Last Week in Southern Labor

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

obs To Move America, a “strategic policy center that works to transform public spending and corporate behavior” (according to their website), recently put out an in-depth report on job quality at manufacturing facilities in Alabama and Mississippi. And not only did this report find that job quality is poor, but work-life balance is also virtually…

labama’s grocery tax has been the subject of discussion and debate quite a bit, especially since the start of the Pandemic. Year-after-year growing inflation has been strangling the working class, not least of all here in the Yellowhammer State, and so proposals to cut grocery tax have been put forth in an effort to bring…

ocketCityReckoning.com — a website that just went live this past week — contains explosive allegations against Huntsville City Schools (HCS) and its leadership, including allegations of abuse and coverup, corruption and profiteering, mismanagement, and much more. And according to the locals behind the incriminating website, “this is just the beginning,” as tips are reportedly trickling…

would give us a solid A-,” was the response given by Robyn Hyden, executive director of Alabama Arise, when asked by TVLR host Jacob Morrison on last week’s show how she would grade Alabama’s expenditure of the ARPA funding. “Especially for [the second] round of funding.” Her take may come as a surprise given the…

everal Alabama legislators Thursday appeared resigned to a $300 million jump in the price of a prison under construction in Elmore County. The Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority (ACIFA) this week voted to increase maximum funding for the prison from $625 million to $975 million, an increase of 57% that state officials blame on inflation…

rofessional spring football is heating up, with the revived XFL’s season already underway and the USFL opening its season next month. Now, XFL players seek to follow in the footsteps of their brothers in the USFL and form a union. According to a March 10 release from the United Steelworkers, XFL players “have filed a…