Portside

On July 1, 2020, NAFTA was replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The new labor provisions require Mexico to restructure its labor relations system with US oversight. Mexican workers will most likely continue to suffer.

The AFL-CIO’s new report on police reform doesn’t come anywhere close to what’s needed. Written largely from the perspective of police officers, it rejects calls to defund the police, embracing the failed approach of trying to weed out bad apples.

A plan of a committee convened by the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and Service Employees International Union aims to encourage police union members "to speak up and take action if fellow members are violating their professional oath or abusing their power."

Last November, Trumka tried, unsuccessfully, to block any state convention discussion of a general strike contingency plan in the event of a constitutional crisis (of the sort which did occur on January 6).

Worker centers in general serve as a clearinghouse for workers’ needs when forming a union is all but impossible. Even in anti-union terrains, the centers have found ways to change public and corporate policies.

The annual decline in the number of union members actually slowed after the a right-to-work law in Michigan took effect in 2013. And membership grew to 604,000 in 2020 from 589,000 in 2019. 

The Amazon organizing drive has drawn attention to just how much the deck is stacked against workers and unions. The Pro Act would provide a much-needed update to labor law after decades of rising inequality and an erosion of collective bargaining.

The question is whether even a supportive president can reverse the decline in union power that economists say has helped hollow out America's middle class. Neither organized labor nor sympathetic politicians have managed to do that for decades.