Chronic low pay is emerging as a crucial political issue in the United States as middle and lower-income workers struggle while executive pay soars. The town of SeaTac is at the centre of the storm after the local council set a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Many cities are now following suit. ...

Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr released a “plan of adjustment” Friday that includes huge cuts in city worker pensions and health care, pledges full payment for secured bondholders and outlines plans for the privatization of city services and assets, including the transfer of control of the Detroit Institute of Arts. ...

As the Erdogan government in Turkey takes an increasingly authoritarian turn, trade unionists have been in the firing line. But a mass trial in Istanbul, little noticed by the international media, has not gone entirely the government’s way. ...

Hospital workers, teachers and rubbish collectors launched a 24-hour strike across Portugal on Friday to decry a new round of public sector wage and pension cuts in the bailed-out nation. ...

Anti-austerity protesters in Rome threw eggs and firecrackers at the Finance Ministry during a march Saturday to oppose cuts to welfare programs and a shortage in low-income housing. Police said 11 people were detained. ...

“The consciousness of a worker is not a curve that rises and falls with wages and prices; it is the accumulation of a lifetime of experience and socialization, inherited traditions, struggles successful and defeated . . . It is this weighty baggage that goes into the making of a worker’s consciousness and provides the basis for his behavior when conditions ripen . . . and the moment comes.” – E. P. Thompson ...

After her re-election, Angela Merkel will again propose to the EU that the German economic model — thrift, probity, austerity and a formal partnership between employers and workers — should be the norm for all Europe. But that partnership, once  admired for its fairness, is failing. Now employers revel in local and global inequality. ...

Carlos Humberto de Carvalho, the mayor of Barreiro, is a straightforward and frank 62-year-old who has just won the Portuguese city’s municipal elections for the third time in a row — and with an absolute majority. Dressed without a tie, he has been a communist since he came of age in 1968, since the tough, tricky and far-off days of the underground era. He belongs to the hardcore — to the Central Committee ...

Vandaag vond op het Malieveld in Den Haag een grote demonstratie plaats tegen de extra bezuinigingen op de Publieke Omroep. Staatssecretaris Sander Dekker nam de ruim 261.000 keer ondertekende petitie tegen de korting in ontvangst.  ...

After the reactionary speech of PM Samaras for the closure of the public broadcaster ERT that produced fierce reaction in Greece and in all over the world, today Thursday June 13th, the unions and the coordination of the media workers decided unanimously to prolong our strike in all electronic and paper media. In this strike participate journalists, administrative personnel, technical-support employees in r ...