WSJ declares the "era of the megalayoff."
That this "new template for ‘right sizing’ the workforce is spreading."

In other words, the ruling class intends to impose mass unemployment on an unprecedented scale, with massive pay & benefit cuts, speed-ups, and longer hours for everyone else.

150,000 laid off in 2025, just in the U.S.
90,000 so far in 2026:

*30,000 fired from Oracle
*18,500 fired from Amazon
*14,000 canned from Nokia
*5,100 axed from Block (40% of their workforce)

Corporate debt is now over $14 billion just in the U.S., with Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft & Oracle expected to take on another $175 billion in new debt this year just to finance their AI orgy, which will likely lead to increased productivity & profits, and the elimination of even more jobs.

Meanwhile, we've got the big unions cutting sellout deals with the bosses, telling members there's no other choice but to pay ever increasing amounts of our paychecks for healthcare premiums, that we're lucky to get 1-2% raises, far below the rate of inflation, when others are getting canned or taking pay cuts.

https://www.wsj.com/business/has-the-era-of-the-mega-layoff-arrived-928f061d

https://skillsyncer.com/layoffs-tracker

#workingclass #LaborHistory #classwar #unemployment #oligarchy

Iconic IWW Sabo Tabby Cat SVG design, perfect for t-shirts, stickers, posters, and DIY Cricut or Silhouette projects.

👇 Download link in the comments!

#SaboTabbyCat #IWW #LaborHistory #ProtestArt #SilhouetteFiles #DIYCrafts #TShirtDesign #StickerDesign #VintageStyle #PoliticalArt

Today in Labor History April 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco earthquake struck. It killed over 3,000 people and destroyed 80% of the city, making 250,000 people homeless, or more than half of its population at the time. Chinatown was heavily damaged and many of the survivors from that community fled to Oakland, with only 400 remaining in San Francisco. The population of African Americans, in contrast, increased in the wake of the quake, as many came to San Francisco to support their friends’ and families’ recovery efforts. IWW bard, and composer of the classic hobo song, “Big Rock Candy Mountains,” was there at the time. In 1905, he sang at an Oakland rally for London’s mayoral bid. When the earthquake hit, Haywire Mac was drafted by a fire captain. He spent the next three days making coffee and sandwiches for the firemen, remaining close to engines because soldiers were shooting looters on sight.

You can read more about Haywire Mac here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/03/16/the-haywire-mac-story/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #sanfrancisco #earthquake #IWW #jacklondon #haywiremac #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History April 18, 1945: Workers in Turin, Italy launched a General Strike against the Nazi occupation. Workers were rising up in other towns, too, particularly Milan. Many workers, including those at Fiat, occupied their factories. Others took to the streets, calling on the fascists to surrender. Seven days later, on April 25, they successfully ended fascism in Turin, and in Milan, where anarchist brigades disarmed a retreating Nazi column. Soon fascism would fall throughout the country.

You can read more on the anarchist movement in Italy before and during World War II here: https://files.libcom.org/files/red-black-years.pdf

#workingclass #LaborHistory #generalstrike #nazis #fascism #turin #italy #anarchism #socialism #unions

Today in Labor History April 18, 1914: IWW workers in Taft, California, continued their strike against Standard Oil. It was the first strike ever against the company. The workers demanded an eight-hour day and a 50-cents raise.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #standardoil #IWW #union #strike #california #eighthourday

Today in Labor History April 18, 1912: The governor of West Virginia called out the National Guard against striking coal miners. As a result, fifty people were killed. His action marked the beginning of the West Virginia Mine Wars, initiating one of the most violent strikes in the nation's history. Because of their isolation and geography, the West Virginia mine owners were able to dominate the miners more than almost any other employer in the nation. They hired gun thugs from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who routinely murdered miners and evicted their families from the company towns. On April 18, thousands of miners went on strike in Paint Creek, Cabin Creek and in surrounding counties. Many were armed with hunting rifles to defend themselves against the company thugs. Mother Jones and Socialist Party members came to support the miners.

The struggle that began today in 1912 continued for decades and included the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, and the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. 10,000-15,000 coal miners battled 3,000 cops, private cops and vigilantes, who were backed by the coal bosses. Up to 100 miners died in the fighting, along with 10-30 Baldwin-Felts detectives and three national guards. Nearly 1,000 people were arrested. One million rounds were fired. And the government bombed striking coal miners by air, using homemade bombs and poison gas left over from World War I. This was the second time the government had used planes to bomb its own citizens within the U.S. (the first was against African American during the Tulsa pogrom, earlier that same year). You can read my longer article on the West Virginia Mine Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #motherjones #coal #mining #strike #union #socialism #murder #police #nationalguards #massacre #bombing #matewan #blairmountain #insurrection #civilwar

Today in Labor History April 18, 1977: Native American activist Leonard Peltier was found guilty of murdering two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. However, he was actually framed by undercover FBI agents who were conducting counterintelligence on the reservation. During the trial, some of the government’s own witnesses testified that Peltier wasn’t even present at the scene of the killings. In 2017, President Obama denied Peltier's application for clemency. He was still in prison in 2025 and his health had deteriorated. On June 7, 2022, The UN Human Rights Council's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Peltier’s imprisonment violates the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Biden, as one of his final acts as president, commuted his sentence to indefinite house arrest. In February 2025, he was released and transferred to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #leonardpeltier #fbi #obama #AmericanIndianMovement #indigenous #prison #racism #nativeamerican #politicalprisoner #pineridge #biden

Her union has been going from workplace to workplace to talk with workers about the need for “a general strike pledge to protect workplaces and ...

CHICAGO—“May Day is our day. It belongs to all working people,” declared Fred Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, at a virtual town hall of labor leaders hosted by People’s World on Thursday, April 16.#labor #afl-cio #essentialworkers #internationalsolidarity #internationalworkersday #internationalism #laborhistory #labormovement #mayday #maydaystrong #peoplesworld #ufcw
Labor leaders tell People’s World town hall: ‘May Day is our day’

Today in Labor History April 17, 2014: Journalist and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on this day. Affectionately known as Gabo, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Two of his most famous books were, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Garcia Marquez was a socialist and an anti-imperialist, and critical of U.S. policy in Latin America.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #GabrielGarciaMarquez #columbia #author #writer #fiction #nobelprize #books #Literature @bookstadon

Today in Labor History April 17, 1996: Brazilian police attacked 2,000 landless peasants, killing 19 and wounding 69. Over 1,000 would be killed in similar protests throughout the 1990s.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #peasant #massacre #brazil #police #policebrutality #policemurder