Portside

How might collective bargaining change if health care wasn't tethered to work? Democratic presidential candidates aren’t in agreement over how to solve the current health care crisis, where 1 in 2 sick Americans cannot afford health care.

A number of Portside readers respond to last week's Labor post, "Reader Responses to Nurses Defend Union Contract." Here are responses from Lauren Esguerra Chavarria; Shanna Murphy; Dahlia Tayag; Faye Bruneau; Francesca Gomes.

The rule is "a blatant political attack on a group of workers that are 90% women and majority people of color,” said April Verrett, president of SEIU Local 2015, which represents some 380,000 California home care and nursing home workers.

The time has come to take health care off the bargaining table by making it a right for all Americans.

“Are you going to be able to keep what you have? Are you going to be able to sit at the table as one?” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson asked UAW members, as he urged them to avoid division based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender.

“If collective bargaining is undermined in Canada, and the right to strike is part of their collective bargaining rights, our collective bargaining rights are also under attack in the United States”

Sports unions employee a 'empowerment unionism' strategy that sees the contract as a basic framework that sets some minimum thresholds and establishes a procedure for resolving disputes. Workers are free to negotiate their own salaries.

A federal judge in Washington has struck down keys parts of President Trump's executive orders that would have made it easier to fire federal employees.

A new collective bargaining law--supported by the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity--requires local unions to prove they represent a majority of the teachers in their districts. The measuring stick? At least half of all employees eligible to be in the union must be paying dues.