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Portside Needs Your Help

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Once a year, Portside Labor asks all of our readers for support. Every year our readers come thru. We run these appeals for just two weeks. If you have already contributed, many thanks! If you haven't... what could be a better time than over the weekend. If you have thought of going to our donate page, but haven't...please do. Here's why we are asking for your support.

In Oaxaca, Teachers Won’t Give Up the Fight

Eric Larson NACLA
Oaxacans in 2006 tied the repression of education workers to broader frustrations with official impunity and deep-seated social and economic inequality. Those frustrations continue to animate everyday life. In confronting today's new challenges, Oaxacans are doing more than simply “saying no.” They’re drawing from an array of experiences – including that of the Oaxaca Commune in 2006 – to imagine collective alternatives, and make them real.

Annual Message from the Moderators of Portside to Our Readers

Portside
The service Portside provides is in greater demand than ever. Thousands are discovering that there is a Left in the US, and our daily posts help give a sense of its real scope, however diverse and organizationally diffuse. We turn for you to help because as we grow, so do our financial needs. We will continue, but to measure up to a re- charged and re-vitalized movement, your contributions will make all the difference.

Supreme Court OKs Longer Arguments in High-Stakes Union Case

Jess Bravin The Wall Street Journal Law Blog
The court is considering whether to overrule its 1977 decision allowing states to require public employees to join a union or pay a fee to cover collective bargaining costs. A win for the plaintiffs—a group of California teachers who say they oppose union efforts to increase pay and protect job security—could cripple public sector unions in about two dozen states that have “agency fee” laws.

A Superfund for Workers

Jeremy Brecher Dollars and Sense
How to Promote a Just Transition and Break Out of the Jobs vs. Environment Trap

When Workers Fight: NUHW Wins Battle with Kaiser

Cal Winslow Beyond Chron
The victory of the therapists, counselors, and social workers at Kaiser Permanente in California is a landmark, in healthcare and above all in mental healthcare. The bottom line: these workers have won patient care ratios, they’ve won the right to advocate for patients, and they won these in a context of a nationwide drive to cut costs and press productivity in an industry awash in cash.

Workers Need a Better Deal on Thanksgiving Weekend

Jenny Wittner The Progressive
Thanksgiving Day sales, Black Friday, Cyber Monday prevent retail workers from enjoying family time. Employers aren’t just giving workers unstable, unpredictable shifts during the hectic holiday season — they’re doing it all year round. Nearly 40 percent of retail workers are given irregular schedules that wreak havoc on their lives.

How Higher Wages for U.S. Autoworkers Could Help You Get a Raise, Too

Jordan Yadoo BloombergBusiness
While new labor contracts cover only 140,000 unionized employees at the Big Three carmakers, they could lift pay standards for the nearly 1 million people who work in the U.S. auto industry and may also spur wage gains through the broader labor market. The deals come after a decade without raises for senior workers and lower wages and benefits for new hires--which almost completely eliminated the wage premium autoworkers once enjoyed over the average American worker.