Portside

UAW Local 2865 has called a strike. For many grad students, the very idea of a contract governing the limits and conditions of our labor is a source of skepticism and even derision. This system is not an alternative to the working world - it is the model every employer would eagerly adopt. Far from prefiguring an emancipated society, the university offers a foretaste of the total domination of workers by management.

The United Auto Workers announced their fourth straight year of increasing membership. The union added that the two-percent membership increase for 2013 does not include several thousand workers who have voted in favor of union representation, but do not yet have contracts with their employers.

Saadiyat Island is across a narrow sea channel from Abu Dhabi. Many luxury villas are being built as well famous museums like the Guggenheim and the Louvre. Unfortunately many of the construction workers are poorly paid and forced to live in poor facilities.

The most important benefit of Obamacare is the security it provides to the tens of millions of people who already had insurance—except that insurance, before the Affordable Care Act, was only as safe as their job.

Adjunct professors make $18,000 to $30,000 for the equivalent of full-time work; compared to tenure track professors, who earn $68,000 to $116,000 (plus benefits), according to the American Association of University Professors. Only three in 10 professors are tenured today, down from six in 10 in the 1970s. Recently, frustrations over the plight of adjuncts have boiled over in congressional hearings, online petitions and a two-day walkout at the University of Illinois.