Portside

Answers remain scarce as Canadian labour grapples with Uber, Airbnb and the 'gig economy.'

If the labor movement must invest in politics, it would be wisest to do so at the community/local/state level. It is there, our ‘laboratories of public policy’, where the labor movement can have the most positive impact on the lives of working people.

Aside from the fact that unions seldom use their most powerful weapon, the strike, and aside from the fact that even fewer unions ever mobilize and organize their biggest asset, the members, our biggest problem in bargaining is that labor’s financial analysis of corporations only touches the surface. It misses the vast bulk of corporate hidden wealth. Labor economist Les Leopold explains how companies hide their wealth in his new book, Runaway Inequality.

"Finance capital supports war and chaos and strives towards it, because it can use chaos to seize national assets. In my opinion, our mafia-like capitalism cooperates and collaborates with foreign capital, which does not care for our sovereignty and prosperity," explains Maziyar Gilaninejhad from the Iranian metal workers and mechanics union in a interview in which he also describes the repression workers in Iran face.

The National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia said her members helped elect Secretary Hillary Clinton in various states. She also blasted "hateful rhetoric" from Donald Trump.

Thousands of attorneys perform tasks so routine that some believe they should get the same protections as the rest of the hourly workforce.

Despite a crackdown on labor activists there, Chinese workers continue to strike. The strike wave continues to grow, and strikes are not only in the private sector or in companies that manufacture for export. Last year saw a large wave of teacher strikes, and as this article shows, nurses in public hospitals are also striking.

Instead of playing musical chairs among hospitals in hopes of finding better working conditions, Philadelphia-area nurses are ready to raise standards throughout the city.

"The University of Missouri System has chosen to take the hard route, and we are willing to do it that way," said Senff to the Maneater. "We want to be able to enact our constitutional rights. A collectively bargained contract is the only thing that will make us feel secure in our position at the university."

The BCTGM is organizing to protect its members and their community in Chicago. However the odds of success appear stacked against them. Job security has become the key issue in the national negotiations between Nabisco and the BCTGM, in which the company is also trying to eliminate the multi-employer BCTGM pension plan for all plants. Nabisco was recently purchased by the stridently anti-union Mondelez, a global food conglomerate.