Portside

When people have bad working conditions and no voice on the job, it’s obviously bad for them. But rotten jobs affect our collective health, safety and well-being.

As we contribute to the fight for workers’ rights and to build worker power, we are clear that the origins of the U.S. labor movement start with enslaved African people and their descendants struggling for emancipation.

Walmart workers and supporters in the labor movement say they plan a new series of protests over wages and conditions at America's largest private employer, in which they will target the firm's family-friendly ethic ahead of its annual shareholders meeting next week. Hundreds of mothers who work at stores across the US plan a number of strikes in 20 cities nationwide. Others will travel to Walmart headquarters in advance of the upcoming shareholders' meeting next week.

George Goehl and National People’s Action spent the last 6 years developing a new organizing strategy. The organization now commits itself to a vision of a “new economy”: democratic and public control of finance, and cooperative and alternative forms of business ownership. NPA also envisions giving workers real decision-making power within corporations and giving the public the right to revoke the charters of corporations that provide too little social value.

Three years ago, when the Cambodian minimum wage was $61 per month, 200,000 workers took to the streets to ask for a raise. It was the largest-ever strike in the garment sector, but, after just three days, it came to an anticlimactic halt due to police violence and threats against union leaders. Then the "neak ta" appeared. Mass faintings in factories spread throughout Cambodia, and employers' took notice.