Portside

Bernie Sanders has a long record of supporting pro-worker policies. Vermont union members learned long ago that the mutual benefit derived from their work with and for Sanders goes far beyond the results of labor’s usual (and sometimes tawdry) transactional relationships with public officeholders.

When workers feel collectively trapped in poorly performing unions that do not properly represent them, the most union-minded among them often believe that changing unions is their only hope. If switching to another union is not a viable option because of AFL rules or incumbent union manipulation of Labor Board procedures, the result will be more workplace anger, frustration, and resentment.

Oil workers belonging to the United Steel Workers of America put-up picket lines in Northern California, Texas, Kentucky and Washington State this week. It has been 35 years since Tony Mazzocchi helped lead a strike against big oil.

Virtually all labor organizations face the expanded challenge of recruiting and maintaining members in already unionized workplaces where the decision to provide financial support for the union has, for better or worse, become voluntary.

Veteran labor activist and labor reporter, Steve Early, looks at the growing number of third party candidates and the growing support they are receiving from the labor movement. He pays particular attention to the long history of successful third party candidates in the State of Vermont.

Mike Parker, a key Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) organizer who spent thirty-two years as a union reformer and skilled tradesman in Detroit, is leading a citywide slate of progressive candidates in a run for Mayor. Now, as municipal elections loom in the fall, the business community—led by America’s third-most-profitable company, Chevron—wants to make a political comeback by defeating those who've curbed its influence.

There was lots of excitement about the AFL-CIO Convention last week, but were the proposals enough to rebuild the labor movement? Steve Early argues,"Given the extreme attacks both union and non-union workers are suffering, the convention’s heavy emphasis on conventional political strategies and growth through diluted forms of membership was not “transformative” enough to meet the challenges of the day."

When the votes were tallied at the NLRB regional office in Oakland yesterday, NUHW support in Kaiser’s largest bargaining unit had increased by 15 percent—but SEIU, the vocal opponent of striking, won again with 18,844 votes versus NUHW’s 13,101. (Another 334 workers chose no union.)