Portside

Employees of Newton based Medical Resources Corp in Boston voted to Unionize. They will be members of Service Employees International Union Local 1199.

As the United States and Cuba start to restore full diplomatic relations, here is a picture of an aspect of the dysfunctional relationship that has existed between our two countries. The release and return to Cuba of the last of the "Cuban Five" helped pave the way for the new stage in US-Cuba relations. Here is the backstory of that group, told, as Chris Serres says, by Fernando Morais in a new, well-researched, "cinematically vivid" account.

From 100 hours of recently unearthed audiotapes recorded over decades, the Liz Garbus film weaves together Nina’s narrative, told largely in her own words. Rare concert footage, archival interviews, along with diaries, letters, interviews with Nina’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, friends and collaborators, make this the most authentic, personal and unflinching telling of the extraordinary life of one of the 20th century’s greatest recording artists.

Personal care attendants will see their wages increase to $15 per hour in Massachusetts, while fast food workers in New York State may soon see a large pay increase as well.

Cal Winslow lays out the context for the breathtaking admissions of Dave Regan, President of SEIU UHW, regarding the forced transfer of 70,000 long-term care workers from UHW into the newly formed SEIU Local 2015.

AMC’s new show goes beyond the obvious questions about what happens when robots can think like people.

The award-winning poet Julia B. Levine opens her eyes to global tragedies we leave for our children to inherit and our attempts still to shelter their innocence from what will haunt them.

Public sector unions are playing defense. They need a plan to convince employees to join (or stay in) the union. But they're operating in a difficult terrain, after years of cuts and concessions.

Worker participation does not consist in attendance at purely formal meetings but rather in taking part in real discussions about wages, training, conditions at work. We use no shock therapy. Changes cannot be decreed, they are first debated by all the workers, by the whole population. We are proud of Cuban workers' capacity for resistance, for creativity. We are aware of the issues at stake and we are confident. We, Cubans, are not a bit afraid!

In higher education, whether as affordable land-grant state colleges, tuition-free municipal universities, grants to children of the poor or need-blind admissions, access to learning was at least prized as a right, not a privilege. As tuition and administration costs soar, the number of low-paid adjuncts explodes and financial aid collapses, college funding shifts from the public purse to student debt. Wither democracy or plutocracy?