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How Is "Right to Work" Being Enforced?

Kathy Wilkes The Progressive
Wisconsin has joined a host of other states whose right-to-work laws emulate "model legislation" produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) describes ALEC as a "bill mill" supported by several conservative foundations and dozens of high-profile corporations, like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. So-called 'Right-to-Work" favors corporations at workers' expense.

Tidbits - April 2, 2015 - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Death Penalty; Water Privatization; Elizabeth Warren; Cesar Chavez; and more

Portside
Reader Comments - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Innocent Man on Death Row - Prosecutor Apologizes; Stealing Africa's Seeds; Fighting Water Privatization - Ireland and Mexico; Run Elizabeth, Run; Jews Who Speak Out Against Israeli Policies; Cesar Chavez, the UFW - Lessons for Today; Feminist Heroes for Children; Cuba Eradicates Syphilis; Billie Holiday and Ethel Rosenberg; Resources for Passover; To Better Understand Greece and Syriza; Announcements

Houellebecq Submits

Adam Shatz London Review of Books
Soumission, Michel Houellebecq's novel about a Muslim party's takeover of France, is "a melancholy tribute to the pleasure of surrender." It's 2022, the National Front is set to win the presidency, so the Socialist and Gaullist parties bloc so that a charismatic centrist Islamist politician wins instead. Whether or not France deserves a moderate Islamist state, "it has found in Houllebeque a sly and witty chronicler..." An English version will appear in September.

Exploitation of Migrant Workers: The Hidden Face of Germany's Construction Sites

Rachel Knaebel Equal Times
A growing number of German construction and public works companies are using labor subcontractors. They are not genuine construction firms. They look like it on paper, but their only activity is to supply labour at a low cost. They often only pay wages for the first few months. They then stop paying and expect the workers to keep going until the job is finished, in the hopes that they will be paid at the end of the contract.

Syracuse to Drop Fossil Fuel Stocks From Endowment

John Schwartz The New York Times
At $1.2 billion, Syracuse’s is the largest endowment to divest entirely of fossil fuel stocks.Katie McChesney, a campus divestment campaign organizer with the climate action group 350.org, said the successful student action showed that “if you want results, turn up the heat.”

Stand Up Now! Stand Up Now!! A Diggers Song

Peter Linebaugh CounterPunch
"The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now, The club is all their law, stand up now. The club is all their law to keep men in awe, But they no vision saw to maintain such a law. Stand up now, Diggers all."

Thirteen Angry Men

Valeria Costa-Kostritsky KRB Blog
A 2009 study found that in Paris, individuals perceived as ‘black’ or ‘Arab’ were, respectively, six and eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than individuals perceived as ‘white’. Sihame Assbague, a spokesperson for Stop le Contrôle au Faciès, finds this baffling: ‘We have a left-wing government caving to a really right-wing police union.’

In a Win for Opponents of Mountaintop Removal, W.Va. Govt Decides to Study Health Impacts

Laura Michele Diener Yes! Magazine
On March 13, Randy Huffman, the secretary of the DEP, acknowledged for the first time that reviewing the existing research is necessary. Four days later, the administration of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin announced that the state would conduct an official review of those studies, under the leadership of the state Bureau for Public Health’s commissioner, Dr. Rahul Gupta.

AFSCME Relocating Conference Out Of 'Disgust' Of Religious Liberty Law

Daniel Strauss Talking Points Memo
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Lee Saunders announced AFSCME was relocating its 2015 National Women's Conference from Indiana out of disgust at its passage of a Religious Liberty Law. He called it an un-American law.