Portside

Thousands of attorneys perform tasks so routine that some believe they should get the same protections as the rest of the hourly workforce.

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.

A bill being introduced in the City Council Monday would require all employers to put contracts in writing, impose civil and criminal penalties for taking longer than 30 days to deliver payments, and award double damages plus attorneys fees to contractors who’ve been stiffed — similar to the protections now enjoyed by regular employees.

Workers had a big 2015, and next year could be even bigger.

Outsourcing distribution has been an effective way for grocers to dump their relatively expensive unionized workforces.

As more states feel they’ve been put at a competitive disadvantage by their right-to-work neighbors, the pressure only increases to follow suit and enact their own right-to-work laws. And after a while, a national right-to-work law might not be far behind. “I suspect that will happen within the next decade,” says Marquita Walker, an associate professor of labor studies at Indiana University.

IATSE is taking on Live Nation, the nation's biggest concert promoter because of its use of labor contractors who pay low wages and fail to ensure workplace safety standards. The union argues that the promoter, not the subcontractor is responsible,workers conditions -- an argument consistent with the NLRB ruling that McDonald's not its franchises were responsible for the conditions.

Last week SEIU and adjunct professors launched a national campaign calling for $15,000 per course.

Food service workers at Harvard are members of UNITE-HERE Local 26. After two years, they earn $21.73 per hour on average, while for many years the DoubleTree hotel in Cambridge owned by the university non-union housekeepers earned only about $15 an hour. Last year, housekeepers at the hotel mounted a push to join Local 26 as well. Hilton, which owns the DoubleTree chain bumped salaries to $18 an hour— but has so far managed to avoid a unionized workforce.

The union election was remarkable for a couple reasons: First, because of the margin of victory, with 86 percent voting yes on 77 percent turnout. And second, because it took place in the anti-union South.