Portside

Like most new organizing in the private sector, decades of attempts to unionize Walmart stores in the U.S. and Canada have been met with firings, outsourcing, and even closings.

Leo Robinson was a leader of the longshore union in San Francisco. He died this week. For many of us, he was an example of what being an internationalist and a working-class activist was all about.

Teachers unions and other educational service workers across the country - in New York, Seattle, and Hawaii - are fighting against further cuts in school budgets, for better quality education for their students. In New York, school bus drivers prepare to strike for job security for trained professional drivers; in Seattle, teachers vote to refuse to give standardized tests; in Hawaii teachers campaign for a penny tax increase dedicated to education.

The passage of a so-called "right-to-work" law in Michigan recently left the labor movement feeling gut-punched. AlterNet talks with Stephen Lerner, Jonathan Westin, Ruth Milkman, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jane McAlevey, Eric Robertson & Ben Speight for their suggestions on how labor can go on the offensive in the next year. Amy Dean, former president of the South Bay (CA) AFL-CIO Labor Council looks at best & worst developments of 2012 in the labor and social movements.

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein looks at the role of labor unions in our country's history - there has not been any progress when unions have been weakend.