Long Island Red Rose

New York workers held Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strikes throughout December to challenge the exploitative practices of Amazon and Starbucks and push for better terms at the bargaining table.

Striking is one of many activities that workers are legally entitled to under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). What makes a ULP strike different from an “economic strike” is further protection under the NLRA. Workers are entitled to return to their jobs after ULP strikes, whereas in an economic strike—for higher wages or other direct economic concessions—workers are not as explicitly protected. 

Although workers across the state demand higher wages, better working conditions, and stronger protections, they can hold ULP strikes over these concerns due to misconduct from management over concerted activities, like refusing to bargain in good faith. For corporate albatrosses like Amazon and Starbucks, that list of ULPs is nearly limitless. 

Amazon Teamsters authorized a strike at seven locations across the United States after the company missed their proposed Dec. 15 deadline for contract negotiations. Workers at the DBK14 distribution center in Maspeth began picketing Dec. 19, followed by a walkout at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island at midnight Dec. 20. Both groups maintained continuous picket lines through midnight Dec. 24.  

On some of the coldest days of this year, laborers and allies braved the snow and wind, the ignorant opinions of aspiring capitalists and anxious last-minute Christmas shoppers, and in the case of Amazon workers in Maspeth, - the barbarous arm of corporate oligarchy - otherwise known as the NYPD.  

On the first day of the Maspeth picket, a Teamsters organizer and an Amazon driver who joined the picket line were unjustly arrested. Both returned to the picket within hours. The Teamsters secured a temporary restraining order against the NYPD for the duration of the strike. 

Several days into picketing, a drainage pipe outside the warehouse began releasing freezing water, flooding the sidewalks where picketers were walking and spilling into the streets. Striking workers accused Amazon of deliberately opening the pipe to drive them away.

On December 22nd, Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) went on strike at locations across New York City and Long Island, joining Starbucks workers nationwide with pickets for three days at select stores. The pickets lasted through Christmas Eve, with other unionized stores, including some on Long Island, also closing on Christmas Eve. Workers urged customers to boycott all Starbucks locations during the strike.

Starbucks workers authorized this ULP strike in response to the company—whose CEO Brian Niccol makes over $50,000 per hour—returning to bargaining this past month without making meaningful movement on proposed wage increases for baristas. This was backtracking on their commitment to reach agreements for a contract by the end of this year and follow many unresolved ULP cases at stores across the country. 

Starbucks Workers United members have spent this past year hard at work nailing down the specifics of the contract and escalating the pressure to win after the company stalled the process for years. SBWU’s efforts are especially inspiring given how tough it is to organize food service, where high turnover and low representation rates have stifled efforts for decades. Long Island DSA members joined workers for SBWU’s “Red for Bread” canvassing campaign, giving fliers to customers, asking them to support union baristas, and reaching out to unorganized stores.

Ultimately, there's still a long fight ahead for these workers, and anxiety around the uncertain future of the NLRA under the Trump administration means a long fight for us all. The past few weeks have shown us what building worker power looks like. When companies only care about their bottom line, workers need disruptions to demonstrate that their labor generates all that value. Along the way, it’s our duty as socialists to stand in solidarity with workers and push collective organization until worker power is absolute across the globe.

Deportations Hit Decade-High in '24, Surpassing Trump-Era Record

From the same party that decried children in cages and held photoshoots in front of tent city shelters, deportations reached a 10-year high in the fiscal year 2024 under the Biden administration, surpassing the Trump-era peak in 2019, according to a government report.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported more than 271,000 immigrants in the 2024 fiscal year. It is the highest number since 2014 when the Obama administration deported 316,000 people.

Border agents arrested roughly 82% of those deported. ICE deportations rose from 72,000 in fiscal year 2022 to 143,000 in fiscal year 2023. The figures come despite Biden’s 2021 pledge to pause deportations.

Under Trump, the US carried out 1.5 million deportations during his four years in office. In the fiscal year 2019, ICE deported 267,000 people, the highest number during his administration. 

Trump has promised to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history once back in office, which includes using the military.

About 11 million undocumented immigrants lived in the United States as of 2022, per the American Immigration Council.

Oligarchs Gone Wild

Elon Musk used his considerable influence and wealth to undermine a bipartisan government funding proposal aimed at averting a shutdown, playing a key role in its collapse while being as annoying as possible.

While Congress eventually reached a last-minute deal on Dec. 21 to keep the government open until March 14, Musk garnered attention for leveraging his platform to sway lawmakers. His involvement hinted at the political clout he plans to wield over the next four years.

Musk, true to his obnoxious style, spread false claims on X, including misinformation about congressional salaries, stadium funding, and bioweapon labs. Fact-checkers swiftly debunked these misleading statements, sparking chaos.

The original funding proposal, which had support from both parties, faltered after Musk and former President Donald Trump expressed opposition. Musk, a major financial supporter of Trump, spent $250 million to back the president-elect’s campaign.

In response, House Republicans introduced a 116-page plan to fund the government, backed by Trump and Musk, who has emerged as a key GOP ally heading into the 2024 election. However, despite immense pressure and primary threats from Trump’s camp, the plan failed to pass on the House floor because of resistance within the Republican Party.

Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are set to co-lead Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory board, a new initiative aimed at slashing regulations and government spending.

LI DSA Merch Store

We have a merch store! All proceeds go to UNRWA and local organizations supporting Palestine and Palestinians through the end of the year!.

Current apparel includes t-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, and multiple fun mugs. Most items available in multiple colors and sizes.

Check out our Bonfire store here: www.bonfire.com/store/long-island-dsa/

Note: As a social welfare org. 501(c)4, All purchases or donations to LI DSA are NOT tax deductible.

Is greedflation causing you food insecurity?  Community Solidarity operates five mutual aid foodshares on Long Island every single week; free vegetarian groceries for all in need, no questions asked, and volunteers welcome. 

Under Capitalism, the owning class continues to maximize profits over people, through price gouging, shrinkflation, and obscene amounts of intentional waste that keep prices high. The working class in turn must spend a greater and greater portion of their wages just to survive. 

Food is a right.  No one should go to bed hungry or have to choose between buying groceries, paying for prescriptions, or affording rent.

Contact them at communitysolidarity.org for locations/times.

Southampton Sues Shinnecock Over Construction

The Town of Southampton is suing the Shinnecock Tribal Nation’s trustees over the construction of a travel plaza in Hampton Bays. 

The lawsuit, filed in December, claims the plaza, which includes a gas station, violates zoning laws and creates a public nuisance. The lawsuit alleges the tribe didn’t get permission to clear the land or install underground gas tanks. 

Due to federal rules on tribal sovereignty, the town cannot sue the tribe directly. Lance Gumbs, vice chairman of the Shinnecock Council of Trustees, told Newsday they will continue construction and that the town has no authority over tribal lands.

The plaza is being built on Newtown Road and has faced opposition from residents. The town is seeking legal advice and trying to halt the project while also asking for legal fees.

The plaza is near electronic billboards owned by the tribe. A recent court ruling required the tribe to shut them down after a legal challenge from the state, but the tribe says both the billboards and plaza will help generate additional income. 

Nearly 60% of the Shinnecock people live below the poverty line, whereas the average household income in Southampton town is $194,861, with a poverty rate of 8.2% 

Kathy Hochul Wants You to Think of the Poor CEOs

Whatever you think of Luigi Mangione, Brian Thompson, or the American healthcare system, even the most milquetoast reading of the events of Dec. 4 sees it plainly that Thompson’s assassination was a hot flash of decades of systemic discontent with how American medical resources are qualified and doled out. 

Concede all possible sympathy to Thompson, all possible condemnation to Mangione, and eschew all personal responsibility for individual roles in a system that causes thousands upon thousands of preventable deaths among the poor and even the pretty-not-poor of this nation, and you are still left with the inescapable notion that our healthcare system is deeply, deeply sick. 

Unless you’re Kathy Hochul. If you’re Hochul, you think of the poor CEOs.

To the bemusement of millions, the New York State Governor’s most visible response to Thompson’s assassination was to hold a “therapy session” for the Empire State’s healthcare company executives. The branding itself is beyond laughable. Maybe they just had health speak on their minds, but the last thing the fabulously wealthy apex dwellers of corporate America need is a publicly funded vent sesh.

If this were just stupid, it would be one thing. But it’s far worse.

The content of the therapy session, far from being stupid, is actively revolting. The governor, with nearly 200 members of the state’s business gentry on the phone, discussed sharing law enforcement resources with corporate security teams. Publicly-funded data collection on blameless New Yorkers across the state funneled directly into the arms of the private sector. A merging of corporate and state power so complete that to call it fascism feels redundant. 

Instead of exerting any political pressure to fix or even band-aid the root causes of Thompson’s death and the deaths of enough New Yorkers to fill a small town every year, Hochul, unprompted, will start running oppsec for some of the wealthiest institutions on the planet. The thought of this much data changing hands in the healthcare field at all should already raise a million red flags with “HIPAA” on them. 

What would make someone interesting to health insurance security? Mangione was radicalized by his own experience with a botched back surgery. Are we now to expect that government spooks tracking us like wild game could be just as much a consequence of a procedure as chronic pain? 

But there’s no reason to think these practices would stop at a mere expansion of the surveillance state—another wing added to the panopticon Hochul has forced New Yorkers into at every possible moment. It’s absurd to think that capitalists armed with additional data relevant to public health matters wouldn’t mine it for maximum profit. 

All that aside, the greatest offense of Hochul’s latest moment of evil is that against the sanctity of human life itself. Again, we have it pushed down our throats that our so-called representatives equate net worth to human worth. 

A whole state apparatus can bend to cover the blind spot that leads to one death at the Heart of Capital, while at the same time shrugging coldly while health insurers and landlords and bosses and corporate polluters and planetary arsonists condemn us in our multitudes to slow and painful ends. This cold capitalist reality is apparent to anyone living in it, but we can’t even be spared the boundless indignity of having it rubbed in our faces. 

Hochul, who was supposed to be less of a scumbag than Cuomo, who was supposed to be less of a scumbag than Patterson, who was supposed to be less of a scumbag than Spitzer and so on, is a scumbag. Beholden to nobody, regardless of the individual, the government of the polity that contains the bleeding core of global finance will always maintain as its one immovable object the primacy of scumbaggery. 

Nobody is coming to save us from inside the halls of power. We have to do it ourselves.

The Mangione Effect