Portside

Barbara Ehrenreich speaks on the need to expand the conversation about sexual harassment.

Like Bargaining for the Common Good, TURN members also believe teachers need to approach bargaining more creatively and boldly. Specifically, TURN wants to see unions negotiate over policies that “advance student learning,” such as reducing the number of standardized tests students must take while also pushing for new kinds of assessments that measure skills like creativity.

Approximately 1.8 million veterans in payroll jobs across the US would get a raise if Congress raised the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024. Nearly two-thirds of the veterans who would get the raise are age 40 or older, over 60% have some college experience, and nearly 70% work full time. The real federal minimum wage peaked back in 1968.

During the 1970s women and people of color were organizing their workplaces at impressive rates — they just weren’t winning. Lane Windham in her new book recounts that history and its consequences.

As labor unions across much of the world struggle to increase their membership, how do workers get their employers to raise wages and assure safe conditions? That’s the question some of the world’s most innovative worker groups are asking. And they’re hopeful they have found a solution.

As labor unions across much of the world struggle to increase their membership, how do workers get their employers to raise wages and assure safe conditions? That’s the question some of the world’s most innovative worker groups are asking. And they’re hopeful they have found a solution.

Union leaders say they take sexual harassment seriously. In addition to expanding staff training and counseling as needed, SEIU has established additional channels through which employees can report potential issues. At its executive council meeting in March, the AFL-CIO approved a new, stronger code of conduct and a new process for addressing issues like sexual harassment and requiring its state and local affiliates to do the same.

Greg Asbed has been honored for his work co-founding the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and helping develop the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model, or WSR, a bottom-up approach in which workers play a key role in establishing work condition standards.

Tip theft and other forms of wage theft is already a serious problem, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. It estimated workers lost more than $50 billion a year in wage theft in 2014, or far more than the cost of robberies, burglaries and other property crimes.

Acting on the principle "All of us or none," delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention joined Black Lives Matter protesters outside the meeting hall.