Portside

While bacteria from lean mice prevent obesity in peers, microbes are only part of the story — the effect also depends on a healthy diet.

The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the internet – and now we have to fix it

In twelve weeks, on the busiest shopping day of the year, Walmart workers will mount what may be the biggest-ever US strike against the retail giant

The current crisis facing the public sector, a major location of African American workers, along with the crisis facing organized labor, should present a moment to reconsider old assumptions. A multi-union effort to organize Southern public sector workers could be something close to a game-changer on several levels, not the least being the potential impact on Southern politics and Southern unionization. And, as the saying goes, as goes the South, so goes the USA.

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The National Labor Relations Act protects the right of employees to join together to improve their working conditions. The collective power of union membership is designed to balance the power of employees with that of employers, who can increase their power by incorporating or forming partnerships. Employees can also be more powerful together by filing class action lawsuits to enforce their rights under employment laws other than the NLRA.

Discussions between the United Auto Workers union and a Tennessee Volkswagen plant have raised fears among Southern politicians that union representation would deter businesses - and badly needed jobs - from coming to their respective states.

In 15 cities today, Walmart workers and their supporters are staging their biggest day of action since the groundbreaking "Black Friday" strike in November. They are demanding that Walmart reinstate 20 workers they say were fired for taking part in a June strike, and they are calling on Walmart to end its poverty-level wage scale and pay a living wage. (Mike Hall, AFL-CIO Now)