Portside

The U.S. Department of Labor said this week that it’s examining two worker deaths at warehouses operated by the world’s largest online retailer.

TTIP does away with “barriers” that impede the intercontinental flow of goods. This will make it easier for companies to base their production facilities on “cost” grounds, especially social ones. Workers’ entitlement to be involved will still stop at the border. TTIP will therefore mean a weakening of workers’ rights, despite guarantees under the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

There has been much printed about how Foxconn treats workers in China. Here is new information about Foxconn in the Czech Republic and Turkey.

A court ruling that California's teacher tenure law is unconstitutional has stirred a heated debate. Four commentators, including Diane Ravitch, discuss the pros and cons in the New York Times' "Room for Debate" column.

The Next Page: Dark days in the Electric Valley Historian and former chief union steward Charles McCollester revisits the little-known Westinghouse walkout of 1914

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of a lawsuit filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, every state in the country would essentially turn into an anti-union "right to work" state, which would be a significant blow to public sector unions' collective bargaining efforts and also complicate thousands of existing contracts between organized workers and municipalities, cities, counties, and states across the country.

Last year workers at the Resorts World casino in Queens, New York, won a major wage increase as a result of unionization and an arbitration decision. Five workers talk about how their lives have changed as a result.

When teachers at the Perelman Jewish Day School in Montgomery County were told in March that the private religious academy would no longer recognize their 60-member union, they filed a federal labor complaint - and then they went to a higher authority.

Hassan Yussuff was elected Canadian Labour Congress president, marking the first time an incumbent was defeated. Yussuff did not offer a shift in ideology, but rather a shift in approach. He promised a more open and inclusive CLC that would balance lobbying and advertising campaigns with the type of grassroots mobilization and direct political action that so many rank-and-file members were demanding.

Are Bosses Afraid of "Members only Bargaining"? The Chamber of Commerce has published a report on the threat of "members only bargaining". This refers to the fact that in the 1930's company's negotiated with unions, for the unions members only. Labor law expert Charles Morris comments on their fears. In another article, the Wall St. Journal fears that the AFL-CIO might throw it's support to members only bargaining.