Portside

400 workers represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union have been on strike at the Just Born candy factory since September 7. Just Born's hard-line stance on hiring replacement workers could have both short- and long-term consequences for the company, including the need to rebuild shattered trust among employees and the possibility of fending off lawsuits from the workers hired to replace them, experts said.

For the first time in its 40-year history, the union of full- and part-time faculty at City College of San Francisco recently went on strike—and it worked.

Tens of millions of public sector workers have gone on a day-long strike across India, protesting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic policies, particularly his plans to push for greater privatization. Thousands of state-run banks, government offices and factories were closed on Friday, and public transport disrupted, in the strike called by 10 trade unions.

The strike and union campaign at Klein Management are part of a larger movement among indigenous Mexican farm workers, which is sweeping through the whole Pacific coast. Work stoppages by Triqui and Mixteco blueberry pickers have hit Sakuma Farms in Burlington, Washington, for the past three years. Workers there organized an independent union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, and launched a boycott of Driscoll's, the world's largest berry distributor.

Verizon strikers are fighting against the oppression and indignity of the American workplace.

The actions by the Verizon workers show that it is possible to fight back against the power of employers to dictate the terms of the employment relationship. They remind us that the supremacy of big corporations, like technological changes and market forces, are not inevitable but reflect political and managerial choices. It appears workers are finally finding a way to counter the corporate strategies that have defined—and held back—the U.S. economy in recent decades.

If well organized and militant union members at Verizon—who have gone on strike against the company and its predecessors in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2011 and now—can’t stop the outsourcing and destruction of decent jobs, unorganized workers spread across the planet in industries like telecommunications will find the task insurmountable.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s strike today is a challenge to the rest of labor to break anti-union rules.

Just in time for the 2016 Labor Notes Conference, the Chicago Teachers Union is planning a one-day strike and citywide day of action April 1. The union’s governing body, the House of Delegates, gave its stamp of approval to the action last night.