Portside

The National Labor Relations Act protects the right of employees to join together to improve their working conditions. The collective power of union membership is designed to balance the power of employees with that of employers, who can increase their power by incorporating or forming partnerships. Employees can also be more powerful together by filing class action lawsuits to enforce their rights under employment laws other than the NLRA.

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The current crisis facing the public sector, a major location of African American workers, along with the crisis facing organized labor, should present a moment to reconsider old assumptions. A multi-union effort to organize Southern public sector workers could be something close to a game-changer on several levels, not the least being the potential impact on Southern politics and Southern unionization. And, as the saying goes, as goes the South, so goes the USA.

The Chilean 9/11 created a community in California and around the world of Chileans that fled to escape the brutal military regimen. The Bay Area Chilean community commemorates September 11, every year with a cornucopia of cultural and art events. “This is part of our history as a community here in the Bay Area,” said Marci Valdivieso, one of the organizers.

This recent struggle that succeeded in securing a wage increase at Victoria Secret may show that the fight for better wages at fast food stores might be having a ripple effect.

Today’s American readers will find the arguments favoring Peña Nieto’s energy reform familiar. They center around the flaws of the state-run enterprise: its corruption and inefficiency, its coddling of unions, and its monopoly in the national market for consumer goods such as gasoline, which has kept prices high. But thus far, the debates have hardly touched upon the local consequences of this reform for regions that will be most affected.

Empire enjoys watching the two sides battle like caged mice, weakening each other to its advantage.

The question Congress and Mr. Obama must ask now is whether employing force to punish Mr. Assad’s use of chemical weapons is worth endangering the fragile international order that is World War II’s most significant legacy.