Portside

It compares the right-to-work law with laws passed in Southern states in the 1950s as part of the massive resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court’s desegregation orders in Brown v. Board of Education, with legislation intended to discourage membership in the NAACP — laws that were ultimately overturned in court for violating 1st and 14th Amendment rights of free expression and association.

In the end, those who must live without hope easily turn to hate — or at least resentment. That is how we ended up with a referendum campaign that rarely reached beyond “fear” and “immigrants.” Throughout history, the right only feeds in the spaces vacated by progressive, inclusive politics. At least on the Labour side, much of the Leave vote has its roots more in poverty than in prejudice. And this is where Labour must begin.

Leaders in both the environmental and labor movements say the country could prevent more public health disasters like the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, if old infrastructure is fixed or replaced -- like leaky drinking water pipes, and natural gas pipelines. And at the same time, the repairs would create jobs.

(Orginally published in Spanish on SubVersiones, see links at the end.) If the national teachers movement in Mexico manages to bring down the educational reform, there will be a path to bringing down all the structural reforms that are occurring in the country’s strategic sectors, such as the energy sector. This is the assessment that teachers are making. This is precisely the fear of the federal government.

Why do we defer from 9 to 5? The “master-servant relationship” is a feudal phantom that still haunts today’s workplaces, thanks to English common law. Peter Hall-Jones argues that it’s time to exorcise the old ghoul. The workplace democracy movement aims to do just that, but where do unions fit in? The way they respond to this agenda might well determine their relevance in the workplace of the future.

As living conditions in Puerto Rico continue to deteriorate students and young workers from the island will continue to flood those places where family connections and job opportunities pull them. Not all will be targets of violence because of their multiple identities, as the Orlando victims were. Their fate, however, will continue to be a reminder of how invisible forces pattern seemingly random events in the lives of individuals and communities.

The Mexican government followed through on its threat to use force against striking dissident teachers.

It is no coincidence that CEO pay has reached astronomical levels at the same time that income inequality has widened to a level not seen since the eve of the Great Depression or even the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. A wide body of scholarship has linked the two. CEOs, who earn 335 times the pay of their average employee, make up a big chunk of the 1 percent. Some ideas to change that are kicking around.

Leave’s libertarians will destroy the welfare state. The desire to give the ruling class two fingers is understandable, but we must resist this false patriotism.

As education activists draw attention to high rates of suspensions, racial disparities, and the “school-to-prison pipeline,” the political winds are shifting.