The Virginia Worker

This reportback was written by an anonymous member of the TAP Head Start Workers Committee A year ago, in January 2021, preschool workers at TAP Head Start in Roanoke, VA initiated our first workplace struggle. We were organizing for some basic, decent working conditions (the first two of which were a long time coming, and…

Rick Amherst, member of The Virginia Worker Editorial Board, offers the following review of Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann’s ‘Climate Leviathan’ As the authors of Climate Leviathan concede, climate change is not a debate– it is a reality that will inevitably wreak at least some degree of havoc on the world, especially for the most…

The following is an account from Walmart workers in the New River Valley Since the beginning of the pandemic, Wal-Mart’s response to the crisis has been unimpressive.  Despite the adoption of a variety of masking and social distancing guidelines over the past two years, most of their efforts have been failures.  Resistance from the customers,…

Recently The Virginia Worker sat down with J and X, members of Bridges Starbucks Workers United in Roanoke, after they went public with their union campaign. They’re the first Starbucks workers in both Roanoke and southwestern Virginia to unionize, joining close to 100 other stores across the country, with numbers growing everyday. Starbucks Workers United…

The New River Valley branch of the Industrial Workers of the World recently passed an emergency resolution on the inter-imperialist escalations in Ukraine, calling on fellow workers across Virginia to join their efforts in stopping US ruling class imperialist maneuverings there. Click here to endorse the NRV IWW resolution below: IWW NRV GMB Resolution on…

Based on the acclaimed book by former Roanoke Times journalist Beth Macy, ‘Dopesick’ covers the opioid epidemic that swept across Appalachia due to the activities of the drug company Purdue Pharma and its morally corrupt owners, the Sackler family. The miniseries opens in the fictional mining town of  Finch Creek, Virginia. As we’re introduced to…

On Tuesday, February 2nd, a gunman opened fire on the campus of Bridgewater College, terrorizing thousands of students and College workers. Two Bridgewater College security officers were killed. What happened was a tragedy and the families of those two Bridgewater College officers had their lives involuntarily changed by one person’s selfish and terroristic actions. I…

From Target Workers Unite Target workers have been organizing since 4Q of 2021 around hazard pay for the persistence of COVID19 across our workplaces. Target tried to pay us off with a $2 dollar holiday pay, but it has fallen far short of the $2 dollar hazard pay we’ve demanded since starting our campaign leading…

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA: Virginia Beach city workers held a rally and press conference at City Hall on Tuesday, January 18, demanding a real voice for safety, dignity, living wages and an end to institutional racism on the job. The members of newly formed Virginia Beach City Workers Union, UE Local 111, were joined by supporters…

There’s no need to argue with anti-maskers. You might have noticed that these people’s minds are impervious to logic. It’s not the “concerned parents” we need to appeal to – it’s the right to a workplace that is hazard-free that we must invoke. Untold thousands of workers in America have been tortured and murdered by…