Portside

Two key issues for the workers, all members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, have been the subject of negotiation: wage increases and the union’s demand to increase the time therapists spend on tasks other than seeing patients.

Food, like climate, like income, like “the environment” raises all the important issues, and it’s as good a tool for grappling with those issues as anything else. If we can’t sustainably and reliably provide ourselves with good food, we’re looking at a future of increasing illness and planetary degradation.

A Trader Joe’s in downtown Minneapolis became the second unionized location in the US on Friday, less than a month after a Massachusetts location became the first.

"I remember A League Of Their Own, and I specifically remember not seeing women that looked like me on that team," said Chanté Adams. Now she gets to play one.

Starbucks is seeking good PR by offering to cover travel costs for abortion and gender-affirming care for workers like me. But its promises come with caveats and can be revoked. We don’t want flimsy promises — we want these benefits in a union contract.

It is an indictment of the entire restaurant industry.

Our labor has become a commodity, something bought and sold in the marketplace, no different in principle than raw materials, equipment, and the buildings that house our workplaces.

Phillips County, Arkansas, hometown of the most lynching, inspired the poet Gerry Sloan to remember the tragedy at Elaine a century ago.

“They are compelled to do this,” says Alan Benjamin, a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council who heard directly from striking workers. “It's not voluntary; it's compulsory work, without proper sanitation and equipment.”

It’s interesting to see how political art changes. This year’s Whitney Biennial, rather than in-your-face commentary on American injustice here and abroad. Then there was a collection that I thought was a parody, but discovered it was serious