto assembly lines and construction sites, in hospitals and grocery stores, in the informal economy and among incarcerated laborers, among the unemployed and excluded. 

At Workday Magazine, we try to remain sober about the challenges and overwhelming power these workers are up against, while holding on to the hope that comes with ...