Labor

Activism

Children of 2008

A guide to the changing landscape of the labor movement

March 12, 2026 • by
Solidarity, we’ve always thought, is more difficult at a distance. The great, mythic union victories of the 1930s, like the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936–37, when the United Auto Workers beat General Motors and opened the door to organizing the auto industry, were won by workers who lived and worked ...
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Children of 2008
Interviews

Fresh Hope for Labor

A conversation with labor historian Dave Kamper on the growing strength of American unions, as recounted in his new book, Who’s Got the Power?

March 12, 2026 • by and
In his new book Who’s Got the Power? The Resurgence of American Unions (The New Press, 2025), labor writer and organizer Dave Kamper delivers a bit of good news in a dark time. “Much of the last half century has, for the labor movement, sucked beyond the telling,” he writes. ...
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Fresh Hope for Labor
Kinships

Family Values or Family Exclusion?

How right-wing policies fail working mothers

January 22, 2025 • by
Parental entitlement policies represent a complex interplay of cultural, social, and economic priorities for far-right leaders in both Italy and the United States. On the one hand, many religiously minded conservatives uphold traditional family values, which would seem to support policies that promote marriage and the growth of families. At ...
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Family Values or Family Exclusion?
Body & Mind

The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying

How does Brandy Melville continue to tap into the most desperate impulses of being a teenage girl?

December 10, 2024 • by
“From the beginning of the supply chain to the end, we’re all being exploited by the same system” says Chloe Asaam, who represents the Or Foundation. She’s speaking in Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion, an HBO documentary that explores the toxicity of the international brand Brandy Melville.  The ...
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The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying
Economy

You Are Entitled to Live Your Own Life—If Your Employer Allows It

How the business of cobbling together a living became a new form of unpaid labor

October 17, 2024 • by
I know someone, a nurse, who doesn’t have health insurance. His employer, a staffing agency, bounces him from assignment to assignment—sometimes with only a day’s notice. Engaged in skilled care work that is profoundly dependent on the ability to maintain human relationships, he often finds himself treated more like a ...
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You Are Entitled to Live Your Own Life—If Your Employer Allows It
Economy

Low-Paid Industries Rely on Gig Workers. Are They Actually Employees?

A new survey sheds light on the working conditions of New York City’s “independent contractors”

October 16, 2024 • by
Ask any organizer and you’ll hear how hard it is to reach gig workers. These workers typically lack a physical place of work or regular schedule (though many work all the time), and their work is poorly measured in Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics datasets. The gig workers ...
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Low-Paid Industries Rely on Gig Workers. Are They Actually Employees?
Capitalism

Biden’s Green Protectionism

Behind rhetoric about jobs and green energy is a bid for a $650 billion industry

September 16, 2024 • by
Domestic economic commentators tend to describe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the rise of American green industrial policy along three lines. Lawrence Summers, former United States secretary of the treasury under Clinton, has criticized Biden’s protectionist policies as a “manufacturing-centered economic nationalism.” Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has supported Biden’s ...
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Biden’s Green Protectionism
Labor

People Do Not Live with Indignity Forever

June 7, 2022 • by
On May 3, I—and about a hundred million other women—was reeling in the aftermath of Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s contemptuous assault on women’s bodily autonomy. We had learned about it that day because of a leaked draft decision that will eliminate the right to safe, legal abortions in ...
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People Do Not Live with Indignity Forever
Labor

The Orchids That Bloom in the Dark

The migrant domestic workers of the U.K. organization Waling Waling are fighting for their dignity and human rights

November 17, 2021 • by
On a warm, wet London Saturday, a group of Filipina women meet in Regent’s Park. They are joined by a few friends from North and West Africa, several small children, and a couple of men recording the event on camera. They spread blankets on the grass which they quickly cover ...
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The Orchids That Bloom in the Dark
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