Portside

Steve Thornton has been an activist in Hartford since moving there in the 1970's after graduating from the University of Connecticut. He worked for many years for the Hartford-based health care workers union, New England District 1199, and has been involved in many organizations and campaigns there over the last 40 years. He also has a keen interest in local people's history, and some years ago started a website, shoeleatherhistoryproject.com, to popularize that history

The president-elect slammed a Carrier union leader and then chose a fast-food executive to be labor secretary. The working-class will fight back

With the election of Donald Trump, labor faces a unique opportunity. It will face hostility in all branches of the federal government, and will have to maintain a multi-pronged fight. Yes, union density numbers are at historically low levels, and the bulwark of public-sector unionism may suffer a major blow at the Supreme Court through a case challenging the constitutionality of fair-share fees in the public sector...It has the existential imperative to reform itself.

Ultimately, a new left politics in the United States will have to involve recapturing the energy of some of those pre-New Deal labor, agrarian, and socialist radicals who held on to the promise of a party of their own.

An in-depth investigation reveals that multibillion-dollar Big Ag corporations—including DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto—as well as small-scale farmers routinely use labor recruiters who crowd migrant workers in housing riddled with health and safety violations, such as bed bug infestations and a lack of running water. When state inspectors visit migrant labor camps, they find violations as much as 60 percent of the time.

Reader Comments: UE Calls for Trump Defeat; Fact Checking Pence; Israel Seizes Women's Boat to Gaza and 13 dangerous women - What you can do; Who to Vote For-Lessons from the Past for Leftists; Prison Strike Continues-Now Joined by Alabama Prison Guards; Reader query - why did you use certain sources in your labor post?; Cubs and Socialism; Public Option; The Women of Salt of the Earth; Announcements: Labor and Islam; NYPD Surveillance of New York's Muslim Communities

Lipton brings tea from around the world through the Port of Virginia. At its single 20-acre plant in nearby Suffolk, 200 workers roast, blend, package, and warehouse it, producing over 6 billion bags a year. For years on end, these workers have been “drafted”—the company’s term for forced overtime—into working 13 straight days out of every 14.