Portside

More than 30,000 farm workers are being brought to Canada from the Caribbean, Mexico and South East Asia to do the jobs that no one wants to do, they are treated as sub-human and forced to return home, many times as injured bodies.

Farmworkers at Washington's Sakuma Brothers farms have voted to join what could be the first union for Driscoll's berry pickers in the nation. In September, they voted to be represented by Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), the first farmworker union led by workers who are indigenous to Central America.

A union president explains how labor should adjust to changing times.

Vice President Jesse Sharkey said, "We're bargaining every day," and that talks would continue through the weekend. As of Monday morning, however, no deal had been made. CBS reports that if there isn't a deal reached by midnight, the strike will begin at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

UAW members, prevented from working for four months, question the company’s claimed concerns over ‘stark economic realities’ in the aviation industry.

“They have targeted Massachusetts with the idea that if they can win here, it makes the road to privatization across the country easier,” Massachusetts Teachers Association President Barbara Madeloni says. “Blowing this up would really be a feather in their cap.”

The Canada-European Union "Free" Trade Pact, due to be signed on October 27, like other such agreements, favors corporate power and profits at the expense of working people. Dock workers action last July shows resistance is possible.

A play about a young woman growing up in New York City where her father was a live-in custodian at the St. Agnes Branch Library Library on Amsterdam Avenue between 80 and 81st Street. She describes what a wonderful life she had living in a library and how much the union, District Council 37, AFSCME meant to her and her family. "Feeding the Dragon" has opened at the Pittsburgh City Theatre in Pennsylvania.

The strike — called on the same day that musicians on the other side of Pennsylvania at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra walked out on strike — came as the Philadelphia’s players sought to recover some of the pay they lost to concessions during the recent bankruptcy.

There is a specific set of behaviors that constitute gender-based violence at work that includes sexual violence, verbal abuse, threats of violence and bullying. A meeting in Brazil sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation and the Solidarity Center discussed a campaign to shape a worker-driven International Labor Organization standard ending gender-based violence at work, based about successful initiatives by local worker organizations.