Portside

Dozens of workers in Byhalia, Mississippi who work for one of the country's leading producers of cereal and baked goods voted Wednesday in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, known as UFCW.

Over the last few decades, the employee-employer relationship has been hollowed-out...by the staffing industry and businesses that want to “hire” workers without the regulations and obligations that come with officially employing them.

Google said on Tuesday it will require its contracted and temporary workforce to receive full benefits, including comprehensive health care, paid parental leave and a $15 minimum wage, according to an internal memo.

The national unemployment rate hit 3.8 percent in May and companies across the country are complaining about the difficulty of finding workers. Yet Amazon has been able to staff its warehouses with low-paid part-time workers.

Labor experts say unions are focusing on the hospitality field and less traditionally unionized workplaces - car washes, retailers, taxi and limo companies - as membership rolls have decreased. The percentage of private sector workers represented by unions has fallen from a peak of about 35 percent in the mid 1950s to about 7 percent, said Fred Feinstein, a former general counsel with the National Labor Relations Board who now works as a union.

The latest skirmish in an escalating battle between ver.di, one of the largest unions in Germany, and Amazon, which employs 8,000 permanent workers at eight distribution centers in the country, one of the online retailer’s largest markets outside the United States. Deservedly or not, Amazon’s labor relations have lately come under intense scrutiny by German media.