Portside

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's slate of labor-busting measures has touched off a lengthy budget impasse in Springfield.

California Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez introduced a bill to allow groups of 10 or more independent contractors working for "hosting platforms" such as Uber to join worker organizations and bargain over pay and working conditions. This would allow workers to have union-like associations, but they would still be considered contractors and not employees.

What’s unspoken is that the best proof that the unions didn’t have much of a role in the protest is that historically they’ve shown little ability to mobilize significant numbers of students in the Bay State. Typically, union-backed coalitions like BEJA will pull a few dozen to a few hundred people to such protests. Students or non-students, the story is always the same. The people who turn out will be a mix of union and nonprofit staffers.

Gig workers include Uber and Lyft drivers, DoorDash and Postmates food delivery drivers, Handy house cleaners and Amazon "flex" workers who deliver packages. They are technically independent contractors who set their own terms of employment — taking as many or as few jobs as they want — but they have no control over wages, which can be changed at a whim by the companies in charge.

Republicans in Virginia have proposed a referendum in November to strengthen the state's existing open shop laws. In this, an opportunity presents itself that labor unions must take. Our goal should not simply be to defeat the proposal: it should be a realignment of the conversation surrounding the role in labor unions in Virginia’s—and America’s—political economy.

Can some of Trump's white working class supporters switch to vote Democrat. The author believes this is possible.

The fact that your company gives you good free lunches and shuttles to work and nice paycheck does not change the fact that you could get more by negotiating together, as a union. Anyone smart enough to get a job at Google is smart enough to grasp these facts.

Answers remain scarce as Canadian labour grapples with Uber, Airbnb and the 'gig economy.'

If the labor movement must invest in politics, it would be wisest to do so at the community/local/state level. It is there, our ‘laboratories of public policy’, where the labor movement can have the most positive impact on the lives of working people.

Aside from the fact that unions seldom use their most powerful weapon, the strike, and aside from the fact that even fewer unions ever mobilize and organize their biggest asset, the members, our biggest problem in bargaining is that labor’s financial analysis of corporations only touches the surface. It misses the vast bulk of corporate hidden wealth. Labor economist Les Leopold explains how companies hide their wealth in his new book, Runaway Inequality.