Portside

New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio will sign an agreement on Wednesday with DC37, AFSCME to raise the minimum wage to $15. This will cover about 50,000 municipal workers including DC37.

Within the labor movement, we never want to share publicly critiques of work to be utilized by our class enemies—in this case, Walmart. I appreciated the energy and excitement among participants in the OUR Walmart campaign and observers who saw it as a potential labor renaissance. I didn't want to be perceived as an old crank pissing on a new parade that didn't fit my measure of what worker organizing should be. But my reticence has now been overridden.

City regulators haven’t enforced a 2007 law that requires doormen, janitors and other service workers at taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be paid wages comparable to union rates.

City regulators haven’t enforced a 2007 law that requires doormen, janitors and other service workers at taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be paid wages comparable to union rates.

Ashley Smith interviews Ellen David Friedman about the recent crackdown on labor organizers in China.

Experts on banking and labor markets offer their reasons for optimism and pessimism going into 2016.

Turkey’s major trade unions called for a one-day strike on 29 December to protest the government-led military operations against the Kurds. Union representatives declared that they would persist in struggle against those who are trying to destroy the hope of both peoples [Turks and Kurds] to live together and build a common future.

A bill being introduced in the City Council Monday would require all employers to put contracts in writing, impose civil and criminal penalties for taking longer than 30 days to deliver payments, and award double damages plus attorneys fees to contractors who’ve been stiffed — similar to the protections now enjoyed by regular employees.

The millions of service members who live on military bases around the world experience a kind of economic and social security that is foreign to most of America’s middle class. In the military, clothing, food, shelter, and medical care are guaranteed. And although it offers less choice about what to wear or where to live than the private sector, there’s a baseline of care for service members that doesn’t exist in the civilian world.

Workers had a big 2015, and next year could be even bigger.