Departments

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labor history

  • SOURCE: Jewish Currents
    3/14/2023

    The History and Politics of the Right to Grieve

    by Erik Baker

    Grief isn't a personal psychological and emotional process; we experience it through the demands a capitalist economy makes on our time, energy and attention. It's time to make bereavement a matter of right, instead of a favor doled out at the whim of your boss. 

  • SOURCE: Jewish Currents
    2/24/2023

    Little Bargains for Big Issues

    by Michael Paul Berlin

    Bargaining teams representing University of California graduate workers focused narrowly on economic issues, and not on building unity of workers and the communities around universities. This is a historical pattern of a "business unionism" model eclipsing a view of unions as social movements. Workers need to change this. 

  • SOURCE: In These Times
    2/24/2023

    It's Time for Labor Spring

    by Cindy Hahamovich, William P. Jones and Joseph A. McCartin

    In 1996, labor unions connected with campus activists to support anti-sweatshop movements, living wage campaigns for campus workers, and graduate student union organization. Now, labor must expand that effort for "wall-to-wall" organizing to make campuses better and more democratic workplaces. 

  • 2/26/2023

    What Airports Can Tell Us About Histories of Regional Development

    by Eric Porter

    From the perspective of travelers, airports appear as generic "non-places." But for people who aren't just passing through—entrepreneurs, activists, and especially workers—their particularity makes them sites of struggle that shape the life of a region. Historians have much to learn from them, too. 

  • SOURCE: CNN
    2/16/2023

    Temple Revives Old-Time Union Busting against Grad Students

    by Heather Ann Thompson

    Temple's decision to revoke the tuition remission of striking grad students (and threaten their ability to complete degrees) is the kind of hardball tactic that bodes ill for workers in every workplace in America, and a reminder of the need to understand the country's labor history. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    1/3/2023

    Assessing the UC Grad Strike

    by Laura J. Mitchell

    Despite winning increases in wages and benefits, University of California graduate student workers still face the problem of working amid the rubble of a social contract uniting universities, students, and the public around the idea of the university as a public good. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    12/28/2022

    The Think Tank Trying to Defund Public Sector Unions

    Labor historian Lane Windham describes a well-funded effort to encourage union members to opt out of paying dues, a strategy designed to force their unions to do more with less. Organizing to recruit new members and energize existing ones is the way to fight back. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    12/14/2022

    The Farm Workforce Modernization Act Raises Troubling Echoes

    by Matt Garcia

    The support of the United Farm Workers for the bill cuts against the organization's origins in opposition to the Bracero guestworker program, and signals its shift toward advocacy of global responsibility initiatives in the food supply chain. Other labor organizations believe the bill would reestablish indentured servitude in farm work. 

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    12/8/2022

    "Amtrak Joe" Leaves Rail Workers in the Dust

    by Kim Kelly

    Why did the "most pro-union president" in modern times push through a negotiated settlement rejected by the majority of railroad union members, and what would Eugene Debs think? 

  • SOURCE: History Club (Substack)
    12/4/2022

    Qatar's World Cup Echoes Brutal American Labor History

    by Jason Steinhauer

    Exposés of the brutal conditions faced by migrant laborers who built Qatar's World Cup facilities echoes the history of American public works, where workers' bodies and lives were subordinated to budgets and timetables. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    12/2/2022

    The Biggest Threat to America's Stability is the Class Divide

    by Kim Phillips-Fein

    We mistakenly bemoan "polarization" instead of reckoning with the economic power of radical right-wing elites, who have the resources to fund growing organizations, and the growing number of people disaffected from the social order who are susceptible to their messages.