Portside

Can privately invested pension funds be disconnected from destructive financial patterns and deployed in socially positive ways? Can neoliberal capitalism be forced to provide decent pensions to all workers? Can a predatory private financial system be reformed?

There is no way of addressing the various popular desires which neoliberalism failed to fulfil without a radical programme of democratic reform. Only if publics are genuinely enabled to engage in meaningful, open-ended collective decision-making in a range of spheres can the justifiable sense that things are being done being done to them by people they did not authorise to do them actually be assuaged.

A book review by Michael Hirsch of Stanley Aronowitz's latest book, The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement, Verso 2014. Stanley Aronowitz is a former factory worker and organizer with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil,Chemical and Atomic Workers. Mr Hirsch writes that Aronowitz argues for direct action, workplace democracy and that unions become partners in job and community struggles. He calls this a book of wonder.

Guy Standing argues that there is a new class in the global economy - the precariat. The precariat is growing, but fighting for democratic rights. Will the precariat be the vanguard of a new progressive era?

True, a Big Mac here costs more — $5.60, compared with $4.80 in the United States. But that is a price Danes are willing to pay. “We Danes accept that a burger is expensive, but we also know that working conditions and wages are decent when we eat that burger,” said Soren Kaj Andersen, a University of Copenhagen professor who specializes in labor issues.

Two thousand telecommunications workers walked off their jobs in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine on October 17 after FairPoint Communications imposed its final bargaining table proposal.

At the end of each day, all the workers were required to pass through a security clearance checkpoint where they had to remove their keys, wallets, and belts, pass through a metal detector, and submit to being searched. The whole process could take up to 25 minutes. Should these workers be paid for the time they spend being searched?

Despite being a fundamental human right enshrined in international law, the right to strike is certainly not guaranteed for all workers. In fact, transport workers are one of the groups increasingly being excluded from the right to strike by way of outright bans or public service, essential services or minimum services requirements that severely limit that right.

Many jobs at low wages largely responsible for a young workers death.

The labor movement has not adequately addressed climate change - primarily employment based, rather than a comprehensive strategy to truly address the problem. The authors argue that unions need to step up and mobilize for a real solution that includes a government program that puts people to work converting to a climate-safe economy.