Belabored Podcast #6: “That Can Get You Fired”
Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board rejected, new strike authorizations, and Sarah and Josh discuss the state of fast food workers’ organizing efforts. They interview journalist Jake Blumgart about recent developments around anti-sweatshop activism, at-will employment, the future of Atlantic City, and high-stakes testing at a sushi restaurant. {…}
Belabored Podcast #5: Bargaining Against Banks
Sarah and Josh discuss port trucker organizing in Savannah, fast food strikes in St. Louis, and one union’s experiment with using collective bargaining as a weapon against big banks. Then they consider the anti-union record of Obama’s new nominee for the Commerce Department, and the Democratic Party’s future with organized labor. {…}
Belabored Podcast #4: “Talk To Someone Like Me”
Sarah and Josh interview Hyatt hotel housekeeper Cathy Youngblood, a leader in UNITE HERE battling with the hotel giant, on Obama’s choice of a Hyatt heir to run the Commerce Department, and her “Someone Like Me” campaign calling for a worker to be added to Hyatt’s board. Plus labor news and “I wish I’d written that!” {…}
May Day! Highlights from the International Labor Movement
Today marks the rallying of the international labor movement. We asked our favorite labor journalists and scholars to pick highlights from the last year of general strikes, minority strikes, walkouts, and international solidarity. Here’s what they chose. {…}
Low Wage Workers Strike—Because YOLO
For low-wage workers, it’s almost insanely risky to strike. This Wednesday, they went on strike in Chicago. Why? YOLO. {…}
Belabored Podcast #3: “Strike.”
Sarah and Josh talk strikes: the latest wave of one-day, low-wage, non-union work stoppages and, hypothetically, what might happen if everyone doing care work in America…stopped. {…}
How Industrial Dangers Get Overlooked
Last week’s tragedies at the Boston Marathon and in tiny West, Texas, made one thing clear: terrorist violence fascinates early twenty-first-century Americans far more than industrial disaster, even when latter brings far more devastation. We still await word on just … {…}
Invisible Immigrants: What Will Immigration Reform Mean for Migrant Women?
Patricia thought she had crossed the border to a land where she could finally earn a good living. She ended up in one of the worst places to be a woman. As a migrant farmworker, she was brutalized and raped … {…}
Low-Wage Workers Walk out in Chicago
NBC Chicago is reporting that “hundreds of fast-food and retail workers walked off their jobs Wednesday morning to…call for higher wages” and the ability to unionize without intimidation. For many workers, like Esly Hernandez (interviewed by Ned Resnikoff at MSNBC), … {…}
Partial Readings: The Violence We Can, and Can’t, Prevent
It’s been a grim week. Whether it was the bombing at the Boston marathon or the explosion of a fertilizer plant in small-town Texas, the week’s events have instilled, for many in the U.S., a renewed sense of vulnerability to … {…}
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The Costs of China’s Mega-Cities· May 20, 2013 ·
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Student Debtors Put Pressure on the Department of Education· May 20, 2013 ·
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The Struggle for Cheap Meat on the Lower East Side· May 17, 2013 ·
