The Green Party supports working people

From our platform

The right to organize unions, bargain freely and strike when necessary is being destroyed by employers and their representatives in government. Today, nearly one out of ten workers involved in union organizing drives is illegally fired by employers who wage a campaign of fear, threats, and slick propaganda to keep workers from exercising a genuinely free choice.

And as union membership falls, so do the wages of all working people, union and non-union alike. We support efforts to overcome these legal handicaps, especially in the South and Southwest where the laws are most hostile. We also must dedicate ourselves to fighting for a complete overhaul of this country's labor laws

The Green Party supports the irreducible right of working people, without hindrance, to form a union and to bargain collectively with their employer. This right was guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.


 

  • Rally on Tuesday, August 24 at 10:00 a.m. at Mcclinton Park in Atlantic City followed by a Boardwalk March to Kennedy Park!

  • Hoffman/Warburton Campaign to Attend!

The Hoffman for Governor / Warburton for Lieutenant Governor campaign stands in support of the casino workers in demanding a safe and smoke free workplace. Doctors have known for decades that smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer. 9 out of 10 lung cancer deaths are caused by cigarette smoking or second hand smoke (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Report). Thousands die every year from secondhand smoke. The link is clear and well documented. Secondhand smoke kills. Outside of cancer, secondhand smoke is also responsible for effects ranging from nasal irritation, ear infections, asthma, reproductive issues, coronary heart disease, smoke, and heart attack.


  • No Strikebreakers in Connecticut!

Nearly 4,000 unionized healthcare workers at 33 nursing home and extended care facilities in Connecticut have voted to go on strike on Friday, May 14, if their demands for better wages and safer working conditions are not met. Another 6 facilities will go out on strike on May 28. They are members of District 1199 SEIU: only a few months ago these essential workers were being praised to the skies for their commitment and sacrifice, caring for elderly and disabled people in the places where Covid-19 has hit the hardest and been by far the most deadly. Signs thanking front-line healthcare workers for putting themselves at risk are still seen on front lawns all over Connecticut.


SAN FRANCISCO – Ever since the historic labor movement culminating in Chicago's 1886 Haymarket Riot and the commemorating of May Day as International Workers Day, capitalists have pushed back against workers' rights and safety, and their ability to organize.

Other moments in history brought the labor movements' struggle to intersect other critical movements such as when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis to support the African American sanitation workers' efforts to unionize and their strike in protest of low wages, unsafe work conditions, and their abusive white bosses. The picket signs they carried stated the simple message: “I Am A Man.”


  • By Beth Scroggin, chair of the Green Party of Chester County and co-chair of the Green Party of PA.

PHILADELPHIA – Happy May Day! Celebrated in various ways throughout hundreds of years, May Day joyfully welcomes the change of season. My inner child looks forward to the May Day celebration at my daughter’s Waldorf School, which includes maypole dancing and a wooden boat race. My activist side, however, observes the significance and necessity of the coinciding International Workers’ Day. 


Thank you to the organizers of today’s march and rally for allowing me to speak. I represent the Green Party, an independent political party. The Green Party often co-sponsors rallies such as these, joining in the fight for better working conditions, but we rarely get invited to share the podium because of deep seated fears of independent politics. Politics that doesn’t go along with the status quo, the two-party system or in this city -- let’s be real -- a one-party system.


PITTSBURGH – As President Biden visits Pittsburgh on March 31st to promote his “Build Back Better” campaign, Pittsburgh region organizers, advocates, and activists publicly remember many years of broken promises by leaders and elected officials of the Democratic Party, decades in which the rhetoric of justice and human rights diverged wildly from the bipartisan realities of endless war that devours our resources and has displaced millions of refugees.

We remember the bipartisan abandonment of workers and unions in service to corporate donors. We refuse to forget the bipartisan building of the mass incarceration system and enablement of police violence against people of color. We remember that both parties accepted massive campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and richly repaid the favors with trillions of dollars of direct subsidies and deregulation threatening our very future existence as a species.


Salem, WV – A Resolution in Support for OVEC Unionization

WHEREAS, the employed majority of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) has voted to form a union under the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to advocate for improved workplace conditions;


  • ICE Out of NJ Speak Out!

TRENTON, NJ – We had great support for last month's solidarity event. Tomorrow we will be hosting two events with our YES-Young Eco-Socialists Caucus. First, in solidarity with Alabama Amazon Workers and then only two miles away ICE Out of NJ Speak Out! We as a party have signed onto and support the March 2o "International's Day of Solidarity With Alabama Amazon Workers & Against Union Busting on World Day Against Racism."


The Green Party of Philadelphia (GPoP) officially endorses and will participate in the national day of action on Saturday, March 20 in support of the Bessemer Alabama Amazon Workers as they take on a courageous, historic vote to form a union.

Starting at 2:00 p.m., there will be a rally and march from the union-busting law firm Morgan and Lewis at 17th and Market Streets to Whole Foods.


PITTSBORO, NC – Over the past several weeks, the North Carolina Green Party has been active in supporting the Bessemer, Alabama Amazon warehouse worker vote to organize under the representation of the Retail, Wholesale Department Store Workers Union (RWDSU). This potentially historic campaign, nicknamed “Organize #BAmazon”, began as a bold effort by predominantly black workers who first formed the “Bamazon Workers Union”; it is the first Amazon unionization vote in over six years and could become Amazon’s first organized facility in the United States. A “YES” vote victory would have a tremendous symbolic impact and could change momentum in the largely unorganized US South by showing everyday people, nationally and internationally, what truly is possible when workers unite.