Portside

Reader Comments - Black Friday protests; Walmart and retail workers; Congress filibuster; Warren, Sanders - the 2016 elections; healthcare; Detroit; Climate Change; "Hunger Games;" Africa; Iran; Announcements - NC Music Love Army benefit album; New Books - What We Can Learn from the New Deal and JFK - The Cuba Files the untold story of the plot;; Performance-talk and jam - Nueva Canción - New York - Dec 6; PM Press - Holiday Sale and Upcoming Releases!

Las Vegas workers, stage sit-in on casino floor of the Cosmopolitan, demanding the Vegas resort recognize their union. For two years the $4 billion casino has refused to negotiate with their workers, and their union - Culinary Workers Union or UNITE HERE local 226.

Reader Comments- Teachers Protests in Brazil and Mexico; Shutdown and Social Security; , GOP Playbook; Two Countries in 2014; Koch Bros. Monster Out of Control; Ghost of McCarthy; Lessons from Germany; Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap; Mission Accomplished? More Responses; Annnouncements- Trans-Pacific Partnership Forum - New York-Oct 25; Concert Celebration for Jon Fromer - New York-Oct 26 Social Cost of America's Race to Incarcerate - Chicago-Nov 7; Shorts, Job Announcement

In the picking of the strawberry crops - many workers are needed and in the name of immigration reform the growers are seeing their dream - a huge cheap source of labor. Congress is debating bills that would expand the number of recruited workers many times over, possibly even reaching the 500,000 worker peak of the bracero program in the mid-1950s.

In 15 cities today, Walmart workers and their supporters are staging their biggest day of action since the groundbreaking "Black Friday" strike in November. They are demanding that Walmart reinstate 20 workers they say were fired for taking part in a June strike, and they are calling on Walmart to end its poverty-level wage scale and pay a living wage. (Mike Hall, AFL-CIO Now)

The National Labor Relations Act protects the right of employees to join together to improve their working conditions. The collective power of union membership is designed to balance the power of employees with that of employers, who can increase their power by incorporating or forming partnerships. Employees can also be more powerful together by filing class action lawsuits to enforce their rights under employment laws other than the NLRA.

While the media is packed with material about consumer rights, there is seldom mention of workers’ rights.

Today Portside is posting another comment on Brooklyn College plans for the Graduate Center for Worker Education. This response comes from Manny Ness to his BC colleague Robin Corey's statement, posted yesterday. The focus for the debate on what is the nature of workers' education programs, who is admitted to them, and how they are run, is at Brooklyn College. However the issues have ramifications for the broader education and labor movement.