Portside

Late last year, the International Center for Joint Labor Research, the first institute of its kind in China, was shut down, with little warning or explanation.

Michael Harrington, a founder of Democratic Socialists of America believed that to change the consciousness of a nation, one had to be prepared to build an organization, start a publication, speak in a thousand halls to crowds of hundreds, or scores, or tens, if necessary, recruiting comrades from those converted by the sound of one’s voice and the strength of one’s arguments.

Even though many Bay Area unions are opposed to fracking their pension funds continue to invest money in the companies carrying out this work. It is a problem they are trying to solve.

Despite the opposition of many Bay Area workers and their unions are to fracking they are finding, much to their dismay, that their pension funds are being invested in the fossil fuel industry.

The longtime New York Times labor reporter on the state of the American labor movement and labor journalism.

“[Right-to-work] is going to bring everybody down,” said Russ Krings, the directing business representative for the Milwaukee union International Association of Machinists District 10, during a press conference with other labor leaders on Monday. “It’s going to affect not only the union families and nonunion families. It’s going to affect all the businesses that we go and spend our money at. This is going to bring the economy down."

Because their traditional allies from the Democratic Party have obsessively embraced corporate-motivated innovations, teacher unions seem paralyzed, unable to respond with a new strategy. They criticize the overuse of standardized tests, but they keep electing Democrats to office who, once elected, more often than not join the corporate attack on education.

In this article Kristof acknowledges he was wrong about unions - As unions wane in American life, it’s also increasingly clear that they were doing a lot of good in sustaining middle class life — especially the private-sector unions that are now dwindling. "To understand the rising inequality, you have to understand the devastation in the labor movement,” says Jake Rosenfeld, a labor expert at the University of Washington and the author of “What Unions No Longer Do.”

IATSE is taking on Live Nation, the nation's biggest concert promoter because of its use of labor contractors who pay low wages and fail to ensure workplace safety standards. The union argues that the promoter, not the subcontractor is responsible,workers conditions -- an argument consistent with the NLRB ruling that McDonald's not its franchises were responsible for the conditions.

Republican Governor Bruce Raynor launches ferocious attack on organized labor in Illinois. The Governor has aimed his attack against both public and private sector workers. This goes beyond Wisconsin Governor Walker whose attack was mainly aimed at public sector employees.