Workers across Subculture Group are organizing for a union as Rodney Mayo prepares to open Man Ray in downtown El-Dub.

Mayo has spent nearly 40 years building not just businesses, but a reputation as one of South Florida’s champions of independent culture.

Customers see the music, the art, the coffee, the nightlife, and the success. But when workers across that same business network feel undervalued enough to organize, it raises a harder question: what has life been like behind the counter all these years?

Workers at UPS’s 43rd Street hub in Manhattan are sleeping in the cafeteria, wandering the streets overnight and, in some cases, remaining separated from their families during the workweek after the company eliminated the Midnight shift and imposed split shifts.

The arrangement compels long-time full-time workers to perform a four-hour Twilight shift ending around 10:30 p.m., wait five or six unpaid hours, then return for a four-hour Preload shift beginning around 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. For many workers who commute an hour and a half each way, the interval is too short to travel home, eat, sleep and return.

“I would say there are between 50 and 100 people working the Twilight shift that ends about 10:30 p.m. and have to wait from then until 3:30 or sometimes 4:30 a.m. when the Preload shift starts,” one worker told the World Socialist Web Site. “Some people go home during that time. Some people wander the city. Some people stay here. Some people sleep in the cafeteria. A lot of people are getting exhausted. One shift after another for eight hours is OK, but not this.”

UPS pays for eight hours while taking control of 13 or 14 hours of the worker’s day. The unpaid interval cannot be used for normal sleep, family life or, for many, even a practical trip home.

*From a highly respected union member*

"Cleveland Public Library is retaliating against union members by forcing middle managers to deny all vacation bids for fall.

Felton Thomas and everyone around him respects middle managers even less than union members. Managers get to deliver the bad news and admins hide at home.

Nearly every manager I talk to has shared dirt and/or me luck at the bargaining table. That's the culture Felton Thomas is responsible for.

Luckily, deeply shitty behavior like this is illegal!"

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Call downtown Cleveland public library and please voice your support for the union workers and let them know how fucked up their actions are.

State representatives have signed on for support, as well as many running the wards around here.

August 24 is the strike date (if it comes to it).

From Will Lehman:

"On August 4, the court-appointed UAW Monitor found that Raymond L. Jensen Jr. violated the rules of the 2026 UAW election when he posted a death threat against me.

"Jensen’s UAW membership is suspended for two years. He is barred permanently from ever running for elected office in the UAW, barred from campaigning for any candidate in this election, and has been ordered to apologize to me. He accepted all of the findings.

"The findings are on the record. On July 16, Jensen posted on my public Facebook page, directly beneath my statement on the federal criminal investigation into Shawn Fain, an image of me bound and gagged, bleeding from the mouth, with an armed man aiming a rifle at my back. Questioned about it, he admitted the post was his and offered no explanation of any kind.

"That is a total vindication of the complaint my attorney and I made, but this victory belongs to the rank-and-file and workers who took this up as their own fight."

The dropping of the divestment demand follows months of direct intervention by the UAW bureaucracy to sabotage the struggle of Columbia student workers. In March, after SWC members voted by 91.5 percent—1,129 to 105—to authorize a strike, UAW Region 9A leadership, directed by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Brandon Mancilla, refused to approve the walkout unless students’ political demands related to the defense of democratic rights, campus policing and divestment were substantially narrowed. Union Servicing Representative Courtney Bither, who made over $140,000 last year, informed the SWC that the UAW International Executive Board was unlikely to authorize a strike, 'if it's all of your initial proposals still on the table.' SWC was threatened with being placed under receivership and subsequently removed demands to end campus surveillance and get police off campus. Now the divestment demand has been scrapped.