labor history 
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SOURCE: Jacobin
6/27/2022
The Labor Upsurge Calls Us to Rethink Organizing Rules
by Chris Brooks
Do the successes of organizers at Amazon and Starbucks mean the age of slow, methodical and gradual organizing is over? Can workers use a union vote itself as an organizing tool to move quickly and defeat union-busting?
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SOURCE: Washington Post
6/8/2022
Anti-Sweatshop Crusader Charles Kernaghan, 74
Kernaghan waged war against the dark side of free trade: the ruthless exploitation of workers in overseas factories.
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5/29/2022
There is a Real "Great Replacement" – But Not the One the Right Talks About
by Guy Lancaster
Arkansas history shows how the true Great Replacement in the United States has been organized by oligarchs hoping to use immigrant labor to undercut Black people's demands for economic fairness and human rights.
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SOURCE: Business Insider
5/22/2022
Labor Historian: Amazon's Warehouse Victory is a Big Step, But Just a Step
Cornell's Ilene DeVault says the organization of Amazon's Staten Island warehouse is more important that unionization at Starbucks for the reversal of the decades-long attack on organized labor in the US.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
5/4/2022
The Laundry Workers' Uprising and the Fight for Democratic Unionism
by Jenny Carson
African American and Black Caribbean immigrant women were key organizers of New York laundry workers who pushed for a union movement that rejected divisions of occupation, race and nationality in favor of workplace democracy.
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SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
5/1/2022
Chicago Museum Expansion will Highlight Key Role of Pullman Porters in Black History
Lyn Hughes was shocked that the public history of Chicago's Pullman factory and surrounding neighborhood overlooked the role of African American workers – who became a key core of civil rights activism.
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SOURCE: NPR
5/1/2022
We Overlooked May Day This Year – We Aren't Alone in the US
Historian Peter Linebaugh explains that the international day of labor solidarity has always sat uneasily with American nationalism.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/21/2022
Union Organizing in the Long Shadow of the Gilded Age
by Daisy Pitkin
On listening to Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library as librarians perform the kind of social services Carnegie deplored (and try to organize a union, which he deplored more).
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/13/2022
We Got a Great Big Convoy
by Dan Albert
The media obscured the reality of recent protests in Ottawa and Washington by unquestioningly adopting a mythology of the North American trucker drawn from the 1970s when independent truckers had real grievances.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/14/2022
Amazon Labor's Union Shows "Woke Capital" Still Uses Racism to Divide Workers for Profit
by Adam Serwer
"Amazon’s defeat is also notable for another reason: the victory of a diverse group of workers against a mighty corporation that has presented itself as racially egalitarian."
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/6/2022
The Automation Myth (Review Essay)
by Clinton Williamson
Neither utopian nor cataclysmic predictions about the effects of automation made in the 20th century have come exactly to pass; technology has changed, but not replaced, work. Several new books try to connect the past and future of work.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
4/4/2022
With Amazon Union, What's Old is New Again
by Rosemary Feurer
The victory of the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island doesn't represent a revival of "the 1930s insurgency," but a new generation finding guidance from some of the bottom-up solidarity building strategies from that decade. Today's unionism will have to avoid some mistakes of the CIO to endure.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
4/4/2022
The Amazon Union Vote is a Win for Hope
by Ian Rocksborough-Smith
"Despite historically low unionization rates, recent polls suggest at least 2/3 of Americans approve of labor unions – the highest approval rating since 1965. The ALU seems to have come along at exactly the right moment."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/4/2022
2022's Labor Uprising Reminds of More Radical Past and Possible Future
by Xochitl Gonzalez
The Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers' Organization encouraged its college-educated members to take on industrial work to support a labor union movement in crisis; the moment encouraged a broader sense of who is a worker. Today, are workers in health, service, and logistics coming to a similar recognition?
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SOURCE: NBC News
4/4/2022
How Did Amazon Workers Win a Union? Look Back 100 Years
by Kim Kelly
The radical Black waterfront worker and organizer Ben Fletcher established a model of a democratic, antiracist, integrated labor union on Philadelphia's waterfront that echoes in the worker-led victory in establishing a union at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
4/1/2022
Mill Mother's Lament: The Legacy of Ella May Wiggins
by Karen Sieber
The city of Gastonia has struggled to agree on the commemoration of the bloody 1929 Loray Mill strike, including how to account for the murder of pregnant union activist Ella May Wiggins.
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SOURCE: Dissent
3/28/2022
Baseball's Labor War
by Peter Dreier
Organizing the Brotherhood of Professional Base-ball Players in 1885, John Montgomery Ward asked whether team owners could treat their players as chattel through the "reserve clause." Today's players seem to be learning some similarly radical lessons from the recent owner's lockout.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
3/6/2022
When Musicians Went on Strike – and Won
by Joey De La Neve Defrancesco
Professional unionized musicians in the 1940s struck to stop the impact of recording technology on their livelihoods. It's an example for musical artists being squeezed by streaming services today.
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SOURCE: The Nation
2/7/2022
Baseball Players Can't Live on a "Cup of Coffee"
by Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier
Framing the baseball lockout as a battle of billionaire owners vs. millionaire players misses the fact that most players who ever reach the big leagues won't make great salaries, garner endorsements, or get a league pension.
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SOURCE: The 1A
2/9/2022
The Biden White House Lends Support to Right to Organize a Union
Labor historian Erik Loomis discusses the release of a pro-union report by the White House Task Force on Worker Orgainzing and Empowerment.
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