Portside

The form of political action that Clinton defenders in labor advocate is a suffocating loser. It seeks accommodation when confrontation is required. It is more concerned with the longevity of the union as an institution – an important consideration for labor, but one that demands a more courageous vision – than with the overall strength of its members vis a vis their employers, which in fact is the only guarantor of institutional survival.

Michael Yates has produced a primer on inequality for our times. Steve Early takes a look.

According to the article AFSCME would agree to a four-year wage freeze in an attempt to get get the Rauner administration back to the bargaining table". AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Roberta Lynch said, "Employees would pay more for health insurance in three of the four years...".

The author argues that a key factor in unifying the fractious 13 colonies in opposition to British rule during the Revolution was the patriots' effort to link British oppression to extant colonial fears about insurrectionary slaves and homicidal Indians. America's founders were chief among those spreading tales of British agents inciting blacks and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion, making racial prejudice a foundation stone of the new republic.

La La Land is not, in the end, so very different from Whiplash (an earlier Chazelle film) for all their tonal differences. Above all, the vision they paint of the artistic life is masculine. In Damien Chazelle’s movies, men have power, and they get (almost) everything they want... And women? All they get to do is listen.

As recently as 2015, Donald Trump was still collecting a $168,000 pension — and maybe more — from the Screen Actors Guild for playing himself in The Apprentice. Now that Trump is about to be president, the most important question is: What is Trump's plan to save the system that is designed to protect millions of union pensions like his own?

With coeliac disease and wheat allergy affecting only 1.2% of the population, why is it that an estimated 15% of UK adults and an astonishing 29% of US adults are trying to avoid gluten?

In a decision issued on January 7th, United States District Judge Matthew Kennelly found that the local "right to work" law passed by the Village of Lincolnshire, Illinois in 2015 is pre-empted by federal law, and that only states and territories have the authority to such laws.

The notorious southern bigot George C. Wallace came hunting for votes and found a ready-made audience among blue-collar workers.

The BBC show seems to have difficulty fitting female characters into its universe. But it isn’t Arthur Conan Doyle’s fault.