Labor - Dissent Magazine

Introduction: No Retreat

Sarah Jaffe and Natasha Lewis ▪ Winter 2017

What will the future of work look like? As the writers in this special section show, the answer will have more to do with politics than robots.

Unequal Pay, Unequal Work

Jake Rosenfeld ▪ Winter 2017

Ruth Milkman’s Gender, Labor, and Inequality is a story of halting progress for women in the workforce, a march punctuated by setbacks, false starts, and abandonment by purported allies.

While conservatives tighten their grip on Washington, a network of grassroots organizers in three Texas cities is showing how local progressives can beat the odds. Could their efforts become a national model for opposing Trumpism?

Belabored Podcast #118: Fighting for Sanctuary and Solidarity

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ December 16, 2016

Rosanna Aran and Christina Fox of #SomosVisibles join us to talk about immigrant organizing in New York under Trump.

Belabored Podcast #117: Welcome to the Resistance, with Barbara Madeloni

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ December 2, 2016

Massachusetts Teachers Association President Barbara Madeloni joins us to talk about an election victory for public education, and how labor should respond to Donald Trump.

Belabored Podcast #116: Facing Labor and Politics Under Trump

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ November 11, 2016

We look at some bright spots from the election, including the story of how a unique labor-community coalition in Arizona helped defeat the reelection bid of the infamous bigot Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Belabored Podcast #115: Organizing for Power, with Jane McAlevey

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ October 28, 2016

Jane McAlevey joins us to talk about her new book, No Shortcuts, strategies for workplace organizing, and what’s wrong with Saul Alinsky.

Belabored Podcast #114: Striking the Ivory Tower, with Harvard Workers

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ October 14, 2016

We speak with two Harvard workers, Kecia Pugh and Anabela Pappas, and UNITE HERE organizer Tiffany Ten Eyck about the ongoing strike at the country’s most elite university.

Prison Uprisings, From Attica to Today

Tim Barker ▪ October 7, 2016

Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, discusses the uprising and the current wave of prison strikes.

Belabored Podcast #113: Chicago Teachers Strike Back, with Sarah Chambers

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ September 30, 2016

The Chicago Teachers Union is on the verge of another major strike—one that could be even longer and nastier than the union’s landmark 2012 fight. Public school teacher and CTU activist Sarah Chambers lays out the stakes.

Belabored Podcast #112: Striking India, with Vamsi Vakulabharanam and Gautam Mody

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ September 16, 2016

Last week’s general strike in India might have been the largest strike in history.

Belabored Podcast #111: Workers’ Rights for Graduate Employees, with Lindsey Dayton

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ September 2, 2016

Lindsey Dayton from the Graduate Workers of Columbia joins us to talk about the recent NLRB ruling that graduate students who work for private universities are employees and have the right to unionize.

Belabored Podcast #110: Americans in Revolt, with Sarah Jaffe

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ August 19, 2016

Belabored co-host Sarah Jaffe talks about her new book, Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.

The French Left Divided

Paul Cohen ▪ August 8, 2016

This summer, France’s Socialist government quashed the country’s largest wave of strikes of protests in a generation to impose a drastic overhaul of French labor law, revealing deeper fault lines in the process.