Portside

Labor experts say unions are focusing on the hospitality field and less traditionally unionized workplaces - car washes, retailers, taxi and limo companies - as membership rolls have decreased. The percentage of private sector workers represented by unions has fallen from a peak of about 35 percent in the mid 1950s to about 7 percent, said Fred Feinstein, a former general counsel with the National Labor Relations Board who now works as a union.

Reader Responses to Grocery Unions and Obamacare; Freelancers; Better Unions

Thousands of Medi-Cal medical interpreters would have the right to join a public employees union and collectively bargain with the state under a legislative push to regulate that profession.

Some 40,000 workers at more than 250 New England supermarkets approved new collective bargaining agreements this month in an uneasy embrace by their union of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as Obamacare.

In an interview taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, Richard Trumka said he was seeking a more formal alliance with key elements of the Democratic Party’s liberal base, including civil rights organizations and women’s rights groups. The hope, he said, is to broaden union membership beyond the traditional realm of workplace-based organizing. The full interview is scheduled to air on C-SPAN Sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.