Portside

France's new labor law allows a race to the bottom as employers take advantage of a fragmented workforce whose ability to call on the solidarity of workers elsewhere will be strictly controlled.

Former students who sued over the issue of teacher tenure asked the state Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the judicially whipsawed Vergara v. California case.

The split amid an unexpectedly contentious Democratic primary season has exposed contrasting agendas in organized labor. Trade unionists are exercised by international deals, which they blame for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Service workers less affected by globalization advocate collective-bargaining rights and wage protection.

Assessing how White people benefit from race-based economic inequality.

Verizon strikers are fighting against the oppression and indignity of the American workplace.

US Labor Against the War (USLAW) held its 2016 National Assembly at ATU’s Tommy Douglas Center in Silver Spring, MD from April 15-17. Unlike the labor movements of most countries in the world, with the exception of trade and immigration, most of the American labor leadership still is uncomfortable or has yet to see the importance of talking about foreign policy and the need for international labor solidarity in practice rather than just in rhetoric.

Forty thousand Verizon workers have now been on strike for a month. These days, a strike of the Verizon action’s scale and duration is exceedingly rare. That’s largely because the stakes for workers are so high. Strikers don’t just lose their pay and benefits — they risk losing their job entirely.

The change -- which has been criticized as too drastic by many employers -- will go into effect on Dec. 1, 2016. It is intended to expand access to overtime pay for otherwise low-salaried workers who log long hours but have been treated as exempt from overtime because they perform some managerial duties.

Higher pay scales for longer-term employees would likely further reduce turnover and increase loyalty, says Erin Johansson, research director at Jobs With Justice. It would also reduce the burden on tax-paying Americans, who shell out more than $1.2 billion each year to cover public assistance programs for McDonald's employees, according to a recent study by the National Employment Law Project.

On average, manufacturing jobs still pay better than most jobs available to people without a college degree. But there isn't anything special about manufacturing that made it a source of good living wage jobs for so many decades. The real reason why some terrible manufacturing jobs became good jobs is simple: unions. We may not bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. in large numbers, but we can work to revitalize and rebuild unions.