Portside

Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.

"The term “union” is a dirty word in some circles, even in this city, where labor still has considerable clout and has catapulted many workers into the middle class. But no one can deny that these union workers savor something that is all too rare in the retail industry right now: guaranteed minimum hours — for part-time and full-time employees — and predictable schedules."

Most liberals continue to pay lip service to unions and their importance to the Democratic coalition. But in private, many will tell you that they have little use for them. Julian Zelizer, a Princeton political economist, argues that the marriage between liberalism and organized labor “took a terrible turn starting in the 1970s,” when global competition moved manufacturing jobs from the unionized Northeast and Midwest to the non-union South and, ultimately, abroad.

Two provocative articles on our upcoming Labor Day, by Bill Fletcher and Maynard Seider

Trade union delegates to the US-Africa summit stressed that economic ties and growth are not enough. They stressed that there needs to be "a more complex view of development," that addresses the issue of growing inequality. As an example, delegates noted that it is not enough to talk about job creation, attention must also be paid to the kind of jobs being created.

Many of the 112,000 active educators and school workers in the Michigan Education Association can now leave the union and stop paying fees under a state law that took effect last year. Other major unions, covered by multi-year contracts, won't reach the opt-out point until 2015 or later.