Portside

After a long absence organized labor is attempting to unionize workers in Silicon Valley. The teamsters have aimed their campaign Facebook drivers. Previous campaigns in 1992 and 2008 ended in failure.

Philadelphia teachers and their union were surprised today when they learned that the School Reform Commission had decided to unilaterally cancel their contract.

The union election was remarkable for a couple reasons: First, because of the margin of victory, with 86 percent voting yes on 77 percent turnout. And second, because it took place in the anti-union South.

In 2010 two former employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, a temp agency that supplies workers at many of Amazon’s U.S. warehouses, sued the company demanding back pay for the time they spent in security lines after clocking out at Amazon warehouses in Nevada. On Oct. 8 the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether that time counts as work.

Two articles on Venezuela. The first is on the takeover of an abandoned Clorex factory, by the Venezuelan government. The second is about the assassination of a young member of the Venezuelan Socialist Party.

It's important that we don't just see working-class people as passive victims of neo-liberalism. Often it is precisely workers occupying the lowest rungs of the labor market who exercise both voice and agency. We need to recognize the shared humanity working-class people hold in common.

Under the settlement, these workers, who were supported by the hospitality union Unite Here, also will receive preference in hiring at future Boston-area Hyatt hotels, although many said they would be reluctant to return to a Hyatt unless it is unionized. Nationwide, about a quarter of Hyatt hotels have a union presence, and Marc Ellin, senior vice president at Hyatt, said future Hyatts in Greater Boston “could involve union representation

Economist Juliet Schor is known worldwide for her research on the interrelated issues of work, leisure, and consumption. Her books on these themes include The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer, and Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (retitled True Wealth for its paperback edition). She is also a professor of sociology at Boston College. —Eds.

UNITE HERE and the Teamsters have been quietly negotiating a contract with Harrah's Hotel and Casino in New Orleans for the last six months that, when inked, would double the size of organized labor's tiny footprint in the New Orleans tourism economy.

Five years ago, Hyatt Hotels in Boston fired workers after making them train their replacements. HERE Local 26 has backed these non-union workers in their fight. After five years they have won.