Portside

Two key questions confront labor: should unions focus on organizing workers with major strategic leverage in the economy? Or should they welcome any workers willing to fight, since that organizing can constitute a major catalyst for other workers?

Dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in Los Angeles have received positive signs from the NLRB, which bodes well for their contested union drive. If all goes as expected, they will be the only unionized strippers in the country.

Arbitration agreements prohibit employees from vindicating their legal rights in courtrooms, and instead require them to pursue claims in private, confidential forums.

This decision was the result of a large-scale union campaign which made good use of a worker's survey to raise public awareness but also to mobilize around the issue of occupational cancers. 

“I’m feeling in shock, to be honest. It hasn’t quite hit me yet and I don’t think I’ll fully believe it until we’ve ratified,” And until I’ve hugged and cried in joy with my fellow strikers. But excited and nervous to get back to work! And to see the ripples this has across the industry.” Almost 250 workers had been on strike for 66 days.

Ford Motor Company announced that they would be building a new LFP (lithium iron phosphate) battery plant in Marshall, Michigan. “Because of the foresight of collective bargaining, the UAW will be able to organize this new facility using a card check to prove majority interest.”

If the effort to organize the Buffalo facility succeeds, it would become Tesla’s first unionized workplace. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed opposition to unions in the past.

“The US labor movement is largely unprepared for—if not downright skittish about—taking up the question of how to contest a fundamental assault on democracy.”

The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against Union Kitchen last fall, detailing 26 violations of labor laws protecting unionizing workers.

The call from congressional lawmakers comes amid a surge in child labor violations—and as Republican state lawmakers seek to roll back over a century of child labor protections.