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Philadelphia Orchestra Walks Out on Opening Night

Michael Cooper The New York Times
The strike — called on the same day that musicians on the other side of Pennsylvania at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra walked out on strike — came as the Philadelphia’s players sought to recover some of the pay they lost to concessions during the recent bankruptcy.

Holy Night

Dan Albergotti Crab Orchard Review
It's not easy to discover that a loved one holds views (prejudices) inimical to your own. The Carolina-based poet Dan Albergotti offers an exquisitely balanced portrait of what happens at such moments of discovery.

Sartre and the Birth of Radical Existentialism

Ray Monk The New Statesman
A granular review of three recent books on the the political and intellectual legacy of French Marxian existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. As the reviewer notes, if you want to know why 50,000 people showed up to pay their respects at the writer/activist's 1980 funeral, these new books may provide the answer.

Building Alliances to End Gender-Based Violence at Work

Tula Connell Solidarity Center AFL-CIO
There is a specific set of behaviors that constitute gender-based violence at work that includes sexual violence, verbal abuse, threats of violence and bullying. A meeting in Brazil sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation and the Solidarity Center discussed a campaign to shape a worker-driven International Labor Organization standard ending gender-based violence at work, based about successful initiatives by local worker organizations.

Waivers Can Fix Out-of-Date Federal Labor Laws

Andrew Stern & Eli Lehrer Washington Examiner
Moderators Note: This Portside Labor moderator does not agree with the following proposal by Andy Stern and Eli Lehrer. I do believe that the left in the labor movement needs to know what schemes conservatives are proposing, especially when it comes from a former "labor leader".

Blood in the Water

Terry Hartle Christian Science Monitor
This fresh look at the 1971 Attica, New York prison uprising, which was brutally repressed by then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller, is not just a history. It is an intervention into contemporary debates about the U.S. prison system.

I Am Not Your Negro

Bill Meyer Hollywood Progressive
Raoul Peck's new film 'I Am Not Your Negro' about James Baldwin has a powerful structure utilizing rare videos and photos and personal writings of Baldwin, and at the same time aligning them with contemporary issues of police brutality and race relations, creates a mesmerizing awareness of the continuity in the struggle for civil rights.

Volkswagen Faces Bumpy Road in Challenge to 'Micro-Union'

Daniel Wiessner and Bernie Woodall Reuters
The German automaker's U.S. subsidiary earlier this month brought a case in a Washington, D.C.-based federal appeals court seeking to overturn a vote by a group of skilled trade workers at its Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant to join the United Auto Workers. The dispute is a high-profile test of whether unions, an seek new members by targeting smaller groups, rather than organizing whole plants or companies as in the past.