Portside

If union members at Hyatt hotels in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Chicago vote yes on a proposed contact it will end a four-year campaign. It will also make it easier to organize in new cities.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced last week that it will accept a case for review next year on the use of labor-management "neutrality" agreements in union organizing campaigns. An anti-union decision from the high court would make labor organizing more difficult and threaten labor organizations at a national level, labor experts say.

In cities all across the country, workers stand on street corners, line up in alleys or wait in a neon-lit beauty salon for rickety vans to whisk them off to warehouses miles away. Some vans are so packed that to get to work, people must squat on milk crates, sit on the laps of passengers they do not know or sometimes lie on the floor, the other workers’ feet on top of them.