In today’s News and Commentary, workers and unions across America celebrate Labor Day, California’s SEIU Local 1000 prepares for a strike authorization vote, and New York City creates the Office of Worker Power.

On Monday, labor unions and workers gathered in cities across the United States in celebration of Labor Day. Parades and rallies took place in Boston, Pittsburgh, New York, and Los Angeles, among other cities. The rallies shared the common message of supporting workers’ rights and dignity in the face of skyrocketing cost of living and an increasingly hostile political environment for organized labor. “We’re living in a time that has not been particularly friendly to organized labor, and that’s just not going to fly in Allegheny County,” said Sara Innamorato, a county executive from Pittsburgh. There was also a shared concern regarding the increased use of AI and automation. Jesse Munoz, a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 13 in Los Angeles, expressed worries about the future, citing the fact that automation had eliminated over 2,000 jobs in his industry in the last decade. Nithya Raman, a Los Angeles City Council member and mayoral candidate, spoke at a rally saying that “automation [and] AI are taking away jobs all over this country, and it is up to us to step up and fight back.”

Elsewhere in California, SEIU Local 1000 announced Monday that it is holding a strike authorization vote. The union is California’s largest state worker union, representing over 100,000 workers across nine bargaining units. The most recent contract expired at the end of June, but negotiations have been ongoing since April. SEIU’s top priorities include a 20% raise over three years, telework benefits, and additional health benefits. However, bargaining has been contentious, with many union members speaking out about alleged bad faith bargaining on the part of Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration. If a strike occurs, this would be only the second state worker walkout in California history, with both coming under Newsom. SEIU Local 1000 chief negotiator Bobby Roy said, “It’s about whether the Newsom administration will bargain in good faith over our pay, our benefits, our working conditions and how we deliver public services. We are ready to bargain. They need to be ready too.”

In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani used Labor Day as an opportunity to announce the creation of the city’s first Office of Worker Power. The new office is meant to support labor organizing and address workers’ rights violations, and will be led by Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and longtime union organizer. The initiative comes after many labor leaders have called for Mamdani to increase union participation in the city. The mayor’s office also emphasized that the new department will not replace union organizers or individual efforts by workers but is instead meant to “support and amplify and coordinate with them.” Mamdani himself spoke about the goal of the new office as “mak[ing] sure workers have a seat at the table before exploitation becomes a crisis and violations become routine.”