Portside

As sugar beet harvesting season comes and goes in the Red River Valley, Mark Froemke, president of the West Minnesota Area Labor Council/Red River Valley, AFL-CIO, reflects on worker power in the region.

On Tuesday, federal officials reported a 29% jump in union election petitions during the most recent fiscal year, rising from 2,593 in 2023 to 3,286 in 2024.

A supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant, Lilly Ledbetter discovered through an anonymous note left in her mailbox that she was receiving less pay than her male co-workers who worked the same position.

Bidenomics is a break with four decades of policy that disempowered workers. This record was obscured by Biden’s inability to explain his accomplishments. Undoing neoliberalism will take time but can happen with a revitalized labor movement.

The Teamsters are spinning off momentum from recent organizing fights to new battle fronts across Amazon’s logistics chain.

The proposed agreement includes higher base pay and expanded health care coverage for roughly 3,000 masters and PhD students

Worker risk is also a function of workers’ power in the workplace — or lack thereof. Where they work, the conditions they work under and their ability to protect themselves against obvious threats make workers more vulnerable than average citizens.

“Hello, housekeeping!” she called, breaking into a laugh upon realizing her mistake. The 57-year-old is a member of UNITE HERE, the hospitality union, and had taken a leave of absence from her job at a nearby Hilton to go door-to-door to keep Arizon

On Sept. 23, Boeing announced a new contract offer, but did so in a press release and directly to members instead of to their union in bargaining. Union members said the proposal was inadequate, and disrespectful in the way it bypassed the union.

Black and Latina women are driving labor union growth in the U.S. amid a decades-long decline in membership. In 2023, Black women’s union membership rate notched a slight bump from 10.3% to 10.5%, while Latinas went up from 8.5% to 8.8%.