labor

Labor Unions Appear Set for More State-Level Defeats In 2017

Todd Bookman and Brett Neely All Things Considered, National Public Radio
If New Hampshire, Missouri and Kentucky succeed in enacting "right-to-work" bills, it would be the most states rolling back union power in one year since 1947, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Success in New Hampshire would also make it the first state in the Northeast with a "right-to-work" law. The bills are a further reflection of organized labor's falling clout. Just 10.7 percent of American workers belonged to a labor union in 2016.

Fighting Faux Populism

Joseph M. Schwartz Democratic Left
Brexit has come to the United States. For thirty years now, in Europe and the United States, a bipartisan neoliberal consensus has embraced the benefits of globalization and the rise of the "knowledge economy." If only workers would go back to school, retrain, and send their children to college, the good jobs that disappeared would somehow return. But those good jobs did not arrive, and voters have opted for a faux populism that promises to reverse globalization.

The Real Face of Washington (and America)

Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch
" I deeply believed that our country was simply too special for The Donald, and so his victory sent me on an unexpected journey back into the world of my childhood and youth, back into the 1950s and early 1960s when (despite the Soviet Union) the U.S. really did stand alone on the planet in so many ways."

The Sanders’ Campaign: A Local Perspective

Peter Haberfeld The Stansbury Forum
The Stansbury Forum is proud to publish organizer and labor attorney Peter Haberfeld’s diagnostic of the Bernie Sander’s ground game in Berkeley/Oakland in the run-up to the California primary in June of 2016. Haberfeld contrasts the “organizing” work that he and his comrades attempted to do with the “mobilizing” approach of many in the national Sanders campaign, and their over reliance on social media and barnstorming meetings.

Response to Peter Olney and Ruth Needleman

Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bob Wing Portside
Moderator's NOTE: Bill Fletcher and Bob Wing's article "Fighting Back Against White Revolt 2016" http://portside.org/2016-12-05/fighting-back-against-white-revolt-2016 has sparked discussion from Peter Olney "Go Red" http://portside.org/2016-12-26/go-red-thoughts-labor-movement-age-trump-response-fletcher-and-wing-portside-december-5 and today a response piece by Ruth Needleman. Following is today's reply posting from Fletcher and Wing.

Can a Racist Be a Good Unionist?

Ruth Needleman Portside
Moderator's NOTE: Bill Fletcher and Bob Wing's article "Fighting Back Against White Revolt 2016" http://portside.org/2016-12-05/fighting-back-against-white-revolt-2016 has sparked discussion from Peter Olney "Go Red" http://portside.org/2016-12-26/go-red-thoughts-labor-movement-age-trump-response-fletcher-and-wing-portside-december-5 and now this piece by Ruth Needleman. Please also read today's reply posting from Fletcher and Wing.

The End of Progressive Neoliberalism

Nancy Fraser Dissent
The election of Donald Trump represents one of a series of dramatic political uprisings that together signal a collapse of neoliberal hegemony. In every case, voters are saying “No!” to the lethal combination of austerity, free trade, predatory debt, and precarious, ill-paid work that characterize financialized capitalism today.

Can North Carolina's Moral Mondays Movement Spark a New Civil Rights Fire?

Rev. William Barber II Ebony
Ultraconservative politics are bullying the state government, but there is hope in the numbers being rallied to the cause. Donald Trump's triumph across the South and Midwest, which won him the Electoral College and the White House, did not extend to Governor Pat McCrory in my home state of North Carolina.

North Carolinians Revolt Over Republicans' Brazen Post-Election Coup

Lauren McCauley CommonDreams
"The avalanche of anti-voter surprise bills introduced yesterday by the extremist leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly in a constitutionally suspect 'extra session' is an insult to the democratic values held by all people of goodwill in this state."

Go Red! Thoughts on the Labor Movement in the age of Trump. Response to Fletcher and Wing, Portside December 5, 2016

Peter Olney Portside
I argue that a defection of working class voters to Trump was key to the loss of historic battleground states, and thus the election. These are voters who have been voting for change at least since 2008 and they haven’t gotten it from a corporatist Democratic party. The problem in Fletcher and Wing's analysis of working class support for Trump is that they resort to income as a proxy for class.
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