At The Nation:

A former Walmart employee was handcuffed Wednesday when he visited his old store to talk to workers about next week’s “Black Friday” strike. Alex Rivera, who was fired in September, told The Nation that Walmart management intentionally misled Orlando police, leading them to detain him for twenty minutes in the store. The incident was denounced by the union-backed workers’ group OUR Walmart, which alleges that Walmart has been breaking the law to keep its workers in line.

“It was really humiliating,” said Rivera. “Because who would expect being handcuffed in front of a lot of [workers] and customers? Customers that pretty much know you, because you worked for the company for three years.” Rivera predicted that seeing him handcuffed will make some of his co-workers more hesitant to get involved with OUR Walmart: “They’re going to say, ‘If I join the organization and do something like that, this is what’s going to happen to me.’ ”

Read it.

Rick Smith had me back on his show to discuss my reporting for The Nation on the next Walmart strike. You can hear us here.

The hosts of Solidarity Breakfast, on Melbourne, Australia’s 3CR radio, had me back on to discuss last week’s election results and what they mean for the US left. You can listen here.

Here’s my first post at my new blog for The Nation:

Thursday, Walmart warehouse workers are headed back to the picket line. At 8 am PST, twenty-some workers in Mira Loma, California, plan to launch a one-day walkout that could spread to more workers, including retail employees in Walmart stores. Thursday’s strike will be the latest in an unprecedented wave of work stoppages throughout the retail giant’s US supply chain. It follows strikes by seafood workers in June, by warehouse workers in September, and by 160 retail workers in twelve states last month. It comes a week before Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza that workers have pledged—barring concessions from the company—will bring their biggest disruptions yet.

“Hopefully it will make a dent in their production…” said Raymond Castillo, “and it gets their attention, that we’re not playing around.” Castillo and other Mira Loma workers struck in September, and voted Sunday to do it again on Thursday. According to Castillo, workers started organizing because of unsafe and unsanitary conditions: crooked ramps caused serious injuries; workers’ drinking water came from a hose. The organizing brought retaliation, which inspired a strike, which drew more punishment. “Since we’ve all been retaliated against,” said Castillo, “it was a pretty easy decision for all of us to go back on strike.”

Check it out.

At In These Times

Days before a threatened strike, nurses at New York’s Lenox Hill hospital secured a deal with management on a new three-year contract. Under the agreement, reached November 1 and ratified November 5, nurse-to-patient ratios will be slightly stronger, and wages will increase by between 3.2 and 4.1 percent a year.

The new contract institutes monthly co-pays for workers’ health insurance starting in in 2015, but other than that, includes few of the 46 concessions originally sought by North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, the $6 billion non-profit that acquired the hospital in 2010.

Here’s the rest.