Portside

According to the United Nations’ International Labour Organization, there are only two countries in the world that don’t have some form of legally protected, partially paid time off for working women who’ve just had a baby: Papua New Guinea and the U.S. The U.S. is also way behind the 78 countries that also offer leave to fathers.

A planned strike this week by registered nurses at Kaiser hospitals was canceled after a tentative contract agreement was reached.

Mahalla is a hotbed of industrial unrest, but the latest strike comes at a time when a crackdown on dissent has weakened street protests.

Lawmakers must stop functioning as handmaidens to the rich in an economic scheme that has failed the 99 percent from the very day the 1 percent got Ronald Reagan to buy it.

A compilation of articles by Richard Steier, the "best full-time reporter on the New York City labor beat." He is the editor of the Chief where these articles first appeared. This is the book to read if you want to know what was happening on the municipal labor scene since the mid-1990's.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, battled organized labor regularly during his first term over contracts and pensions. Now, just weeks after his re-election, he's roiled the Public Employees Federation, the white-collar state employees union, by attempting to turn more than 2,500 union jobs into nonunion posts.

Ending the exploitation of urban care workers requires radically democratic alternatives that go beyond the rhetoric of "work-life balance."

For "Saint Cole," his second book-length effort, Noah Van Sciver stayed close to home, weaving a fictional tale with plenty of basis in reality for many young people lacking both the financial clout for higher education and the job opportunities needed to carve out a small slice of the American Dream. We spoke with Van Sciver about Joe's opportunities, such as they are, and the real world struggle of the working class to stay motivated and improve their circumstances.

This localist agenda is part of Mayor Spencers ambitious program to create a fairer and more sustainable local economy whose businesses stay put and where money spends more time circulating locally among networked enterprises. His administration is promoting worker cooperatives, energy efficiency, public banking, a local food shed and urban agriculture, remunicipalization of jobs (like the Socialists before them), and creating new jobs by reclaiming the citys waste.

TPP is a corporate power grab clearly worthy of Seattle-caliber mobilization. But the fight against this reprehensible deal requires different types of tactics. And the place to start is by derailing “Fast Track,” the mechanism that would allow TPP approval to rush through the U.S. Congress with little debate and no amendments.