Portside

The New Voice wasn’t just about growth, it envisioned a labor movement that reclaimed its place as a powerful force for justice in the community and strongly allied with the country’s progressive intelligentsia. But organizing was the magic word.

As public worker union growth ran into the realities of an increasingly conservative national climate, effective advocates for labor, like Victor Gotbaum -- who passed away on April 5 --like many of his peers, proved unable to find a way to keep renewing union power.

Documentary film of the 1984-85 British miners' strike that ended in defeat. This was a great victory for the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher and a monumental event in the union history of the British working class.

In the last few years we have seen an unprecedented number of cities set citywide minimum wages. States - even fully red states - are also raising wages, and many are indexing those to inflation. Minimum wage and living wage campaigns are on the agenda in many other countries as well. Where did this movement for higher wages come from? To what extent is it helping build worker movements and improve workers' lives?

Although right-to-work laws are proffered as part of a state’s economic development strategy, their real goal is to undermine workers’ collective voice and power.

When workers feel collectively trapped in poorly performing unions that do not properly represent them, the most union-minded among them often believe that changing unions is their only hope. If switching to another union is not a viable option because of AFL rules or incumbent union manipulation of Labor Board procedures, the result will be more workplace anger, frustration, and resentment.

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray - who died after being injured in police custody - have been charged criminally, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday. "Where are the jobs for the young people some so swiftly label "thugs?"" Len Shindel worked at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point Plant in Baltimore for 30 years and for most of that time was an activist and USWA representative.

A “coalition of coalitions” -- comprising unions, students, and several other sectors, even including elected municipal officials -- has coordinated movements of protest over the past years and is leading toward a great day of action on May Day. Beyond that several actions are planned for over the course of the summer eventually leading to an important workers’ strike next fall.

German unions use their positions on corporate boards to push their agenda. They have unleaded waves of strikes and secured generous wages increases thus ending years of waning influence.

Some 11% of all wage and salary workers in 2014 were in a union — down from 22% in 1983 after peaking at nearly 35% in 1954, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The fall in union membership is a significant contributor to the rise in inequality since the 1970s, says John Schmitt, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonprofit left-of-center think tank in Washington, D.C., although there’s no single cause of the economic inequality.