Portside

"Oil industry company Halliburton has been branded “obscene” for advertising unpaid UK internships, which critics say give an unfair advantage to people from privileged backgrounds."

“The Trump administration’s rhetoric on immigration and its approach to enforcement have made immigrant communities obviously fearful in a new way,” says Laura Huizar, a staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project. “This is going to prevent a lot people from filing wage complaints that they otherwise would have.”

As organizers we have an obligation to review our prognostications and do some self-criticism when we are way off on our turnout calls. That was the case with our predictions for participation in the 2017 May Day immigrant rights protests.

The May 26 attacks on the MAX light rail train hit close to home for many local union members.

What is at stake for workers?

Thanks to grassroots organizing, the CLC, for the first time, took a clear position of solidarity with a Palestinian-led human rights campaign. The convention also showed progress on Indigenous rights, racism, queer or trans rights, mental health, and environmental justice. The potential of that progress, however, is limited by a "business-as-usual" approach by too many union leaders. What matters now is how union members act on the progress made.

After a robust union campaign the Fairfax Connector went from a unit at risk of decertifying to a strong union shop.

“Taking away local control over wages (and a range of other pro-worker, pro-environment, and pro-civil rights policies) has become a major priority of ALEC, a corporate-backed group with extensive lobbying resources and influence in our state legislatures,” according to an National Employment Law Project statement. “ALEC drafts “model” minimum wage preemption bills for conservative legislatures to simply copy and paste.”

To create pressure on the district, a group of teachers organized their own protest. The 11,000-member Philadelphia Federation of Teachers didn’t authorize the action. Instead it was a rank-and-file group that got the employer's attention.

Organized labor is being strangled by laws that block workers from exercising the rights to organize, to strike, and to act in solidarity. Unions should respond by building a rights movement, placing the struggle for those rights front and center in all movement activity, including organizing, protest, civil disobedience, political action, administrative advocacy, and litigation.