Tidbits - April 2, 2015 - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Death Penalty; Water Privatization; Elizabeth Warren; Cesar Chavez; and more
Portside
Thousands of fast food workers across 150 U.S. cities walked off the job on Thursday. Hundreds of those workers — nearly 500 of them, according to a public relations firm supporting the strikes — willfully committed civil disobedience as part of their protest, and were subsequently arrested by the police.
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.
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