Portside

As the ACLU has documented in Victims of Complacency, while the fate of the men may be unique, the scheme of which they were a part was sadly all too common at the time. Since 2003, similar labor trafficking schemes resulted in thousands of foreign workers (known as Third Country Nationals or "TCNs") being hired to work on U.S. government contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

The priority has to be jobs now, rather than any deficit reduction. On top of lowering unemployment, policy should also restore the bargaining power of low- and middle-wage workers. This means aggressively increasing the minimum wage; it means reestablishing the right to collective bargaining for higher wages; it means guestworkers should have full rights to the same labor market protections as resident workers; it means paying attention to job quality and wage growth.

There are few things more bizarre than watching people advocate that another country be bombed even while acknowledging that it will achieve no good outcomes other than safeguarding the "credibility" of those doing the bombing. Relatedly, it's hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire than having one's national "credibility" depend upon periodically bombing other countries.

ILWU members see turf battles with rival unions as an additional, unwelcome hurdle to surmount, in an already difficult employer battle.

Does anyone still believe that the massive surveillance operations revealed by Edward Snowden were really geared toward protecting us from terrorists?

"...this is a march on corporate America. We’re all being Doctor King right now.”

...the action, and our opportunity to keep marching, continues.

Demands include popular participation in the peace process, an end to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that threaten the livelihoods of family farmers and workers, and government fulfillment of unkept promises for infrastructure development and Peasant Reserve Zones in rural areas.

This article outlines some of the basics of U.S. bankruptcy law and how it relates to worker rights. I will review the current law and some history, and then go into detail about how bankruptcy affects unions. I then offer some ideas of what workers and unions can do to protect themselves under bankruptcy.