Red Hot Summer
Session #2 (Labor Track): Dispelling misconceptions about unions and understanding your “self-interest.”
- Learn the basics about what unions are and common misconceptions dispelled by the bosses.
- Industry and regional breakouts: discuss your motivations for joining this program and organizing your co-workers.
Handouts: (1) your legal rights in the union, (2) your legal rights on the job
About YDSA’s Red Hot Summer
We are in the midst of the greatest surge in the American labor movement in the 21st century. This year, 350,000 UPS Teamsters are ramping up to strike. Alongside this major action, hundreds of new unions and campaigns for worker empowerment have sparked across the country. In the past two years alone, undergraduate workers at over 20 universities have started union drives. YDSA and DSA have played a central role in organizing workers in workplaces previously considered unorganizable. Now, we need to keep up the momentum.
Red Hot Summer includes two distinct tracks so you can get the right labor training for your current conditions:
Labor organizing track
- For people who will be working during the duration of Red Hot Summer (June 19 – July 28) OR who will be working in the fall and have a list of their co-workers available.
- Participants in this track will actively organize their coworkers during the trainings and get active support and feedback from experienced labor organizers.
- We will have facilitators from Starbucks, Amazon, Aramark, graduate unions, undergraduate unions, and restaurants. If you aren’t in these industries, sign up anyways and we will try our best to find you a facilitator.
Solidarity track
- For people without summer jobs or in already unionized workplaces.
- Participants will learn how labor can fight for reproductive justice, Palestinian liberation, a strong Teamsters contract, and police and prison abolition.