Portside

The president has cultivated a relationship with the building trades unions. But early hires at the Department of Labor are opponents of wage standards for construction contracts.

A free on-line course for organizing in your workplace.

Labor sould figtt the proposed National RIght to Work Law. But it is more imortant to continue to build alliances among other progressive groups to fight other reforms that have a serious chance of passage. In particular, labor should put its resources into organizing government workers who are under attack on all sides.

The alliance that some labor leaders made with Trump is built on sand. The author believes they will come to regret it.

"I don't think that the model that Scott Walker has put forward is a model for success," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "That's the model that the Koch Brothers have tried to spread everywhere." Charles and his brother David Koch operate one of the most powerful conservative groups in the nation and have supported efforts across the country to curtail union rights.

Calling for a general strike now bears no relation to what mass strikes have meant in the past. The flight from reality shows up in activists’ blasé attitude to history and their very distant relationship to the working class.

We all know that at this moment everything is on the table. This year has been astounding, sometimes inspiring, and ultimately menacing. It gave lightning flashes of what a people's movement could accomplish. But the election outcome is ultimately brutal -- a nightmare President and administration packed with white nationalists, ultra-billionaires and militarists that threaten the existence of the entire democratic system. No one, no group and no institution is safe.

The top lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board issued an official opinion this week that players at all 17 private colleges in the FBS are employees of their schools. It is a significant expansion of a 2014 ruling by NLRB regional director Peter S. Ohr that Northwestern football players are employees.

The dispute is not over their wages. It's Honeywell that's demanding deep concessions in their new 5-year contract, including the elimination of cost-of-living increases and pensions for new workers, cuts in overtime pay, subcontracting out work, restricting representation rights, and more.

In 2014, the last year with full statistics, 899 construction workers nationwide died from workplace injuries. The reason: loss of union strength and decline in OSHA funding. President Trump's anti-union and anti-federal spending polices promise to only make the situation worse.