Portside

Ten private-sector union pension funds have applied to the U.S. Treasury Dept. for the green light to slash retiree payouts, the Pension Rights Center says Among them are labor organizations affiliated with the auto industry, several from the trucking industry and others from the iron workers and bricklayer unions. Sixty-eight plans are listed as having “critical and declining status,” meaning they too will soon have to apply for permission to cut retiree payouts.

Arkansas poultry workers, Brooklyn warehouse workers and house cleaners, Twin Cities roofers, and thousands of students in places like Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Charlotte, North Carolina. They were all among the tens of thousands who stayed home from work or school across the country during Thursday, February 16’s “Day without Immigrants.”

After national leaders of the Building Trades unions met with President Donald Trump January 25 and heaped praise on him, two Labor Notes readers sent in their thoughts. One is a local assistant business manager, the other a retired communications staffer for the Electrical Workers (IBEW). Here are excerpts from both.

This infographic for State of Power 2017 exposes those 'manufacturing consent'.

Riley said government-operated ports, including Charleston's, are reducing union jobs by hiring non-ILA workers to operate cranes, receive and deliver cargo and perform other duties.

Bob White played an historic role in building working class understanding of key principles: the need for workers to control their own class institutions; the need to maintain an understanding of the conflict of interests between workers and employers, the need to maintain a capacity to collectively struggle and resist, a rejection of competitiveness as a goal or concessions as a strategy, and the need for unions to develop an independent political capacity.

The last time adjunct instructors recieved a wage increase was 25 years ago. They celebrated that long ago event with a party that included a cake.

The new law bans public employee unions in most cases from negotiating over issues such as health insurance, evaluation procedures, staff reduction and leaves of absence for political purposes. Police officers and firefighters are exempted from that portion of the law, a move that AFSCME argues in the lawsuit violates the Iowa Constitution by creating "favored" and "disfavored" groups of government workers.

About 39,000 Minnesota workers suffer from wage theft each year, resulting in $11.9 million in wages owed, and that's only what goes reported. The union-backed Wage Theft Initiative proposes policy changes to give the state Department of Labor and Industry more enforcement tools and an increased budget.

On Tuesday, over 15,000 U.S. bank workers with the Spain-based bank Santander will declare their intent to establish this country's first bank workers' union. They'll deliver petitions, take over corporate lobbies and begin the long struggle to bring collective bargaining to an industry with predatory practices and lots of low-wage workers.