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Venezuela: Seized Factory Was Well Stocked but Wasn't Producing

telesur
Warehouses belonging to Kimberly Clark Corporation — which recently had its factory seized and handed over to the workers — were found to be full of raw materials, despite the insistence from the factory's owners that they could not produce goods, Venezuelan Industry Minister Miguel Perez Abad confirmed Friday.

Most Mechanical Turkers are Young, College-Educated and Making Less Than $5 an Hour

Moshe Z. Marvit In These Times
Since 2005, a dispersed group of sub-minimum wage workers has been performing online tasks for pennies through an Amazon-controlled marketplace called Mechanical Turk. These workers tag photos, transcribe audio, take surveys, and do whatever current computer technology cannot. Their work-product is littered across the Internet, and through academic publications, but they have largely remained invisible.

Socialism Comes to Philadelphia

Sharon McConnell-Sidorick Labor and Working Class History Association
When Bernie Sanders talks about a political revolution larger than himself, it is important to understand that it must also be larger than electoral movements. Although the working class has changed from the halcyon days of yesteryear, it is still the class at the heart of the contradictions of capital, and it is time to take back its true meaning.

Atoning for Washington’s ‘Mass Kidnapping’ in the Indian Ocean

Davis Vine Foreign Policy in Focus
Between 1968 and 1973, the two governments concealed the expulsion from the world. If anyone asked, Anglo-American officials decided to “maintain the fiction that the inhabitants of Chagos” were “transient contract workers,” as one bureaucrat explained. A British official called the Chagossians “Tarzans” and “Man Fridays,” in a tellingly racist reference to Robinson Crusoe.

Three Years After the Egyptian Coup, Lessons Still Unlearned?

Abdullah Al-Arian Middle East Eye
Three years ago the Egyptian military ousted the elected President Mohamed Morsi. Since then, as Amnesty International reported this week, “tens of thousands of people have been detained without trial or sentenced to prison terms or to death....” Perhaps even without the support of significant segments of the public, including leading activists and intellectuals, the remnants of the old Mubarak regime would still have overthrown Morsi. But that support made it easier.

When the Hell Did the NLRB Become More Activist Than Labor?

Shaun Richman Working In These Times
The NLRB even potentially has the power to reverse “Right to Work.” One open question is whether the legislative intent of the Taft-Hartley act was merely to ban union membership as a condition of employment—not whether unions could negotiate mandatory fees for grievance representation services.