Portside

The dominant neoliberal consensus today is that class, race, and gender are just issues of identity. The dominant narrative claims that none of them are structural forces worth bemoaning. None of them have the power to determine our life chances if we don’t want them to. To the contrary, it is the invisibility of the structural dimensions of class, race, and gender that defines current social relations of power

How will the clash over education reform between neoliberal democrats and teachers unions play out in the presidential elections?

The largest Union in Britain, UNITE, endorsed a call to Boycott, Divest and Enact Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, because of its treatment and occupation of Palestine. Another article explains the BDS movement.

Rallies, marches and picket lines were held at schools, council offices and town and city centres across Great Britain and Northern Ireland as public workers protested decline living standards, working conditions and a threat to their right to strike.

A majority of union members today now have ties to a government entity, at the federal, state or local levels. Roughly 1-in-3 public-sector workers is a union member, compared with about 1-in-15 for the private-sector workforce. The typical union worker now is more likely to be an educator, office worker or food or service industry employee rather than a construction worker, autoworker, electrician or mechanic. Far more women than men are in unions.

The new president of the largest teachers union in the country will become the voice of roughly 3 million teachers at perhaps the most critical moment in the National Education Association’s history. First item on the agenda: Win back the public.

What is happening to manufacturing jobs in the U.S.? This in-depth article and accompanying photo essay tell the story behind plant closings, productivity and offshoring.

The new president of the largest teachers union in the country will become the voice of roughly 3 million teachers at perhaps the most critical moment in the National Education Association’s history. First item on the agenda: Win back the public.

On the 4th of July people tend to think back about the history of this country. Here is a little bit of Labor history in the form of a speech by Eugene Debs on July 4, 1901. Debs was a founder of the American Railway Union and the Socialist Party. In 1920, while in prison for opposing World War 1, he received 915,000 votes for President, running as a Socialist.

Even without repealing Abood, today’s court decision is plenty catastrophic. It will put financial limits on unions’ campaigns to organize two of the fastest-growing categories of American workers—those who care for the elderly and the sick, and those who care for small children