Chicago's tourism sector is booming, with a record 55,000,000 visitors to the city last year, and revenue up this year by 10.4% to $1.45B: but workers aren't seeing those gains. Read the rest “Chicago is facing its first citywide hotel strike since 1903”

Following the smash success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand's actors' union pushed for similar compensation and benefits as American actors. This detailed autopsy of how their demands were met with fierce studio lobbying that ended with politicians changing New Zealand's law in favor of the studios. Read the rest “How Warner Bros. used The Hobbit to strongarm New Zealand's acting union”

For decades, Democrats in power and in opposition have traded away labor laws and rules that protected unions in order to gain short-term advantages in political horse-trades, and now, with union membership down from 26 to 10.7% since the Reagan years, districts that formed Democrats' "blue wall" have been poverty-struck and have flipped for Trump. Read the rest “Short-termism led the Democratic Party to let unions die, and now they've lost their base”

Large German companies are required to give board-seats to representatives from their workers' unions, which makes the companies both more profitable and more equitable, so it's unusual for German workers to go out on strike, but 15,000 members of IG Metall union, the country's largest trade union, are engaged in short-term "warning strikes" against 80 companies for the right to take up to two years' worth of 28-hour working weeks, a kind of "work-life-balance" leave that has evolved out of the country's existing parental leave, but would allow workers to take extra time to care for aging relatives. Read the rest “German steelworkers demand the right to take two years' worth of "work-life balance" 28-hour work weeks to look after children or aging parents”

Missouri, an overwhelmingly poor, GOP-dominated state, where a new "right-to-work" bill will face a referendum on the 2018 ballot, is at the heart of the battle over the nation's surging trade union movement. Read the rest “After a manager at a Dollar General asked about the unionization of a nearby store, the company fired her”

For decades, Wells Fargo pressured its employees to commit millions of acts of fraud against its customers, using threats and blackballing to terrorize low-level employees. Read the rest “Wells Fargo woulda gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for that darn trade union”