Portside

The University of Wisconsin at Madison was a hotbed of student radicalism in the 1960s. and left-wing activists there were among the first of their generation to organize around issues related to their own mis-treatment as workers.

In mainly black-and-white photos, Division Street juxtaposes how the down-and-out and more fortunate co-exist in the same urban spaces. His photos remind that the lives of those without homes will not improve until their need for shelter is met.

In new book,The Privatization of Everything, Cohen and Mikaelian, describe and debunk the vast array of privatization schemes that now litter the landscape, from private prisons and charter schools to for-profit water treatment and trash collection.

The book under review, written from a labor organizer's informed perspective, is seen by the book reviewer—himself a longtime labor militant-- as an essential resource for workers navigating their retirement and pension options.

These books raise questions and arguments about job satisfaction, inadequate compensation, long hours, and morally injurious employment in pre-pandemic form.

The "Labor Guide to Retirement Plans" shows why and how private and public sector workers should be mobilizing against such concessions.

New working class heroes, not blinded by 21st century false promises, who hope to build better organizations from the ashes of the old -- should check out the writings of a deceased 88-year old New Yorker who knew what he was talking about.

They are highly educated, poorly paid, absent union backing and part of the metastasizing precariat. They are also organizing. Two veterans of the contingent college adjunct’s struggle ably tell the story, as reviewed by a veteran labor militant.

To help the contingent faculty movement prepare for its next big battles, the authors have produced a timely history of union activity among “second tier faculty excluded from the tenure system.”

According to the book, Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Movement in Higher Education (Pluto Press, 2021), an estimated 70 to 80 percent of all contingent faculty in the U.S. still lack union representation.