labor

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  7/4/2023
  

  University of California is Cracking Down on Workers and Dissent

  by Rafael Jaime

  The arrest of three UC labor activists on vandalism charges related to chalking a sidewalk with pro-labor slogans show that the university will throw its commitment to free speech out the window when it comes to playing hardball with graduate workers, says one grad union leader. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/1/2023
  

  Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions

  By an 8-1 vote, with only Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, the Court allowed employers to bypass the National Labor Relations Board to seek potentially crippling tort judgments against unions for business losses related to strikes, removing a major incentive for good-faith negotiation by employers. 

• 
• SOURCE: Defector
  3/3/2023
  

  The Police Aren't Part of Change in Chicago

  by Dan Berger

  A historian critiquing a recent book on Black Lives Matter argues that the political, fiscal and cultural influence of police is so broad that it's impossible to think of meaningful social reform in a society that includes modern police departments. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  4/25/2023
  

  U. of Michigan Faculty Shouldn't Flatter New President while the Administration Busts Unions and Politicians Trash Higher Ed

  by Silke-Maria Weineck

  Top administrators increasingly share with conservative politicians a "desire to refashion universities in the image of the American workplace, where at-will employees do what they’re told by feudal overlords who have poems commissioned in their praise."

• 
• SOURCE: NextCity
  4/20/2023
  

  The 4-Day Work Week is an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

  While workers have long expressed a preference for a shorter work week, the labor market issues of the COVID pandemic have recalibrated the balance of power between workers and management in ways that have made the idea more appealing to policymakers. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/25/2023
  

  Labor Secretary Nominee Julie Su Shaped by Work on 1990s Sweatshop Trafficking Case

  With a prominent record of advocating for immigrant workers, Su faces indifference or outright hostility from moderate Democrats and Republicans as her nomination to succeed Marty Walsh at the Department of Labor advances. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/19/2023
  

  Rutgers Strikers Ran the Table; Is This the Way out of Higher Ed's Crisis?

  by Jonathan David

  Three Rutgers unions, representing instructors in different professional positions, won by modeling the kind of solidarity that university workers need to fight back against the privatization and corporatization of public higher education. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  4/17/2023
  

  Rutgers Unions Suspend Strike after Big Gains

  Although unions representing graduate workers, lecturers, and full-time faculty must approve them, a framework for agreement has been reached that would deliver significant gains in wages and other demands. 

• 
• SOURCE: Harper's
  4/15/2023
  

  Beyond Quiet Quitting: The Real Crisis of Work

  by Erik Baker

  Impressionistic accounts of worker withdrawal and labor militancy both fail to capture a deeper issue: Work is failing to deliver on the promises the state has made as an avenue of meaning and fulfillment. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  3/24/2023
  

  Why LAUSD Teachers Walked Out

  At the heart of the walkout of 60,000 education professionals is the reality that the school district's policies are keeping teachers and students in poverty that makes it harder to teach and learn, says a union official. 

• 
• 3/26/2023
  

  ChatGPT Wants to Join SEIU in Breakthrough for Organized Labor

  by Jim Castagnera

  Business owners looking to replace workers with automation beware; ChatGPT is a union bot. 

• 
• SOURCE: TeenVogue
  3/22/2023
  

  Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity

  Participants in these actions explain that the goal isn't only pay and benefits for graduate student workers, but returning public higher education to a state of accessibility for millions of students and opportunity for millions of workers after decades of budget cuts and privatization. 

• 
• SOURCE: Peste
  2/21/2023
  

  Can a "Return to Normal" Happen Without Repairing Sociability?

  by Nate Holdren

  The push to return to many pre-pandemic modes of working and living is taking place without sufficient provision for mitigating risk, and with seriously damaged bonds of trust and mutual support; people are again in proximity to each other, but far from being together. 

• 
• SOURCE: Yes!
  1/26/2023
  

  Why We Need Pirates

  by Paul Buhle, Marcus Rediker and David Lester

  Though vilified in popular culture, the history of piracy shows that many crews were egalitarian bands of maritime workers escaping their exploitation at the hands of merchant companies and navies. A new graphic adaptation of a recent history of piracy tells the story. 

• 
• SOURCE: Nature
  1/11/2023
  

  UC Strike is Energizing a Movement of Research Workers

  Collective actions at the University of California campuses and elsewhere are influencing research workers to view the work that they do in the lab as labor. 

• 
• 1/15/2023
  

  Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  12/8/2022
  

  The University of California is Also a Landlord

  The system, which approximates a real estate investment firm that also confers degrees, is squeezing its graduate students both as their wage-payer and as a large-scale landlord that contributes to a housing market that is unaffordable to graduate assistants and postdoctoral researchers. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  11/30/2022
  

  Railway Companies Aren't Simply Being Stingy: Denying Sick Days is Central to their Business Model

  The regime of Precision-Scheduled Railroading (PSR) has yielded immense profits but cannot accommodate unexpected worker absences. The current impasse is happening because executives and stockholders refuse to abandon the system. 

• 
• SOURCE: Google
  11/30/2022
  

  An Open Letter from Historians In Support of Railway Workers

  A group of historians hopes to persuade President Biden and Labor Secretary Martin Walsh to uphold railroad workers' right to strike and to intervene in negotiations to help secure a contract with sick day provisions. 

• 
• SOURCE: Yale Daily News
  11/27/2022
  

  Grad Workers: Choose Solidarity with New Haven

  by Adom Getachew and Sarah Haley

  Two former Yale PhD students argue that the university's graduate student union offers not just benefits and protection to graduate student workers, but the chance for them to work in solidarity with other university and New Haven workers across the vast racial and socioeconomic divides separating city and campus.