Portside

The ILO has issued its 2014 Global Employment Trends report, with a grim forecast for workers in general, and young workers in particular. The proportion of young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) continues to rise. The ILO report follows the release of an Oxfam report that states that the world's richest 85 people control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together.

The ILO has issued its 2014 Global Employment Trends report, with a grim forecast for workers in general, and young workers in particular. The proportion of young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) continues to rise. The ILO report follows the release of an Oxfam report that states that the world's richest 85 people control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together.

A federal judge has ordered Affinity Medical Center to bargain with its registered nurses and to reinstate a nurse who was terminated after nurses voted to join a union in 2012.

"Already, fewer private-sector workers have access to stable pension plans. And the savings in individual retirement savings accounts like 401(k) plans -- which already are severely underfunded -- continue to leak out at a high rate."

Three years ago, when the Cambodian minimum wage was $61 per month, 200,000 workers took to the streets to ask for a raise. It was the largest-ever strike in the garment sector, but, after just three days, it came to an anticlimactic halt due to police violence and threats against union leaders. Then the "neak ta" appeared. Mass faintings in factories spread throughout Cambodia, and employers' took notice.

Once again our readers have come through in support of Portside Labor.

Kellogg workers in Memphis have been locked out for three months and replaced by scabs. Sixty percent of the workers are black. The union believe this part of an attempt to make Kellogg nationally union free.

The Fair Food Program is unique in that it creates a legal framework linking laborers, tomato farm owners, and final purchasers of tomatoes. The purchasers have agreed to pay an additional penny per pound for the tomatoes they buy. In turn, the producers pass that penny directly along to the workers. A penny-a-pound might sound like a pittance, but it represents a 50 percent raise, the difference between making $50 and $80 a day.

In 21st century late capitalism, defending the commons means defending public spaces and public services that are irreducible to mere profit-value. There are few better examples of common spaces than conduits of public and private communication. A conscious, directed effort to save postal services in the United States and Canada should be a priority of the movement for economic democracy.

An appeals court has decided that the School Board wrongly terminated more than 7,000 teachers after Hurricane Katrina. Those teachers were not given due process, and many teachers had the right to be rehired as jobs opened up in the first years after the storm, the court said in a unanimous opinion.