Belabored Podcast #19: The Politics of Time

Belabored Podcast #19: The Politics of Time

How do sex, race, and class shape what counts as “work” and as “life”? Why do these conversations neglect a life for women outside productive or reproductive labor? Is it time for labor to demand the right to free time? The nineteenth episode of Belabored takes on these questions plus the latest developments in labor news.


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The nineteenth episode of Dissent’s Belabored podcast opens with some recent labor news: students getting involved in a Nissan union drive; the United Food & Commercial Workers union returning to the AFL-CIO; Chicago issuing a request for proposals for more charter schools; and interns excluded from sexual harassment protections. Then Josh and Sarah discuss her recent In These Times feature on what the “work/life balance” debate leaves out. How do sex, race, and class shape what counts as “work” and as “life”? Why do these conversations neglect a life for women outside productive or reproductive labor? Is it time for labor to demand the right to free time?

Links for those following along at home:

Sarah’s In These Times piece on “Opting for Free Time

Related stories by the New York Times’ Magazine’s Judith WarnerTime’s Lauren Sandler, and The Nation’s Bryce Covert

Sarah at Jacobin on “A Day Without Care

Pro Publica’s Blair Hickman and Christie Thompson on “How Unpaid Interns Aren’t Protected Against Sexual Harassment

WBEZ on Chicago’s request for charter proposals

Josh’s interview with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry

Roger Bybee on the Nissan plant and its fat subsidies for low wages

Joe Atkins at Facing South on students’ organizing with Nissan workers.

Pieces we wish we’d written:

Christina Caldwell, “Abortion Heat Hits Alabama’s ‘Saturday Women,’ Women’s e-news

Steven Greenhouse, “The Workers Defense Project, a Union in Spirit,” The New York Times


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