Massachusetts pays the most in the nation for its health care, and yet it’s plagued by an ongoing crisis of access, affordability, and quality. Although our experiment in health care reform already has deep problems, policy wonks influencing the country’s health care debate tout Massachusetts as the model for universal health care nationwide. . . .

Portland’s new day labor center opened in June to a hectic scene. Laborers and members of the media crowded around the site, a modest trailer in a city-owned parking lot. . . .

Less than a week after showing its muscle by forcing the second-largest carhauler out of business with a short strike, the Teamsters union reached a concessionary master agreement in mid-June with the remaining unionized carhaul companies. . . .

California may become the latest of several states to put restrictions on an online system that attempts to verify whether a job applicant can work in the U.S. Unions and immigrants’ rights groups—including the Service Employees and the California Immigrant Policy Center—are sponsoring a bill to limit use of the federal program, calling it a tool the government uses to target immigrants in the workplace. . . .

During his time in Detroit, Labor Notes’ recently departed editor was a coordinator of strike support committees for the American Axle and Northwest mechanics strikes. Here he shares a few hard-earned tips on how (and how not) to build support committees. . . .

Editor’s Note: During his time in Detroit, Labor Notes’ recently departed editor was a coordinator of strike support committees for the American Axle and Northwest mechanics strikes. Here he shares a few hard-earned tips on how (and how not) to build support committees.

Maureen Taylor of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization speaks at a June tribute for the American Axle strikers.

As the clock struck 4 p.m., committee organizers paced anxiously around the empty banquet room. Dinners for 500 strikers and supporters sat simmering in unclaimed trays. By 4:30 the mostly still-empty room had reduced some of them to open worry.

Escalating anti-union violence in Guatemala has claimed three banana workers involved in union organizing in the past year. Most recently, Izabal Banana Workers Union (SITRABI) member Enrique Cruz Hernandez was shot while on his lunch break.

The plantations where the men worked and organized are owned by subsidiaries of Del Monte. Despite tight security on the banana plantations, little information has come out about the murders.

The killings came on the heels of a conference in Guatemala convened by the International Trade Union Confederation that addressed pervasive impunity for violence against union members.

Pulte Homes, the country’s fourth-largest housing developer, faces strikes in two cities over its contracting practices. Pulte outsources building operations like drywalling and painting to contractors. But workers building Pulte houses know who’s ultimately responsible when they face unsafe working conditions, low wages, long hours, unaffordable health care, and nonpayment of overtime.

Attempts to organize or speak out are met with intimidation and threats of replacement. Harassed employees in Phoenix and Las Vegas have gone on strike against their subcontracting firms and are agitating against Pulte. Workers hired to build homes for Pulte by contractors are picketing developments and leafleting prospective home buyers.

Workers at the Corning Science de Mexico maquiladora in Reynosa, just across the border at Texas’s southern tip, are struggling against both their employer and their union for real representation in the workplace.

The workers, who make scientific equipment for laboratories, charge that the company and the union work in concert to violate their rights and hold down working conditions.

A group of dissidents, calling themselves the Commission of the Workers of Corning Science Factory (CTEC), have pulled away from the company union. They report abuse at the plant and inaction on the part of the official union.