Portside

After a year of contract negotiations in which Kaiser has rejected proposals aimed at increasing staffing and improving access to care, they’re on their first ever open-ended strike.

“Surveillance makes worker coordination and solidarity harder, and big data makes capital coordination easier, so the need for both pro-labor and antitrust laws is greater than ever before.”

Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center just outside of Albany, New York filed petitions requesting a union election, the National Labor Relations Board confirmed this week.

Two key issues for the workers, all members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, have been the subject of negotiation: wage increases and the union’s demand to increase the time therapists spend on tasks other than seeing patients.

A Trader Joe’s in downtown Minneapolis became the second unionized location in the US on Friday, less than a month after a Massachusetts location became the first.

Starbucks is seeking good PR by offering to cover travel costs for abortion and gender-affirming care for workers like me. But its promises come with caveats and can be revoked. We don’t want flimsy promises — we want these benefits in a union contract.

It is an indictment of the entire restaurant industry.

Our labor has become a commodity, something bought and sold in the marketplace, no different in principle than raw materials, equipment, and the buildings that house our workplaces.

“They are compelled to do this,” says Alan Benjamin, a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council who heard directly from striking workers. “It's not voluntary; it's compulsory work, without proper sanitation and equipment.”

Jennifer Abruzzo, General Counsel, National Labor Relations Board would like to ease the path to forming unions and curb employers’ coercion and intimidation.