Portside

The vote on "Trade Adjustment Act" portion of legislation to allow President Obama to "fast track" the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), failed because Republicans were opposed to giving workers who lose their jobs due to the TPP any additional aid. "Liberal Democrats" voted to kill the TAA bill in order to stop the passage of the TPP, in a Republican controlled House of Representatives.

Sanders has been a strong voice encouraging workers to build unions, opposing excessive corporate power and economic inequality; and for measures to curb climate change, notes the UE General Executive Board in a statement urging its members and locals to consider participating in his campaign. The statement also urged Sanders his to offers a stronger critique of US interventionist foreign policy.

Pittsburgh Labor Board rules in favor of Duquesne adjuncts and rejects the university's religious objections. The vote for the union took place in 2012.

With 1.3 million U.S. employees—more than the population of Vermont and Wyoming combined—Walmart is by far the nation’s largest private-sector employer. It’s also one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-union companies, with a long history of trying to squelch unionization efforts. “People are scared to vote for a union because they’re scared their store will be closed,” said Barbara Gertz, an overnight Walmart stocker in Denver.

The still fledgling campaign focuses on organizing to raise wages and delays question of union structure. No one seems sure about the shape of a fast-food union. Many formations are possible. Since wages and other employment laws differ by city and state, one could envision local or regional contracts that establish a basic compensation structure, benefits and freedom from arbitrary firing. A more ambitious version would be national in scope: a framework agreement...

Leaders of the union representing 18,000 nurses at 14 private hospitals in New York City said Wednesday the nurses could go on strike over staffing levels if negotiations with management fail. "We need more nurses," said Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, president of the New York State Nurses Association. "Our patients' well-being, their very lives, depend on real staffing standards that enable us to simply do our jobs, to deliver safe, quality care."

Representatives of 11 different unions have begun negotiations with General Electric Co. This will be the first round of negotiations since GE announced their return to being a manufacturing company and the selling off of GE's financial companies.

International Labor Organization (ILO) Conventions that protect worker rights should be binding. Just as international financial institutions have the power to enforce their regulations, so too the ILO should have the power to sanction states or multinational corporations that breach its principles.

It’s this year’s biggest private-sector bargaining, between the Kaiser Permanente system and a coalition of 28 locals representing 100,000 health care workers.But the national deal, due June 4, may reveal widening cracks in the celebrated labor-management partnership that turns 18 this year. Kaiser is looking for three concessions, say non-coalition unions: increased health care co-pays, cuts to retiree medical coverage, and a two-tier pension.

If the unionization effort succeeds, it will be a big PR boost for the ailing labor movement. It will show that unions, which have focused in recent years on organizing low-wage workers, can also attract hip, highly educated workers, many of them Ivy League graduates. But if Gawker staffers reject the union, it will be an embarrassing blow to labor, especially because so much of the Gawker debate has been out in the open.