Portside

“We have regular emergencies on the buses,” said John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union. “Folks have heart attacks on buses, children get lost on buses. Every aspect of life in America, the bus and subway are microcosms of it. A robot’s not going to help."

Nearly 5,000 JetBlue flight attendants will start voting Monday in an effort to join the Transport Workers Union.

Virgin America flight attendants vote to join the Transport Workers Union. This came three years after a failed bid to unionize.

In the face of a steadily declining labor movement, unions are increasingly battling one another, devoting resources to gaining members from rivals rather than focusing on the 88.2% of the workforce that is not unionized. Recent "raids"have been especially big with tens of thousands of members at stake. They've become easier to carry off because many unions don't just represent one profession anymore, and can rationalize expanding into rival turf.