Portside

Many taxi drivers love the entrepreneurial nature of the work but they still want and need security and protection. Recent developments of the gig economy in the states of Washington and California are breakthrough moments for the potential to organize workers against companies like Uber. We can't wait for the courts to figure out the gig economy: we have to be organizing now, despite the challenges.

If well organized and militant union members at Verizon—who have gone on strike against the company and its predecessors in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2011 and now—can’t stop the outsourcing and destruction of decent jobs, unorganized workers spread across the planet in industries like telecommunications will find the task insurmountable.

Workers said they began speaking frequently among themselves about the low pay, no benefits and no chance at permanent employment. They decided to organize to get a union.

A proposed deal between SEIU and Airbnb has been criticized by housing groups and labor activists, including some SEIU members, concerned that Airbnb has exacerbated housing crises in cities across the US, including in San Francisco, where Airbnb is headquartered.

AFT President Randi Weingarten along with the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers, the New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers praised Secretary Hillary Clinton for her win in the New York primary and thanked their members who volunteered and voted in their thousands.

Several union officials charge that Working Families Party officials this year re-worked the presidential endorsement process in a way that rigged it for Bernie Sanders with the hopes that its work on behalf of the Vermont senator would help the party raise money and increase membership.The unions that remain argue the party will play a critical role mobilizing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

The old model of collective bargaining can’t be resurrected. Herewith, some new models of how workers can win and wield power.

More than a dozen local labor organizations have endorsed the Vermont senator, even though their national leaders have picked Hillary Clinton.

A three-member NLRB panel denied Volkswagen’s request for the agency to review a December 2015 election in which skilled-trades employees in Chattanooga voted overwhelmingly to designate UAW Local 42 as their representative for the purpose of collective bargaining.

DC37, AFSCME, the largest municipal public employees union in New York City, urges its members and retirees to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party Primary on April 19. The editorial says "Clinton is arguably the most qualified candidate for U.S. President in modern times. Throughout her long career in public service, she has always been a stalwart friend of labor, including our union."