Portside

In an upset victory, San Francisco educators have elected a new union president who promises to empower members, take on standardized testing, and back struggles for affordable housing.

The Chicago Teachers Union has gained a reputation for organizing alongside community groups over broader social justice issues of race and class. Now, from Saint Paul to Los Angeles, more teachers unions are following their lead and embracing a similar progressive model. That model includes building developing relationships with community groups and other unions and taking broader issues that impact their students’ lives to the bargaining table.

Nobody expects an internship to make one rich — but for many, the entire experience has become simply unattainable.

With 1.3 million U.S. employees—more than the population of Vermont and Wyoming combined—Walmart is by far the nation’s largest private-sector employer. It’s also one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-union companies, with a long history of trying to squelch unionization efforts. “People are scared to vote for a union because they’re scared their store will be closed,” said Barbara Gertz, an overnight Walmart stocker in Denver.

It’s this year’s biggest private-sector bargaining, between the Kaiser Permanente system and a coalition of 28 locals representing 100,000 health care workers.But the national deal, due June 4, may reveal widening cracks in the celebrated labor-management partnership that turns 18 this year. Kaiser is looking for three concessions, say non-coalition unions: increased health care co-pays, cuts to retiree medical coverage, and a two-tier pension.

If the unionization effort succeeds, it will be a big PR boost for the ailing labor movement. It will show that unions, which have focused in recent years on organizing low-wage workers, can also attract hip, highly educated workers, many of them Ivy League graduates. But if Gawker staffers reject the union, it will be an embarrassing blow to labor, especially because so much of the Gawker debate has been out in the open.

Many of the janitors and leaders who fought in Century City were the Central American immigrants coming into LA from the wars. Their experience in their home countries was very important in their willingness to fight, and the use of the tactics of mass demonstrations and even CD in the street. They're one of the best examples of the way migration, for all the pain it causes migrants, has benefited our labor movement enormously.