Portside

The year had a spirited and determined feel. Every time we turned around there was another sit-in or strike, ingenious job action or raucous flash mob.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued long-awaited new rules to modernize and streamline union certification elections and to eliminate the worst cases of pre-election delay. The board is mandated to protect the rights of employees to form unions and bargain collectively, but numerous academic studies have demonstrated that the current NLRB election process fails to protect workers' free choice.

On October 17th, 2000 workers, members of the CWA and IBEW at Fairpoint Communications in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine were forced on strike. The company is demanding $700 million dollars in concessions. They are still on strike.

Cratchit handed Scrooge a leaflet, which the old man perused nervously. It listed the workers’ demands: a living wage, health benefits, safe working conditions, retirement pensions. “What?” bellowed Scrooge. “Have you all gone mad?”

We must overhaul our current food system in favor of one that not only produces a high-quality product but also treats the workers who make that food with dignity and pays them a wage that will allow them to feed their families as well as we feed our own.

The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling last week that could clear the way for much more unionization of faculty members at private colleges and universities.

Under the ruling, home care agencies and other third-party employers can continue denying minimum wage and overtime pay to workers who provide primarily “fellowship and protection” as opposed to more extensive care.

In a significant victory for fast-food demonstrators, the Obama administration filed 13 legal complaints on Friday against McDonald’s USA, LLC, alleging 78 instances in which it violated federal labor law by punishing workers for taking part in fast-food protests.

Successful political movements, whether on the left or the right, require long-term investments in organizations that can develop and promote policy ideas over many decades. Such movements must continue to operate in between election cycles, and change the structure of government policy in durable ways that benefit a movement’s allies and disadvantage its opponents. One group that exemplifies such strategies is the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

If more union leaders follow Weingarten's lead speaking up about the epidemic of sexual assault around the country, and amongst the rank-and-file, it could greatly strengthen the movement against sexual assault while expanding the purview of the American labor movement.