Portside

Tennessee’s infamous anti-union union is fading away for lack of members. Will Volkswagen’s rationale for keeping out a real union crumble with it?

We remain committed to fighting the corporate interests that back this project and name this pipeline “a pipeline of corporate greed.” We challenge the labor movement to strategize on how to better engage and include Native people and other marginalized populations into the labor movement as a whole.

The business of providing temps to factories and warehouses is booming in New Jersey, which has one of the highest concentration of temps in the country . But New Jersey's "temp towns" have a dark side. Workers say this sector of the temporary employment industry is rife with mistreatment. They complain about low pay or not being paid at all, rampant racial and sexual discrimination, unsafe working conditions and a system that seems to exploit them at every turn.

A Globe investigation found that these workers, eager for a paycheck, are often paid below the prevailing wage and illegally, in cash. They are also the most likely to be subjected to unsafe work conditions, without insurance to cover medical bills or lost pay if they get hurt. And the unscrupulous contractors who employ them are too seldom caught and penalized.

“The original, Southern desire to preserve an exploited, economically deprived non-white agricultural labor force pinned to the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy continues to manifest itself full force,” Law Professor Juan Perea of Loyola University said. “The only difference today is now it’s brown and black people.”

Between Trumka’s DAPL endorsement and the Fraternal Order of Police’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president, this week has shown a stark divide between parts of American labor and today’s social movements.

NLRB member, Hirozawa, writing only for himself, offered an interpretation of Section 8(a)(5) of the NLRA that would arguably require employers to bargain with minority unions.

We have to grasp the fact that the supposedly stupid people who are under the influence of right-wing populists, who refuse to understand that impoverishment is the price that has to be paid for the enrichment of the few and the unstoppable globalisation of capitalism, are really not so stupid. They are calling for a change of course. And so we must think back to the idea of solidarity, of social rights and democracy.

Minimum wage referendums will be on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington in November. Democrats hope this will energize voters to come to the polls.

As far as labor leaders are concerned, former Labor Sectary Hilda Solis and her successor, Tom Perez, have delivered. "President Obama has been a good president for working people," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says. Since his days as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama has had close relations with labor unions, and organizations such as the Service Employees International Union were among his earliest and most vocal supporters when he ran for president in 2008.