Belabored Podcast #27: Retail Revolution?

This week, Sarah Jaffe and guest host Michelle Chen discuss retail organizing, the fallout of government shutdown, standardized test insanity, and solidarity in higher education.

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This week on Belabored: labor reporter, former Belabored guest, and Dissent contributor Michelle Chen joins Sarah Jaffe to share some of her reporting on the organizing campaign at Guitar Center and the difficulties of organizing large retail chains. Then, the shutdown might be over, but the problems it caused sure aren’t: Sarah and Michelle discuss the disproportionate impact on women, the other subjects pushed to the side when crisis becomes permanent (remember immigration reform?), and more. Plus: kindergarteners taking standardized tests, tenure-track faculty showing solidarity with adjuncts, and why we still don’t “Lean In.”

Links for Those Reading Along at Home

Michelle on migrant women speaking in D.C. for fair immigration laws

Sarah on kindergarteners and standardized tests

dBryce Covert and Tara Culp-Ressler on the shutdown and women

Rebecca Burns on grad student union rights

University of Oregon contract creates solidarity between adjuncts and tenured professors

Study shows fast food restaurants depend on public subsidies to support their workers, from Laura Clawson

What We Wish We’d Written

Michelle: Nancy Fraser, How feminism became capitalism’s handmaiden – and how to reclaim it

Sarah: Felix Salmon, The default has already begun