Why 2023 Was The BIGGEST Success for The Left in a Decade—and Why Status Coup Needs You in 2024 (READ FULL EMAIL!)

You might be asking: Jordan, what are you smoking and can you pass it on? Read on!

Hey folks, it’s Jordan.

Before I ask you for money, let me tell you why.

If you didn’t know, 2023 marked the five-year anniversary of Status Coup (thank you for helping us keep the lights on!) In my mind, this year marked the most successful year for the left—and making structural gains for the battered working class— over the decade I’ve reported across America.

You might be asking: Jordan, what are you smoking and can you pass it on?

Progressives hold no real elected power, the power we do possess is held by Congressmen and women who refuse to leverage their power or play hardball, and the coming presidential election is likely to shower us with a dreadful redux of the 2016/2020 save our “Democracy” storyline.

Which is why 2023 changed the game.

In eight years on-the-ground reporting, I’ve observed many invigorating, and, what felt like, game-changing moments and movements. From Bernie 2016, to the indigenous-led battle at Standing Rock, to the historic George Floyd protests; each one of these felt as if they had lasting power, as if they could actually structurally change the corrupt and rotten systems exploiting average working people.

Unfortunately, most of them turned into fleeting moments; perhaps building blocks to something permanent, but not victories on their own.

But from the moment I saw UAW President Shawn Fain dump an insulting Big 3 auto company contract offer in the trash— from the moment I stepped foot on the picket line—I knew the striking auto workers in front of me represented something I hadn’t seen in previous reporting on the campaign trail or at protest movements: a cumulative disgust, a collective patience run out, a renewed militancy to resurrect what was once the left’s greatest power…

Organized labor.

“We’re gonna wreck their economy because it only works for the billionaire class,” UAW President Fain said at a massive rally in Detroit on Day 1 of the “Stand Up” strike. “They want you to be afraid because they’re afraid…I look around here, I see power, I see faith, and I see a working class that is fed up and fired up.”

We covered the rally, and Fain’s powerful words:

The six-week UAW strike scored major victories for unionized auto workers at the Big 3, including:

• 25 percent wage increases

• Reinstatement of cost of living adjustments (which brings the total wage increases over 30 percent)

• Reduction in progression to top pay from eight to three years

• Significant pay increase for temporary workers

• Future electric battery plants becoming part of master national union contract.

Was the contract everything workers—and retirees—deserved. Absolutely not.

Was the contract one that would have been possible with concessionary, and complacent, union leadership four…eight…or 12 years ago? Absolutely not.

But, to me, the psychological and strategic shift that came from the UAW strike was just as important as the dollar-and-cents results: finally, after decades of weak, complacent, corporate-friendly, and corrupt, union bosses and leadership, we had a renewed union leadership ready to fight back against not only their bargaining partners—but the entire corporate oligarchy that has hijacked our government.

UAW President Shawn Fain tossed out decades of UAW leadership rubbing noses with the Big 3 auto bosses and essentially declared the corporations the enemy….

YES!

Instead of accepting the initial 10% wage increase—which previous UAW regimes would have gladly taken—he tossed their contract offers in the garbage. He refused to show up for the customary symbolic hand-shake with Big 3 CEOS to kick off negotiating. Most importantly, he lifted the expectations—and hope—of auto workers that had been exploited and abused for decades.

IMAGE HERE of Fain tossing contract in garbage.

Fain, and UAW leadership’s hardball against the Big 3 is already paying off for non union auto workers who’ve seen wage increases as a result of UAW’s victory.

After winning their strike victory, Fain and the UAW are not taking their foot off the gas, beginning a major organizing campaign to turn non-union workers into unionized UAW workers. One of those campaigns is at Volkswagen in Chattanooga Tennessee, where non-union workers are currently organizing to join UAW. I recently interviewed several of them.

Fain and UAW are also brilliantly trying to get other unions in different industries to line up the expiration of their labor contracts to align with UAW’s next contract expiration in May 2028. If that happens, I believe we may have the origins of the closest thing to a general strike the U.S. has ever seen.

This all may not affect your specific industry or workplace YET, but organized labor in this country was not destroyed overnight; over four decades, right-wing Republicans and Democrats meticulously attacked and weakened unions to the point where around just 11 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Needless to say, we won’t rebuild the labor movement overnight either, but 2023 was a major start; one I believe will continue into 2024 and have just as much—if not more—impact on your wages, benefits, and future who becomes the next president.

I, and my colleagues at Status Coup, want to continue covering worker strikes and union drives ON-THE-GROUND. As a result of our paying members, we were able to cover the UAW strike ON-THE-GROUND for the first 25 days of the strike in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. That kind of reporting ON-THE-GROUND is very expensive—it’s why most outlets don’t do it (on top of them not caring and being lazy).

If you want to see us expand our labor coverage across America, please JOIN US as a Status Coup member for as low as $5-10 bucks a month.

You can also donate to help fund out reporting.

As always, I believe most people in America are not lacking compassion: most people have no fu*king idea what the hell is going on all around them. Let’s keep waking up the masses.

Jordan