Portside

Workplace sabotage has historically been a powerful organizing tactic. Is the time ripe again?

Unions need to plan a response now.

At the dawn of the Great Depression, millions of workers were angry and didn’t see existing unions rising to the moment. They managed to build a fighting labor movement that transformed labor law and won the welfare state as we know it.

Moving to a single-payer system could enable more unions to win excellent healthcare through group practice clinics for their members—an essential next step after winning universal access to care.

The biggest innovation in Warren’s platform is a private right of action in the federal courts against employers. The biggest disappointment of Warren’s labor plan is her studious avoidance of a just cause right to your job, as Sanders has proposed.

Any candidate who wants to appeal to voters on labor issues has to propose bold solutions to even be noticed, standing next to Sanders and Warren.

Last month, the National Labor Relations Board sought an unprecedented injunction against Laborers Local 79 in Staten Island to stop them from inflating a rat balloon. Unions must fight back.

MOSTLY ABSENT FROM THE STORY of Max Rose’s ground-breaking victory are unions. The New York state AFL-CIO endorsed Donovan, the Republican incumbent. Many individual unions did the same

The labor movement has suffered constant attacks and a demoralizing decline. But labor unions were in bad shape in the 1920s and came back. What can we learn from history?

Our greatest power is still the work we do and our occasional refusal to do it.