Portside

Oil workers belonging to the United Steel Workers of America put-up picket lines in Northern California, Texas, Kentucky and Washington State this week. It has been 35 years since Tony Mazzocchi helped lead a strike against big oil.

The Portside moderators send our heartfelt thanks to our Portside Labor readers, for coming through in response to our annual appeal! This year all Portside readers responded with the largest amount in contributions ever - nearly $19,000.

Despite resistance, domestic workers in Lebanon held a founding conference for a new union. Seven women, from four countries, began organizing the union in 2012. The Ministry of Labor has tried to block the union but the workers have persisted and made history.

In the first big strike of the year, 3,500 California NUHW health care workers took to the picket line at Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest health care provider (HMO). Astonishingly, the California Nurses Association (CNA-NNU), a union with a reputation as a militant fighter for nurses, a union that, along with NUHW, rejected “partnership” with Kaiser, and a union that has in fact been affiliated with NUHW for more than two years, has settled short with Kaiser.

Airline food service workers on January 29 launched a nationwide campaign for affordable health care by holding demonstrations and other actions in cities across the US.

If ILWU members don’t figure out how to use their ship-side strength to bolster unionization across the logistics industry, they will see their power erode, as shippers and terminal operators continue to shift work off the docks and away from the waterfront. The ILWU’s members, with their rich history, deserve as much from their union. They still have time to avoid the fate of once-strong unions like the UAW.

University of California student-care doctors went on strike Tuesday to protest unfair labor practices.

The death of the labor movement has been repeatedly predicted as an imminent event for more than a century. Yet it lives, and is getting stronger.

Cambodian garment workers have been engaged in militant workplace actions to demand higher wages. Despite anti-union violence, including killings and arrests, workers continue to strike for better wages and working conditions.

GOP senators offer their own staff generous maternity leave benefits versus their present position on expanding paid leave to private workers.