U.S: Union membership drops to 16.4 million in 2018

by Heidi Shierholz

Peoples World | January 18, 2019

The number of American workers represented by a labor union ticked down last year, extending a decades-long trend.

New data on union membership from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday showed 16.38 million unionized workers in 2018, down from 16.44 million in 2017. However, because employment of wage and salary workers grew by 1.6 percent between 2017 and 2018, the share of workers represented by a union declined by a more significant amount, from 11.9 percent to 11.7 percent.

In the private sector, the number of workers represented by a union ticked up slightly (+18,000). But due to the 1.7 percent increase in employment in the private sector, the share of private sector workers represented by a union declined, from 7.3 percent to 7.2 percent.

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Murder of indigenous people sparks first-ever march on Washington

by Mark Gruenberg

People’s World | January 18, 2019

Rose Downwind (center) taken from her Facebook page before she was murdered in 2015.

WASHINGTON—For more than two years, Darla Banks has been silent. On Jan. 17, she spoke for the first time – understandably halting to compose herself – about her daughter’s murder.

Hers is an all-too-common tale among Native Americans and indigenous people worldwide, and it helped lead to the first-ever march planned for Washington, on Jan. 18, by indigenous people who have been arriving here from as near as New York and as far as Australia.

L.A. teachers strike: Wearing red for ed on rainy Day One

by Eric A. Gordon

People’s World | January 15, 2019

LOS ANGELES—At Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) chapter chair Frank Burton had his team prepared for heavy rain: As his fellow teachers arrived for the 7 a.m. picket line and approached the tent supplied with coffee and refreshments, Frank unfolded yet another plastic poncho and slipped it over a new arrival’s head. By his count, every single one of “Hammie’s” 140 teachers, plus others represented by the union, such as the librarian and counselors, turned out to be counted on Day One.

Los Angeles teachers stage first strike in 30 years demanding city invests in public education

by Ben Coweles

Morning Star | January 15, 2019

Thousands of teachers and supporters march in the rain during a rally yesterday in Los Angeles

MORE than 30,000 striking teachers flooded the rainy streets of downtown Los Angeles on Monday demanding the city properly invest in its educators and schools.

The strike, organised by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union, is the first time teachers have walked out the classroom in LA since 1989.

The Homelessness Crisis Deepens Across North America

by John Clarke

The Bullet | December 11, 2018

As an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in Toronto, I am only too aware of how much worse the homeless crisis has become in this city over the last three years. As a result of community pressure, City Hall issues a daily shelter census. In a whole series of ways, the official process understates the problem but the picture that emerges is, nonetheless, quite dreadful. In the largest and wealthiest city in Canada, the homeless shelters are bursting at the seams.

The American media revives the methods of McCarthyism

by Patrick Martin

The Deep State and its media shills keep gunning for Trump, but, conceivably, they represent even a worse threat to humanity than the current president.

n the wake of the one-two punch of articles in the New York Times and Washington Post suggesting that President Trump is an agent of the Russian government—or to be precise, that the FBI suspected that he was a Russian agent and opened a counterintelligence investigation (as the Times reports), and that Trump is concealing his private dealings with Putin as president (as the Postclaims)—the American media has gone into a McCarthyite hysteria.

Overcrowded classrooms, privatization schemes force LA teachers to strike

by Mark Gruenberg

Peoples World | January 14, 2019

Joe Brusky, neaToday

LOS ANGELES—Overcrowded classrooms and the schools’ superintendent’s push for charters and privatization were among the top reasons at least 31,000 unionized teachers and staffers in the nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles, had to strike on Jan. 14.

The L.A. strike is the first there since 1989 and affects a district with 660,000 students. A similar situation may push teachers and staff in another notable California district, in Oakland, to walk, too, adds that city’s union, the National Education Association (NEA).