Portside

The new figures have just come out, and we are slightly down again.

Dockworkers in Oakland, California refused to show up to work to show their opposition to Trump's agenda on the day of his inauguration. Their strike demonstrated the potential power ordinary people have on the job, when organized.

The Service Employee International Union, along with other public sector and service industry unions, was not invited to President Trump's meeting with certain union leaders. Its President Mary Kay Henry expects to be hit hard by Trump's cuts. She hopes by expanding the Fight for $15 campaign support for unions will broaden.

That states can pass laws banning mandatory union dues is not new. Congress amended labor law in 1947 to allow individual states to pass right-to-work laws. “How it affects the workforce is really simple: It lowers wages,” said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center. “If you strip it to its core, this is about reducing the power of workers to bargain for a decent living.”

Some critics, including some in the labor movement, suggest that unions have to abandon collective bargaining and pursue other strategies for worker gains, such as winning higher wages through legislation. But collective bargaining can still work, and it is still necessary.

As inequality and its consequences mount, even more struggles and progressive formations will emerge. They are likely to be imperfect and messy, but from them useful ideas as to the future of collective worker action will become clearer. One thing is sure, though: Such a vision will not come from Andy Stern.

"Labor and community groups supporting the efforts by Boeing workers to form a union will also be in attendance," the IAM's announcement states. Evans, the IAM's lead organizer in North Charleston, and Ken Riley, the longtime president of the local longshoremen's union, are scheduled to speak at Friday's event.

King’s strategic advice to the striking Memphis sanitation workers is still useful: winning requires placing the struggle in a larger context that challenges elected officials and government at every level to make America a better nation!

Many New York unions are joining the Women's March on Washington including District Council 37, the United Federation of Teachers, the New York State Nurses Association, the National Writers Union, Writers Guild of America East, United Food and Commercial Workers 1500, New York State United Teachers and 32BJ SEIU.

Mothers—and some fathers—are increasingly suing employers for discriminating against working parents. They are succeeding.