Man-made canals like Panama and Suez face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather patterns and geopolitical tensions that reveal the fragility of our global trade networks, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
To take on Amazon a proper long-term strategy based on union activity is needed
Community organising has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective – it’s time for a switch to industrial organising, based on socialist principles, writes NIGEL FLANAGAN

THE news that the US union RWDSU (Retail Wholesale Department Store Union) has lost the ballot for recognition in Bessemer is an immediate and crushing defeat but also raises a longer-term question — is US-style “community organising” finished?
The loss of this vote among 6,000 workers in Bessemer, Alabama, is hot on the heels of the similar outcome at VW in the same state.
What is even more remarkable is that this is in the plant where an estimated 80 per cent of the workers are black African-American.
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