Portside

From Florida to Alaska, workers are facing legal efforts to weaken their power by targeting union certification and dues.

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.

A new collective bargaining law--supported by the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity--requires local unions to prove they represent a majority of the teachers in their districts. The measuring stick? At least half of all employees eligible to be in the union must be paying dues.

Last week, the Republican-controlled legislature in West Virginia overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, making the measure officially law. The story of how West Virginia got to that point is a boiled-down version of the changes America has undergone over the past half-century — the pain of de-industrialization, the shift in political power, the casting about for anything that might create jobs.

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of a lawsuit filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, every state in the country would essentially turn into an anti-union "right to work" state, which would be a significant blow to public sector unions' collective bargaining efforts and also complicate thousands of existing contracts between organized workers and municipalities, cities, counties, and states across the country.