Portside

UNITE HERE and the Teamsters have been quietly negotiating a contract with Harrah's Hotel and Casino in New Orleans for the last six months that, when inked, would double the size of organized labor's tiny footprint in the New Orleans tourism economy.

Five years ago, Hyatt Hotels in Boston fired workers after making them train their replacements. HERE Local 26 has backed these non-union workers in their fight. After five years they have won.

The rise of precarious labor in Canada, combined with the deliberate creation of fear through constant surveillance, the security apparatus and the demonization and criminalization of dissent, starts to answer the question of why there is no militant resistance to savage capitalism or even sustained social solidarity.

In the last few years trade unions have led the fight against cutbacks in Greece. These fights, although not stopping these cuts, have changed the political scenery of the country.

A training program is the central component of an effort by Unite Here Local 26, the hospitality workers’ union, to reach out to the African-American community to fill jobs that offer good wages and benefits. The initiative aims to expand the diversity of hotel workforces, increasingly dominated by immigrants, and meet the growing demand in the industry for employees who are fluent in English.

More and more unions and union members are making the link between climate change, worker's rights, and working class quality of life issues, as demonstrated yesterday in the People's Climate March.

United Teachers Los Angeles opens its annual Leadership Conference today, and strike talk will be a prominent theme.

“Sharing economy” companies like Uber shift risk from corporations to workers, weaken labor protections, and drive down wages.

"… the question of unity brings up a hard subject, a subject all of us know about but few want to- acknowledge -- race. Because the reality is that while a young man named Michael Brown died just a short distance from us in Ferguson, from gunshot wounds from a police officer, other young men of color have died and will die in similar circumstances, in communities all across this country. … Because the reality is we still have racism in America."

Is teacher tenure obsolete? Or is it the kind of policy that should protect all workers?