As Walmart workers this week resume strikes at stores around the nation, organizers are saying that more employees than ever have joined the ranks of the activists, with some experts going so far as to say that the movement has achieved critical mass.

One hundred years ago this month, a long-forgotten union powered by a remarkable engine of everyday solidarity and direct action was born. The union's distinguishing feature—that it was directly operated by workers on the job, bears little resemblance to today's traditional labor movement with formal negotiation by a bargaining agent as the end goal of even the most creative campaigns. With over 93 percent of private sector workers finding themselves outside of traditional union membership and with little prospect of getting in, this dramatically different and powerful unionism offers a compelling path forward for workers today.

A flotilla of nine fishing boats—their passengers wielding picket signs instead of fishing poles—blocked the grain ship Mary H from docking in Kalama, Washington, May 7. At the same time, a community picket onshore turned workers away from the grain terminal. The action by longshore workers and supporters was part of the escalating conflict between the region’s grain shippers and the West Coast longshore union, ILWU.

Workers say it's a new era as they become owners of their window-making cooperative. In 2008 and again in 2012 they occupied their factory to keep management from removing machinery. Now they own those machines. Photo: New Era Windows Cooperative.

Yesterday—April 24th—was a red-letter day in the annals of worker mobilization in post-collective-bargaining America. In Chicago, hundreds of fast-food and retail employees who work in the Loop and along the Magnificent Mile called a one-day strike and demonstrated for a raise to $15-an-hour and the right to form a union. At more than 150 Wal-Mart stores across the nation, workers and community activists called on the chain to regularize employees’ work schedules. And under pressure from an AFL-CIO-backed campaign of working-class voters who primarily aren’t union members, the county supervisors of New Mexico’s Bernalillo County voted to raise the local minimum wage.

What has 18 owners, no bosses and high hopes for fostering workplace democracy in America? New Era Windows LLC, a worker-owned cooperative formed last year by members of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1110.

On Saturday, April 6th, passers-by will be treated to the sight of a large picket outside of Minnesota’s highest volume liquor store, Chicago-Lake liquors. Picketers will hold signs and chant slogans of support for the workers of the store, five of whom were fired after asking for higher wages as a part of a union drive with the Industrial Workers of the World.

This past Tuesday evening the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) Sisters' Camelot Canvass Union made an offer to the managing collective in an effort to end the strike which has been going on since March 1. The managing collective has been given until the end of Monday, April 8 to decide whether or not to accept. This offer has consolidated the much longer original list of terms for the negotiation of the union's existence down to a list of eight terms, with the logistical details of how they would work clearly defined.

The ITUC has welcomed the release of Russian trade union leader Valentin Urusov from prison. In early 2008 Urusov, a miner and trade union leader, was detained by the authorities, alleging narcotics possession. However, his arrest coincided suspiciously with preparations for a protest rally by workers at the state-owned Alrosa diamond mining company – a rally which Urusov helped organise. He was sentenced to six years in a penal colony: http://www.equaltimes.org/news/valentin-urusov-a-trade-union-prisoner-of-conscience

Workers at a French greetings card firm on Friday sequestered the head of their company and the chief of the Dutch firm which owns it after sacked employees were told they would not get their dues. The protest at the office of French firm Edit66 and the Dutch owner Mercurius, targeted their two chiefs Paul Denis and Merthus Bezemer.