This week on Belabored, Sarah and guest co-host Peter Frase discuss international solidarity campaigns with American workers and give an update on the situation in Detroit. Then, independent journalist Susie Cagle joins them to talk about labor unrest in the Bay Area, where solidarity can be hard to come by.
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.
This week Sarah Jaffe is joined by Laura Clawson of Daily Kos to discuss the continuing government shutdown, the debt ceiling, and the larger Republican attack on the legacy of the New Deal. They also find some things to be optimistic about.
In September Poland went on strike. In many countries struck by economic hardships and severe austerity measures, a mass strike would be no news at all. But in a country where media relentlessly reiterate the dogma that the general public is “passive” and there are no unions “worth reasoning with,” this is news indeed. It also raises questions about the relationship between today’s protests and the original Solidarity movement.
The debate over the working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a longtime adjunct professor at Duquesne University who was fired in the last year of her life and died penniless. Moshe Marvit talks to Dan Kovalik, a labor lawyer who knew Votjko and has helped to publicize her story.
This week, Sarah Jaffe and guest host Bryce Covert round up the week’s labor news and chat about work-family policy on the federal, state, and local level. They also discuss the government shutdown with Mariya Strauss, a labor journalist whose partner is a federal employee.
This past July, in the middle of a summer of political discontent, there occurred a small reason for hope. In seven American cities, thousands of men and women who toil at fast-food chain restaurants picketed in loud and energetic one-day …
This week on Belabored: a message from departing co-host Josh Eidelson and a roundup of labor news from New York to Bangladesh. Then, Sarah Jaffe interviews longtime organizer and union strategist Stephen Lerner about fighting Wall Street, organizing around debt, and the recent fast food strikes.
This week on #Belabored: Occupy celebrates a birthday, labor rights for domestic workers, workers centers under fire, and deep cuts for food stamps. Then, Sarah Jaffe breaks down the interplay between unions, judges, and politicians in the battles to save New York hospitals from closure.
In this week’s Belabored podcast, Josh and Sarah talk about a judge’s ruling against Indiana’s “Right to Work,” a living wage law vetoed in DC, Chicago schools without air conditioning, and steps towards UAW union recognition in the South. Plus a report back on the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles.
This week’s Belabored podcast opens with a round-up of recent news: strikes by fast food workers and port truckers, anti-retaliation rallies against Walmart, and progress on silica dust safety rules. Then Sarah and Josh are joined by Daily Kos Labor Editor Laura Clawson for a wide-ranging interview: What’s ahead at next week’s AFL-CIO convention? Can living wage laws triumph? How has the relationship between bloggers and unions changed?
I used to describe my busy schedule at the “best writing job in America.” But in the hectic pace of my life in those days, I now see myself avoiding my growing sense of dread and desperation. It wasn’t until years later that the scales began to fall from my eyes, allowing me to appraise my work life with honesty and to see myself for what I was: just another working person whose dreams of a decent future had slowly faded before the harsh realities of below-inflation raises and relentlessly rising health care costs.
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.
Contingent faculty constitute an academic proletariat, where a lack of workplace control, negligible job security, and prevailing low wages define the conditions of employment. In response to these conditions, previously solitary academic laborers are joining together in an attempt to speak with a collective voice.
This week on Belabored, an interview with historian William Jones about the forgotten history of civil rights and the relation between racial and economic justice. Plus the latest on prevailing wage law in New York, living wage law in DC, domestic workers’ rights, and labor issues at the ACLU.
