This spring, graduate students at New York University made history when they won recognition for the first graduate student union at a private university. To accomplish this feat, students had to overcome the political and legal opposition of virtually every …
THE NEW MEN of Power is a study of trade unions and their leaders, the American political scene, and the prospects for a radicalized democracy in the years just after the Second World War. When C. Wright Mills published the …
Recently, after nine years of resolutely ignoring pleas, letters, e-mails, and the occasional phone call, I went to my first ever college alumni event. The reason was not a sudden burst of pride or the creeping nostalgia of age—rather it …
Labor movements are remarkable modern institutions. All over the world, they have fought for what Marx called “the political economy of the working class.” They have transformed exploited workers into active citizens, and Social Darwinist battlegrounds into civilized and decent …
The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (MAAH), which opened in Detroit in April 1997, has been acclaimed as the nation’s most important black history museum in numerous descriptive accounts, but, with a few notable exceptions, has not …
America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters by Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers Basic Books, 2000 232 pp $27 The basic premise of Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers’s America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still …
What are the prospects for labor rights in the next four years? The question would seem to require some estimate, first, of what the Republicans intend and, second, of their capacity to do it. But current labor law is not …
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY: Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora Nancy L. Green, ed. University of California Press, 1998 256 pp $40 cloth $14.95 paper Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York …
Nothing characterizes the private-sector labor market in the United States more clearly than the ability to fire employees at will. “Sorry, you’re no longer needed here” sounds like the refrain of a classic American song. Those Europeans who oppose the …
Growing Prosperity: The Battle for Growth with Equity in the 21st Century by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison Century Foundation, 2000 345 pp $25 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison are two icons that progressive economists of my generation looked to …
Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II by Joshua B. Freeman The New Press, 2000 393 pp $35 I’m sitting here in sunny California poring over short-term rentals in downtown Manhattan. My wife stops short at a …
Hector Cuatepotzo, a waiter at the upscale Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California, and an active member of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) union, lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Maria, six-year-old daughter, Ashley, and …
