Portside

Mexican labor unions and workers are, overall, in the worst situation in decades. President Peña Nieto has succeeded in passing a series of so-called reforms - education, labor, energy, and communications - that will have devastating effects on an already weakened labor movement. The Mexican government has controlled unions since the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, but it was in the 1930s that the system of one-party state control over the unions was fully developed.

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New York has a real subway. Seems like anywhere I want to go is walking distance from a station. There are 421 of them, so it figures they're close to almost anywhere along its 656 miles of tracks in four boroughs. The great thing about the subway is the people. New York is so diverse - it feels like you're seeing people from everyplace on earth in just a few subway cars. I see people tired from work, having trouble keeping their eyes open, or sometimes just asleep.

The world as seen by Jose Guerrero is a world full of injustice and violence, a gritty and reeling place where people nonetheless rise up in resistance, solidarity and joy; where even death itself is vanquished by the grinning skeletal calaveras who continue celebrating life on the other side.

The mess was codified in 1966 when restaurant and other tipped workers finally got included in the Fair Labor Standards Act. But instead of one fair wage, the law created a second tier: tipped workers who could be paid a subminimum wage.

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Trying to explain rising inequality without talking about unions is like explaining why the train is late – the tracks are worn, the weather is bad – without noting that one of its engines has been sabotaged.