Portside

“The Catholic bishops of the United States have long and consistently supported the right of workers to organize for purposes of collective bargaining,” a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says.brief says. “Because this right is substantially weakened by so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws, many bishops - in their dioceses, through their state conferences, and through their national conference - have opposed or cast doubt on such laws, and no U.S. bishop has expressed support for them.”

The late Italian philosopher's concept of hegemony was startlingly prescient.

In the end, Trump’s infrastructure plan is simply another in the long line of policies designed to benefit the private sector, and keep the public sector sufficiently small and ineffective that it can be controlled and contained by plutocrats.

Amazon's high-tech sheen hides its abusive labor practices.

The Young Karl Marx is a nuanced and surprisingly accurate portrait of the revolutionary as a young man.

Bargaining for the common good campaigns are when union and community groups together leverage contract negotiations for broader, shared gains.

Happy birthday Open Source; FBI is reading this; SOS FOIA; Say it loud; Bitcoin bubble; Free speech and attacks on democracy

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union membership on January 19th, 2018. There were several spots of bright news for unions.

My childhood dinners were an international smorgasbord. The scents of these dishes beckoned me from my bedroom to the kitchen, where I’d watch my mother in the final stages of sprinkling garnish. Now, in my forties, I feel I owe it to my children, to the generations that follow, to fully and actively educate myself in my family’s food.

In the USA privatization practices contribute to increased water bills and jeopardize water quality, endangering one of residents' most basic needs. We can gain some perspective on the consequences of water privatization by looking to a glaring overseas example: In Lebanon, mismanagement of infrastructure has provided ample opportunity for privatization to proliferate. In both cases, the pursuit of privatization comes from cash-strapped places prioritizing cost-cutting over resource conservation and quality.