Portside

An offstage drama that has been playing out in New york City has highlighted the difficult economics of opera in the 21st century, which have forced several companies in the United States to close or scale back. In the city, a spate of recent emails between labor and management at the Metropolitan Opera and a review of the opera house’s financial statements have pulled back the curtain a bit on life at the Met, one of the most important opera houses in the world.

Payroll fraud and the shift to contingent employment are robbing workers of wages, benefits, and job security—and stealing revenues owed to government.

Northwestern players will vote April 25 whether to form a union after the regional director of Chicago's National Labor Relations Board office ruled last month that players are employees of the school and have the right to unionize. Coach Fitzgerald is prohibited from making promises to players about benefits they would receive if they vote against unionizing. He also cannot make any threats or interrogate players on how they will vote.

UAW Local 2865 has called a strike. For many grad students, the very idea of a contract governing the limits and conditions of our labor is a source of skepticism and even derision. This system is not an alternative to the working world - it is the model every employer would eagerly adopt. Far from prefiguring an emancipated society, the university offers a foretaste of the total domination of workers by management.

The United Auto Workers announced their fourth straight year of increasing membership. The union added that the two-percent membership increase for 2013 does not include several thousand workers who have voted in favor of union representation, but do not yet have contracts with their employers.

Saadiyat Island is across a narrow sea channel from Abu Dhabi. Many luxury villas are being built as well famous museums like the Guggenheim and the Louvre. Unfortunately many of the construction workers are poorly paid and forced to live in poor facilities.

The most important benefit of Obamacare is the security it provides to the tens of millions of people who already had insurance—except that insurance, before the Affordable Care Act, was only as safe as their job.

Adjunct professors make $18,000 to $30,000 for the equivalent of full-time work; compared to tenure track professors, who earn $68,000 to $116,000 (plus benefits), according to the American Association of University Professors. Only three in 10 professors are tenured today, down from six in 10 in the 1970s. Recently, frustrations over the plight of adjuncts have boiled over in congressional hearings, online petitions and a two-day walkout at the University of Illinois.

Campaigns to raise the minimum wage, such as the "Fight for $15" campaign among fast food workers, are not just about raising the minimum wage. They are about changing the social relationships and balance of power embodied in the wage. Through opening this struggle, low-wage workers compel us to rethink again who is a "breadwinner." The campaigns also push us to revisit past campaigns that fought for living wages and also for work to have social value.

Ramogi Huma, president of the College Athletes Players Association, told "Outside the Lines" that he and Kain Colter, the former Northwestern quarterback, will be in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and Thursday for informational briefings with an undisclosed set of legislators.