Earlier this week in southern China, protests began after a New Year’s Day op-ed by the newspaper Southern Weekly was censored. In its original form, the op-ed hoped for a new year in which the liberal principles of the Chinese constitution were respected. When that op-ed was reduced to party platitudes by propaganda officials, the paper’s employees briefly went on strike and the protests began. Brooke speaks with Jeremy Goldkorn is the director of Danwei, a firm that researches Chinese media and internet, about the situation. 

The Books - It Never Changes To Stop

Ester Fuchs, professor of international and public affairs and political science at School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University and former advisor to Mayor Bloomberg, explains what the Chicago teachers strike tells us about the national conversation about education, and what it means for New York City teachers.

An estimated 10,000 people participated in the first day of an indefinite strike against the government on Monday. These protests were motivated by alleged corruption and the elimination of a subsidy that has sent fuel prices skyrocketing in Nigeria. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, who most recently claimed responsibility for a Christmas Day church bombing that killed 37 people and wounded 57, have reached a fever pitch.

Nurses this week will vote on a proposed settlement with Montefiore Medical Center, potentially concluding a season of tense contract negotiations that had unions at four different hospitals threatening to strike.

A planned nurse's strike at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital next Tuesday may be averted, now that their union and the hospital's management have reached a tentative, four-year contract agreement.

Nurses unions at two more city hospitals authorized strikes on Monday,  if contract talks do not advance.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the Department of Education has prepared "for the worst," and alerted parents in an email Friday that they should prepare for a "strong possibility of an immediate system-wide strike."

In recent months there has been a resurgence of labor protests across the United States. From Ohio to Wisconsin, union members are taking to the streets once more. Yet despite this apparent resurgence, the power of American unions has declined significantly in recent decades. Today The Takeaway traces it all back to August 1981, when nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike creating a standoff with Ronald Reagan that ended when he fired the majority of them and de-certified their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. 

After 44 days and the intervention of the Bloomberg administration, waiters, dish washers and bussers at the Central Park Boathouse restaurant have ended their strike.

The frosty relationship between the owner of the Central Park Boathouse Restaurant and a labor union seems to be thawing, more than a month after dozens of workers began striking.

Steven Greenhouse, New York Times labor and workplace correspondent and author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, discusses the increasingly bitter national strike against Verizon, which began on August 7.

More than 2,000 concrete workers have reached a tentative contract agreement.

Verizon and picketing workers are accusing each other of not bargaining in good faith, as a strike enters its second week.

On the fifth day of the Verizon Communications strike, only a specified number of workers were allowed to picket company sites after a State Supreme court judge in Manhattan Wednesday ruled in favor of an injunction filed by Verizon.

Thousands of striking workers from Verizon Communication Inc.'s landline division joined picket lines and rallies Monday at the company's offices from Massachusetts to Virginia, according to a union official.

Two unions that represent workers for Verizon announced an immediate strike on Sunday, demanding better treatment after a lack of progress in negotiating contracts. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the unions representing Verizon, last went on strike in 2000. Verizon union membership has shrunk by nearly in half since then, and is much weaker than before. Can union members still exert their influence in a strike?

Credit ratings agency Standard and Poor's downgraded the U.S.'s credit rating for the first time in history on Friday, causing jaws to drop across the country, and raising the blood-pressures of leaders worldwide as many held emergency meetings to fend off any backlash this news might create. President Obama will be preparing this week for his upcoming bus tour to reconnect with voters in the Midwest. Meanwhile, News Corp. will release their fourth quarter results on Wednesday, the PGA Championship kicks off on Thursday, and Dennis Rodman will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday.

Thousands of area Verizon workers went on strike on Saturday night as contract negotiations broke down. They are part of a total of 45,000 Verizon workers now on strike across the country.

After walking off the job for 3 days in a row, most workers at the World Trade Center returned Thursday morning after their contracts were extended for another 2 weeks. A contingent of over 50 concrete and cement workers, whose contracts do not restrict them from striking, held out for about an hour.