At In These Times:

Sotheby’s New York auction house made international headlines last week, selling Edvard Much’s painting “The Scream” for a record $119.9 million. But few stories mentioned what was happening outside the auction: picketing by 150 artists, activists, and locked-out art handlers.

“Tonight, the irony persists,” said Sotheby’s worker Julian Tysh. “Sotheby’s is selling a copy of the scream – an artful interpretation of human anguish and suffering – and they’re going to profit tremendously tonight, while at the same time they continue to create anguish and suffering among their own workforce.”

Tysh and 41 of his co-workers have been locked out since August 1, a month before Occupy Wall Street first occupied Zuccotti Park. Among labor stuggles, the lockout has drawn some of the earliest, and longest-running, Occupy support. Occupy’s involvement has inspired workers, upped the pressure on Sotheby’s, and amplified media attention – though it hasn’t yet yielded a victory.

Check it out.

Happy to share that Alternet has released a new e-book, Working Americans, which includes a couple of my recent articles. It’s edited by the great Sarah Jaffe, and it’s a fundraiser to support Alternet’s future labor coverage. You can get it here.

At Salon:

Last week, the Romney campaign finally broke its silence on an advisor’s role in a growing scandal. A report released last night shows why it had to.

In September, Mitt Romney named former National Labor Relations Board Chairman Peter Schaumber as the co-chair of his campaign’s Labor Policy Advisory Committee. Then in March, the NLRB’s inspector general named Schaumber as the recipient of leaked confidential info from current NLRB member Terence Flynn – and the Romney campaign avoided comment for a month.

Check it out.

At In These Times:

Last week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released major decisions regarding the rights of two groups of workers that face frequent discrimination. On Monday, the EEOC delivered an opinion finding that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans “sex discrimination” in employment, applies to discrimination against transgender workers. On Wednesday, the EEOC approved a new set of guidelines restricting employers’ use of past criminal convictions to disqualify job applicants. Both decisions parallel, and could impact, legislative efforts already underway.

Check it out.

At The Nation:

Over eight decades in the labor movement, Harry Kelber has been a rank-and-file union leader, an author and an academic. At 25, he edited two weekly labor newspapers. At 57, he helped found a labor college at Empire State College. At 81, he ran for AFL-CIO vice president. Now 97, he writes three columns a week for his website, The Labor Educator. The Nation talked to Kelber about his experience of the labor movement’s past, his critique of its present and what he sees in its future.

Here it is.

At Salon:

On April 4, Barbara Harms’ boss forced her to attend a meeting about why she shouldn’t join a union. The two-hour, on-the-clock meeting was run by Michael Penn, a professional anti-union consultant. Harms says Penn told workers that “you’re going to sign your life away if you sign a union card … the union would tell you to go out on strike … the place could close down.” The meeting left Harms and other pro-union workers frustrated and angry. Especially because their taxes made it possible.

The full, sordid story.

At In These Times:

One year after New York’s new wage theft law took effect, the Progressive States Network has named the state the nation’s leader in confronting the issue. Speaking on a media call Wednesday, PSN Senior Policy Specialist Tim Judson said the 2010 law has proved “the strongest in the country.” But he warned that the national picture remains bleak: “Where wage theft is concerned, there are essentially no cops on the beat.”

“Wage theft” is a new term for an old issue: employers not paying workers their agreed-to wages.

Here’s the rest.

At The Nation:

On April 5 police in Bangladesh found the body of Aminul Islam near the Tangail-Maymanshing highway, 100 kilometers from his home. His body showed signs of torture, including crushed toes. According to his organization, the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, Islam had called his colleagues two nights earlier to suggest they close the office early because he had seen a police van parked outside. BCWS has been in the cross-hairs of the National Intelligence Service since at least 2010, when it organized protests that spurred an increase in the country’s minimum wage to roughly $36 per month. On “what appear to be flimsy charges,” according to Human Rights Watch, authorities had detained Islam with two of his co-workers, Kalpona Akter and Babul Akhter. A 2010 report released by the International Labor Rights Forum described the arrests as part of a “government campaign to shut down” BCWS and “quell worker resistance.”

Subscribers can read the rest, from the “Noted” section, here.

At Salon:

After Wisconsinites submitted signatures to recall their union-busting governor, labor leaders pledged not to settle for just “Anybody But Walker.” Last week, the state AFL-CIO made good on that promise. As a string of current and former elected Democrats lined up behind Milwaukee Mayor and Democratic primary front-runner Tom Barrett, the labor federation followed many of its major unions in endorsing former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk. Many labor leaders say Falk is more likely to beat Walker in the recall and reverse his policies once in office. But to get the chance, she’ll have to overcome Barrett’s 14-point polling lead before the May 8 primary.

Here’s the rest.

At the American Prospect, my interview with the co-author of Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right:

For a company trying to ward off unionization, firing a union activist is a great investment. While the National Labor Relations Act bans such retaliation, its process is slow and its penalties are minimal. Every time Democrats have controlled the presidency and Congress, unions have pushed reforms to the law—and every time they’ve come up short. In their new book, Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right, the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg and labor lawyer Moshe Marvit propose a new approach to labor law reform: add protection against anti-union discrimination to the Civil Rights Act. The Prospect talked to Kahlenberg about why he expects his proposal to succeed where others failed, the relationship between law and culture, and whether Ann Coulter has a point.

Here’s the rest.

At In These Times:

Wednesday night, the National Labor Relations Board announced that truck drivers at the Port of Los Angeles had won a rare union election. The 46-to-15 vote is a major step forward in the Teamsters’ campaign to transform the overwhelmingly nonunion port trucking industry—though it’s no guarantee of a union contract with their employer, the $8.8 billion Australian logistics company Toll Group. “When they tried to push us down, they only managed to make us stronger…” said Toll driver Karael Vallecillo on Thursday. “This is just the beginning of the big war.”

Check it out.

At Salon::

It’s been almost three weeks since the release of a National Labor Relations Board Inspector General report finding that Republican NLRB member Terence Flynn violated ethics rules. Since then, members of Congress from both parties have said the Justice Department should review the allegations. Flynn has bulked up his defense team with a former inspector general of his own — Glenn Fine, who investigated the Bush DOJ. But there’s been no comment on the scandal from the White House, which promoted Flynn, or from the Romney campaign, whose advisor Peter Schaumber allegedly received secret info from him.

Here’s the rest.