2023 was a big year for the labor movement, and all that energy and militancy has shown no sign of dissipating. Now, 2024 has the potential to bring even more key victories for the working class if we continue to organize, fight, and stand in solidarity with one another. We’ve got our work cut out for us, of course, but when has that ever not been the case? As Teen Vogue’s resident labor columnist, I’ve got to tell you that I’m feeling awfully hopeful about our chances.
I also think we all deserve some time to rest, recharge, and prepare for the battles to come. Not every worker will get to enjoy the privilege of a holiday break, though, and they deserve an extra dose of solidarity, empathy, and respect. Plenty will still have to clock in on federal holidays like Christmas and New Year’s Day, and no amount of Yuletide spirit or awkward work parties can make up for a bad boss, an unfair wage, or an unsafe work environment. Only collective worker power and a union can change that.–anyone who’s successfully fought to do so knows that the best New Year’s resolution of all is to organize your workplace this year. Even if you love your job, unless you have the protection of a union contract, all the good things about it can disappear without warning—and your employer has no incentive to change the bad things. (This is true for all states unless you’re in Montana. Yikes.)
Every worker deserves the protection and benefits a union can win, and the U.S. labor movement needs to work overtime next year to reach each and every potential new member.
That means all of us need to pitch in and keep the momentum of the past few years going! Encourage your coworkers to ask you questions about the labor movement. Talk to your work friends about what’s happening in your workplace. Ask them how they feel about unions, and come ready to dispel any anti-union myths they may have encountered. See how they feel about the recent high-profile contract gains made by the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, or ask if they’ve seen Starbucks Workers United’s call to avoid buying Starbucks gift cards until the company stops trying to bust their union. Have an organizing conversation under the mistletoe. And if your workplace has a gift-giving tradition or you were already planning to pick up something special for a coworker this year, use it as an opportunity to give a pro-labor present!
Every year, the country’s largest labor federation, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), publishes its Union-Made Holiday Gift Guide, and every year, I scour it for gift ideas for my various loved ones. Not to brag, but I’m a pretty good gift-giver, and like any good union maid, I do my best to ensure that the treats I procure for my various friends and family come with a union label. With union density still hovering at only 10 percent and a wide range of industries still begging to be organized, it’s not always possible to buy union, but I encourage anyone reading this to give it their best shot anyway! Doing so supports union jobs—and keeps money out of union-busters’ pockets.
That said, here’s a list of gift ideas for your union-curious coworkers to help get you all through the holiday season, and start off the new year with a band—or, even better, a stack of signed union cards!
Union-Made Pizza Cutter
Have you ever worked for a company that noticed ramblings of dissatisfaction among its workforce and decided to hold an “employee appreciation” event in hopes of easing tensions without actually addressing the workers’ concerns or making any meaningful changes around the workplace? Yeah, me too. Sometimes it’s cookies, sometimes it’s doughnuts, sometimes it’s a little cash bonus or a coupon, but more often than not, the employer's bribe of choice is pizza, and lots of it. The anti-union pizza party has become such a classic union-busting trope by now that I thought you or your coworker should be prepared for the eventuality of your bosses panic-ordering a dozen pepperoni pies as soon as they spot your pro-union swag. This pizza cutter is union-made, and comes with a bunch of other handy kitchen utensils too!
Labor Books
There are tons and tons of great labor books out there, ranging from practical organizing guides to labor history stories to biographies of labor greats to roadmaps for the future of the movement. To get your coworker started on building up their very own labor library, here are a few recent or soon-to-be-published books that will help them make sense of how we got here, where we’re going, and how they can get involved. And if I may say so, my book, FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor, is a pretty good place to start!
Malaika Jabali’s wry, rollicking It's Not You, It's Capitalism: Why It's Time to Break Up and How to Move On breaks down exactly why we’re in this mess and how we can pull ourselves out of it, together. Maximilian Alvarez’s heartbreaking and inspiring The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke delves into how early days of the Covid-19 pandemic reshaped our lives by focusing on the individual stories of workers from around the U.S. Dr. Blair LM Kelley’s revelatory Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class weaves together the personal and political to reveal essential truths about Black workers’ essential role in labor’s history and its future. Hamilton Nolan’s forthcoming call to action, The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor is a deeply reported survey of labor’s modern challenges and spotlights the workers and organizers who are determined to surmount them.
Every worker needs a copy of the Labor Notes classic Secrets of a Successful Organizer and Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross’s Labor Law for the Rank and Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law. Pro-labor radical publishers like Haymarket, AK Press, Verso, and PM Press always have a wide variety of labor books available (and they’re often on sale, too!), and there are a growing number of unionized bookstores around the country where you should do all of your book-buying, from Powell’s in Portland, OR to several Half Price Books locations in the Midwest and New York City’s book behemoth The Strand.
Union Drip
Labor folks love repping their unions, and one of the best ways to do that is by showing up to work, rallies, picket lines, or any other function where you can get away with wearing a T-shirt and jeans sporting pro-union swag. T-shirts are a given, and tons of unions also have fully stocked merch stores. You can find hats, pins, buttons, bandanas, hoodies, and, yes, even the iconic Teamsters bomber jackets for sale online (though I’d definitely recommend joining the union first if you want to rock one of those bad boys). The Industrial Workers of the World have an especially rad selection of books, zines, and posters on their webstore, and the Amazon Labor Union’s T-shirts were everywhere in 2023. I am personally eyeballing all the Realtree camo in the United Mine Workers’ shop, the United Farmworkers’ gold earrings, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ portable power bank (!).
Black Lung Kills T-Shirt
Black lung, a deadly and incurable progressive lung disease, has long haunted the coal mining communities where it finds its victims, and coal miners as young as their 30s and 40s are currently battling a resurgence of the disease in cCentral Appalachia. No worker should have to fear for their life at work or worry about bringing toxic substances into their homes, and the more noise we can make about these miners’ plight, the more we can force our elected representatives (and the coal bosses who line many of their pockets) to do about it, including strengthening and implementing a crucial new silica exposure rule.
Class War Veteran Hat
This one’s pretty self-explanatory, and UAW president Shawn Fain laid it all out quite clearly during the union’s historic Stand-Up Strike. “People accuse us of waging class warfare,” he said in a September 13 livestream. “There’s been class warfare going on in this country for the last forty years. The billionaire class has been taking everything and leaving everybody else to fight for the scraps.”
In 2024, let there be no war but class war.
Working Glass Keychain
Locksmiths are expensive. Make sure your coworker never loses their keys again with a gorgeous handmade keychain made by a PA-based union member (and speaking of Shawn Fain, the EAT THE RICH design is my favorite). They have pins, fridge magnets, and larger stained glass pieces, too—I have one of their IWW sabo kitty designs hanging up in my kitchen.
Rat plushie
Scabby the Rat is another beloved pro-union symbol that has truly taken on a life of its own since its birthplace in Plainfield, Illinois in 1989. The massive inflatable rat has since graced sidewalks and streets in front of countless union-busters, anti-labor politicians, and bad bosses. Despite efforts from former National Labor Relations Board general counsel Peter Robb, a Trump-appointed management-side attorney, to sideline Scabby and outlaw its presence on the picket line, the labor movement’s favorite rat lives on to fight another day. (We can’t say the same for Robb; he was fired by President Biden in 2021). I couldn’t find a plush version that featured Scabby’s pleasantly demonic expression (or their festering tummy), but this little guy makes for a pretty cute substitute.
Museum Merch
Working class history is important, and we’re lucky to have a number of museums dedicated to the memory and legacies of those who came before us. You can find pieces of labor history in all kinds of major museums, but I’m especially grateful for the smaller independent efforts that zero in on more specific chapters in our collective history. The Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, WV is one of them. It truly is a special place, and is dedicated to the thousands of coal miners and their family members who spent decades fighting for the right to unionize the West Virginia coalfields. They have a fantastic online store, and you can sign our coworker up for a museum membership while you’re there!
The Eugene V. Debs Museum is another wonderful labor-focused museum with a killer merch game. Housed in the former residence of legendary socialist labor leader Eugene V. Debs and socialist writer Kathleen Metzel Debs, the free museum seeks to preserve their legacy and engage members of today’s movements for labor and social justice; pay them a visit if you’re ever around Terre Haute!
Labor Notes Conference 2024
This is more of a big-ticket item, but if you’re able to swing it and they have the time off, cover their registration for Labor Notes’ 2024 Conference! The longrunning media and organizing project is holding its biannual conference in Chicago this year, and if 2022 is anything to go on, it will be absolutely packed with thousands of rank-and-file workers, organizers, and union leaders who are all eager to attend workshops, build connections, and share strategies for winning future struggles. It’s a whale of a time (I describe it to people as Labor Coachella) and you absolutely will not regret going if you’re able to do so. They take inclusivity seriously, too, so scholarships are available and it will be a masked event.
Donations
If you’re still not sure about what to get your coworker but still want to spread some wintery cheer, consider donating to one of the many strike funds or labor projects in their name. There are many to choose from, but I’d encourage you to first check and see if there are any workers on strike in your area who have a strike fund that needs topping up. For example, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers have been out on strike for over a year, and definitely need the help!
You could also choose to donate to ongoing labor media projects like Labor Notes, nonprofit pro-union newsrooms like The Real News Network and In These Times Magazine, or organizing projects like the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. Subscribe to a worker-owned publication like Defector, Discourse Blog, Hell Gate, or 404 Media, or sign up for your favorite labor journalist’s newsletter or Patreon.
Remember earlier last year when a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in the small Ohio town of East Palestine? The residents are still living with the aftereffects of the disaster, including escalating health problems, and The Real News is running a holiday fundraiser for them here.
These are just a few suggestions; there’s so much more out there, and so many workers who need help. There really is no end to the ways we can support one another as workers, community members, and human beings. What matters most is figuring out what we can do—and then refusing to give up when the going gets tough.
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