Portside

Last chance! This is your last chance to respond to Portside's 2014 fund appeal. We won't ask again this year, and we won't ask again for another year. During that time we'll be working hard to keep you informed and to empower you with the most insightful, entertaining and challenging news, analyses and debates that we can find. Please do help us to keep it coming.

Interfaith Worker Justice founder Kim Bobo explains why progressives should be doing more to woo evangelicals; how the Chamber of Commerce is abandoning small businesses by not fighting wage theft; and why some Catholic employers are lobbying for workers to get paid overtime. [This interview first appeared at Public Research Associates and will be in the Winter 2015 issue of The Public Eye Magazine.]

As you know the response to police violence is going mass. Portside has been faithfully keeping up with the fast-breaking events. If you meant to make a contribution but got caught up in the flurry of action - as we all have - here's a reminder about Portside's purpose and work. We need your help to keep going. We don't intend to stand still. In the next year, we will improve and expand Portside...

The manufacturing industry has been hit hard since China's acceptance in the World Trade Organization. The industry includes imports of computer and electronic parts and accounted for 56 percent of the $240.1 billion increase in the US trade deficit with China. An estimated 1,249,100 jobs were eliminated in the electronic industry.

Agustin Morales was fired from his job as a Massachusetts public school teacher after being elected president of his union and after he participated in collective protest against an element of education reform. Here is the story of how community groups, parents and other teacher union activists came together to support him and help him win his job back.

Agustin Morales was fired from his job as a Massachusetts public school teacher after being elected president of his union and after he participated in collective protest against an element of education reform. Here is the story of how community groups, parents and other teacher union activists came together to support him and help him win his job back.

Op-Ed by food journalist and columnist Mark Bittman: "What makes this an exciting time is that we are beginning to see links among issues that we have overlooked for far too long."

In a turn-around decision, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employees can use their workplace email to organize a union. The Supreme Court continued it's pro-business agenda by ruling that Amazon can detain workers at the end of their shift to search them, and they do not have to pay them for the time it takes.

Indian unions protest government plans for massive privatization and deregulation in the name of more ‘flexible’ labour laws that will impact precarious and unprotected workers particularly hard. The proposed changes, which will bring down social standards and social indicators, have been developed without any form of consultation or dialogue with labour unions whatsoever.

Unions historically have supported minimum wage and occupational safety laws that benefited all workers, not just their members. But they also have recently begun investing major resources in organizing drives more likely to yield new laws than new members. Some of these campaigns seek to organize workers who, rightly or wrongly, aren't even designated as employees or lack a common employer, such as domestic workers and cab drivers.