Portside

Agricultural workers in New York just formed the state’s first farmworker union, but a new law guaranteeing overtime protections and organizing rights for the first time has been delayed.

Rank-and-file unionism, nationally, is taking center stage in many strikes and union actions across the country. “The labor movement was becoming hot, members were really getting activated and needed a way to organize and funnel that energy.”

Wednesday morning, several dozen Amazon workers at two separate Chicago-area delivery stations staged a walkout to demand raises and safer working conditions, making it the first time the tech giant has seen a multi-site work stoppage in the U.S.

High unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic well-being. Unions give workers a voice at work, and also give workers a voice in shaping their communities

For a vast majority of Americans democracy ends when work hours begin. Most people in this country are subject, as workers, to the nearly unmediated authority of their employers, which can discipline, sanction or fire them for nearly any reason

At 93, Noam Chomsky is the most important leftist intellectual alive. At 32, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of our most important leftist elected officials. The two recently spoke about our prospects for winning a better world.

“This is the single biggest new union filing in any industry, definitely this year if not this decade,” said UC Berkeley student researcher Tanzil Chowdhury. “Seventeen thousand new workers just joined the labor movement, which is historic.”

As higher education hires more adjuncts, it also relies on them more. Colleges and universities can’t fulfill their teaching mission without them — which gives part-timers more power, if they choose to use it.

A union of college athletes could become one of the strongest progressive institutions in the South.