Nelson Lichtenstein writes for The American Prospect about the 2024 Labor Notes conference:
Members of organizations with a left-wing pedigree or internal reform movements, including the United Electrical Workers, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, plus a series of reform movements in the UAW, and the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, have long had a presence at Labor Notes. This year, the UAW’s Unite All Workers for Democracy, the caucus largely responsible for electing a reform slate to that union’s leadership, was highly visible at the conference. (With historian Toni Gilpin, I was on a panel with UAWD activists reviewing and re-evaluating the leadership and legacy of longtime UAW president Walter Reuther.) […]
UAW President Shawn Fain was the conference rock star, but also a validator of the Labor Notes ethos. After celebrating in Chattanooga the union victory over VW, Fain flew to Chicago where he joined other UAW officers and staffers at the Labor Notes fundraising dinner and later took part in a Sunday morning workshop, “Back in the Fight: A New Day for Labor.” In his keynote remarks offered at the conference conclusion, where more than 4,000 remained to cheer his class struggle rhetoric, Fain told the crowd of his reliance on the Bible, but then said, “As a young union activist I had another bible, it is this book right here, called A Troublemaker’s Handbook, from Labor Notes. This was my bible and it taught me how to fight the boss. This bible taught me another kind of faith. It taught me faith in the membership, it taught me faith in the working class. And it is that faith that carried the UAW to our new chapter in history.”