Portside

“If you could see my co-workers walking out of the building at the end of the day. So many of them have been broken down by UPS, and UPS does not care. They just want the packages out.”

Miners and their families have occupied a railroad track, blocking a train that’s loaded up with coal that these workers dug out of the earth and never got paid for.

The tentative agreement also does nothing substantial to address drivers’ other big concerns: excessive forced overtime, technological surveillance, and harassment by supervisors.

For public-employee unions in Wisconsin, an open shop isn’t even the worst of it. The anti-union Act 10, which Governor Scott Walker forced through in 2011, mandated annual recertification votes and all but eliminated collective bargaining.

The majority of the ballots were already in by October 31, the day the union's federally mandated Independent Investigations Officer recommended charges against Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall, who until recently seemed to be 75-year-old Hoffa's heir apparent. Hall was charged with obstructing a corruption investigation by destroying thousands of documents and emails.

In the best cases, unions are taking the urgency of the threats as a motivator--not just to sign up new members, but more importantly, to make members feel the union is theirs, by training more rank-and-file leaders and helping them take on workplace fights.

"The IBT Carhaul Division has instructed all carhaul locals to hold meetings to ask members why they rejected the concessionary first offer. These guys are so out of touch, they need to be told the obvious: Teamsters are tired of concessions and want to protect their jobs and make reasonable gains in this boom year of auto sales." Teamsters for a Democratic Union

The UAW is back in bargaining with the Big 3 Automakers. Will they end the two-tier wage and benefit system they agreed to 8 years ago? And if they do, can they end it by raising up the bottom tier, rather than taking cuts for the top tier?

Eight years after accepting a drastic two-tier system of wages and benefits—and nearly a decade since the first tier got a raise—the United Auto Workers are bargaining with the Big 3 automakers.

It’s this year’s biggest private-sector bargaining, between the Kaiser Permanente system and a coalition of 28 locals representing 100,000 health care workers.But the national deal, due June 4, may reveal widening cracks in the celebrated labor-management partnership that turns 18 this year. Kaiser is looking for three concessions, say non-coalition unions: increased health care co-pays, cuts to retiree medical coverage, and a two-tier pension.