he Valley Labor Report has been keeping an eye on so-called “School Choice” efforts and motions by lawmakers to privatize schools, and we have not kept silent on our strong opposition to these efforts, as we believe that school privatization is a deeply flawed education system built on greed, segregation, control, and more. One thing…
Articles
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Birmingham Writers Walk Out After Three Years of Bad Faith Negotiations
en workers at Hearst Magazine in Birmingham, Alabama, staged a walkout recently in protest of bad faith negotiations. These workers successfully voted to unionize in 2020, joining up with the Writer’s Guild of America East, but claim that, since then, they have been stuck in “negotiation hell” with their employer, who has consistently and intentionally…
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7 Years Later, Hyundai Supplier is Penalized for a Workers Death
midst allegations of child labor, mismanagement, and racism, Hyundai’s supply chain in Alabama just can’t seem to “catch a break” as they are now facing penalization for the death of a worker on the shop floor. But to demonstrate just how much employers can get away with, this citation comes 7 years after the death…
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What 42,000 Disney Workers Won in their Tentative Agreement
hortly after rallying together to reject their employer’s so-called “best offer” (estimates are that the offer was rejected by 96%) Disney workers have won big in a new tentative agreement, marking a victory for the labor movement in an anti-union state (Florida). McKenna Schueler, Florida-based freelance journalist and reporter for Orlando Weekly joined Jacob on…
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“66 People Have Died in Alabama Prisons Since We Last Spoke” – Alabama Reporter on the State’s Prisons
t is fairly common knowledge by this point that Alabama’s prison system is among the worst in the country, not only in terms of mass incarceration and stringent parole rates, but also the horrific and even lethal conditions of the prison facilities themselves. Journalist John H. Glenn joined The Valley Labor Report last week to…
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Alabama Politicians Want to MICROCHIP Parolees
his strange move to consider microchipping parolees was kicked off by representative Prince Chestnut, a democrat, proposing a bill with some urgency before the legislative session began, during a house judiciary committee meeting on March 22. The bill was to ban microchipping of employees by employers within the state. At face value, this doesn’t seem like…
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Advocates visit Alabama lawmakers to urge support for Medicaid expansion
edicaid expansion is an issue deeply relevant to working Alabamians, from the hundreds of thousands caught in the healthcare coverage gap to the many more who stand to gain from the potential economic impact. The Valley Labor Report will continue to provide coverage of the important fight to expand Medicaid in Alabama. Critical to that…
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Why did Huntsville school bus drivers unionize?
e broke the news a couple weeks ago that Huntsville City School bus drivers are unionizing with the Teamsters; their organizing comes after a vote among the drivers that led to a blowout of 131 yes to 6 no. While the fact that they are unionizing is important in itself, it’s just as important to…
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23,000 New Jobs: The Economic Impact of Medicaid Expansion
ften left out of discussions about Medicaid Expansion in Alabama are the positive effects that expanding the healthcare service would have not just on individuals but on the economy as a whole. Alabama would likely see a major boom in the job market as new opportunities open up for employment. Debbie Smith is the campaign…
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“Not what I would call bold:” Analysis of the Alabama House Democrats Legislative Agenda
emocrats in the Alabama House of Representatives held a press conference on March 6, when they unveiled their legislative agenda. The AL House Democratic Caucus is calling their legislative agenda the “Plan for Prosperity” and if they said it once, they said it 100 times that it is a “pro-growth” agenda. If you read the…
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What does “Accountability” really mean in Alabama?
ith the passage of the Alabama Accountability Act (AAA) in 2013, Alabama joined a growing trend of states pursuing policies that have done nothing but undermine public schools. Done under the guise of improving schools, the true goal of the legislature was to privatize the public system. To that end, the Alabama Accountability Act authorized…
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“I haven’t seen much of it:” Executive Director of Alabama Arise Skeptical of School Privatization Passing
here has been a lot of talk about “school privatization” in recent years as certain politicians seem to be amping up attempts to push U.S. education in that direction, but it is a wildly unpopular concept, as far as teachers and student-parents are concerned. This resistance, however, has not stopped or even slowed down attempts…