Portside

If the Tea Party is going for a smaller party that's more pure, they're not necessarily deterred by getting beaten. [With incidents like the shutdown,] they just feel like they got sold out, so they redouble their efforts. At some point, this process will curdle on itself and collapse, but I don't think we've reached that point yet. I think the Tea Party's going to keep fighting. If the Republican caucus in Iowa for president was next week, I think Ted Cruz would win it.

A Supreme Court case being argued could take away a tactic that's kept unions alive. The case, Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall, involves the constitutionality of "card check neutrality agreements" between unions and companies they're trying to organize. The case now facing Antonin Scalia and company could be "the most significant labor case in a generation."

Treaty negotiated in secret between 12 nations 'would trample over individual rights and free expression', says Julian Assange. WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world's GDP.

Reader Comments - More on the AFL-CIO; NFL Bullying; Vets and Peace; Seattle Socialists Win; Obamacare; Babies; Announcements - Organizing Walmart & Fast Food Industry - New York - Nov 19; Fighting Back Against Wall St. - NYC - Nov 25; Mark Rogovin To Be Inducted Into the Illinois Labor History Society's Labor Hall of Honor; 'Spies Of Mississippi' preview - NYC - Dec 15; Audio available -The Hidden History of Workplace Resistance: U.S. Autoworkers Speak Out;

Review of George Packer's "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America." This American life is a mess. As responsible as they were for instigating the Great Recession, Wall Street and the securities industry were not the business centers solely at fault for the lead-up to the collapse. An outsized military budget, imperial wars, the decline of unions as counterweights to corporate excesses and the flight of manufacturing overseas played their parts, too.

Members of the International Association of Machinists have overwhelmingly rejected a contract proposal that would have eliminated their defined benefit pension plan, increased their health insurance costs, and provided wage increases that would have amounted to a pay cut over the contract's eight-year proposed term.

New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and municipal unions have a major problem. After going 4 years without a contract under Mayor Bloomberg the question of a new contract and how much retroactive pay is included is front and center for the incoming Mayor and the municipal unions.