Portside

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.

In the past year, UMass administrators have eliminated all funding for full-time Labor Center graduate students (including teaching and research assistantships), all funding for part-time faculty who teach the required curriculum and cut the Director's position from 12-months to 9-months. The course on collective bargaining was cut from the curriculum.

For the first time in its 40-year history, the union of full- and part-time faculty at City College of San Francisco recently went on strike—and it worked.

Tennessee, Volkswagen, and the Future of Labor

400 workers at Just Born Quality confections in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania have gone out on strike. The company's most famous product is Peeps. Management wants to replace their pension with a 401(K).

We never know what is actually possible until we test it. It may seem a long road from a union trying to protect jobs to a union setting out an alternative agenda for the economy. But surely the main lesson of recent years is that since capitalist corporations think big as a matter of course then we will surely lose if we continue to think small. If we don't raise our expectations, they will be lowered for us. •

In his speech on immigration, the Republican presidential candidate echoed hardline stances once voiced by unions. But decades of union campaigns have drawn immigrants and minority voters into their fold.

For the third year in a row, union density has gone up in New York City. Over one-quarter of New York City workers now belong to unions. The growth has come primarily in the private sector.

Tens of millions of public sector workers have gone on a day-long strike across India, protesting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic policies, particularly his plans to push for greater privatization. Thousands of state-run banks, government offices and factories were closed on Friday, and public transport disrupted, in the strike called by 10 trade unions.

This paper finds that Black union workers of today are very different from Black union workers of the past. In particular, Black union workers today are more likely to be female, older, have more years of formal education, be immigrants, and work in the public sector. Black union workers also enjoy higher wages, and better access to health insurance and retirement benefits than their non-union peers.