Portside

Senator Al on media merger mania; Librarians and net neutrality; Tell Me More no more; NYT's new editor; After Colbert; Women in newsrooms

"Workers increasingly serve businesses that do not officially 'employ' the worker — a distinction that hampers organizing, erodes labor standards and dilutes accountability," said Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project, which advocates on behalf of low-wage workers. A recent Federal Reserve study showed that nearly 7.5 million people who are working part time — contract workers included — would rather have full-time jobs.

Public broadcasting is under attack for elitism and bias in the UK, US and Australia. But the critics' real agenda is clear: the expansion of corporate influence into our most trusted media.

Bernd Riexinger, co-chair of Germany's Left Party, talks about socialist strategy in the twenty-first century.

A report shows that while young black workers with college degrees have fared better than their less-educated peers, they have a higher unemployment rate and are more likely to find themselves in a job that does not require a degree than other recent college graduates.

The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

The same day weekly mass protests began again at the North Carolina legislature, civil rights groups filed a legal motion to block a restrictive new voting law from being enforced for this year's election.

The sharing economy is growing. AirBNB is now more valuable than Hyatt. But is this an economy built on social justice values and a more sustainable, lower consumption model? Or is it a new way for Big Business to creep further into our lives and exploit our relationships with one another? One professor says about crowdsourcing: "This is a total affront to what the labor movement has struggled for for centuries."

Bernie Sanders says he is "prepared to run for president of the United States." That's not a formal announcement. A lot can change between now and 2016, and the populist senator from Vermont bristles at the whole notion of a permanent campaign. But Sanders has begun talking with savvy progressive political strategists, traveling to unexpected locations such as Alabama...

Washington raised the minimum wage in 1998 linking it to inflation. In the 15 years that followed, the state's minimum wage climbed to $9.32 - highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington's restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years