Workers Rights Archives - Public Seminar

Economy

The Wall Street Journal Resurrects Mandeville

Do poor Americans have too much?

September 27, 2022 • by David Lay Williams

According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Phil Gramm and John Early, the problem is not that the wealthiest Americans have seen their fortunes dramatically explode. It is rather that the poorest Americans have too much! ...

The Wall Street Journal Resurrects Mandeville

Interviews

A Hotbed of Anarchism and Clam Pasta

Labor organizing and espionage in Joseph Matthews’s new novel, The Blast

May 18, 2022 • by Joseph Matthews and Evangeline Riddiford Graham

There was a great variety of tremendously active Left formations in San Francisco in 1916, and I wanted to explore that variety within the context of the novel....

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 Annelise Orleck

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 ...

Capitalism

A Displaced Worker in a World of Goods

What Winslow Homer’s Old Mill teaches us about the world industrialization made

September 28, 2021 • by Steven Stoll

A woman in a red jacket, lunch pail in hand and eyes forward, travels to work. She ascends a ramp leading from a meadow of wildflowers, over a millpond to a small water-powered textile factory. Winslow Homer painted Old Mill in 1871, but its subject looks back fifty years to the first ...

Labor

Why the Pandemic Paves the Way for Labor Reform

COVID-19 is a natural disaster, but the plight of American workers is man-made.

May 21, 2020 • by Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs

Every worker in America has been affected by the coronavirus. Since the stay-at-home orders went into place, more than 30 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits. Millions more, deemed “essential” workers, are taking life-threatening risks by simply continuing to do their jobs. Others are sudden telecommuters, putting in three hours a day extra on ...

Labor

May Day, 2020

The United States doesn’t celebrate this workers’ holiday — but maybe we should

May 1, 2020 • by Peter Dreier

This year, the global Covid-19 pandemic will keep most workers around the world in their homes on May Day. But Americans are more aware of the plight of workers than at any time in decades. Despite the Trump administration’s incompetence and indifference in handling the virus crisis and the economic ...

New York City

Local Governments Can Afford To Pay a $15 Minimum Wage

November 7, 2019 • by James Parrott

In contrast to this Congressional stalemate, there’s been a growing push in many states for higher minimum wages. Over the past decade, 29 states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum wages above the federal floor. In the spring, Maryland and Connecticut joined New Jersey, Illinois, New York, ...

Uncategorized

Banner Tales

Material culture and the making of solidarity

July 6, 2019 • by David Featherstone and Diarmaid Kelliher

The miners’ strike workshops were developed alongside an ongoing project called Banner Tales, which is a collaboration between geographers and Glasgow Museums staff. This work has encouraged us to reflect on the relationship between material cultures and the makings of solidarity. In both projects we have been involved in using banners ...

Education

Teacher Insurgency

What Are The Strategic Challenges?

February 23, 2019 • by Leo Casey

The following post was the basis for a talk by Leo Casey, the Executive Director of the Albert Shanker Institute, which was delivered at “The Future of American Labor” conference held February 8th and 9th in Washington, D.C. There is every reason to celebrate the “Teacher Spring” strikes of 2018 and the more ...

Feature

Others

A reflection on sex work

October 28, 2018 • by Amaya Olivas Díaz

On July 31, 2018, the BOE issued a resolution whereby the Ministry of Labor formalized the constitution of the OTRAS union (Sex Workers Organization), under Art. 28 of the EC, which establishes the fundamental right to unionize freely. In line with this news, many voices put the cry in the sky, ...

Feature

Bitter Grapes

An excerpt from ‘We Are All Fast Food Workers Now’

October 18, 2018 • by Annelise Orleck

In We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now, Annelise Orleck traces a new labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from across the globe. Orleck illuminates globalization as seen through the eyes of worker-activists: small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, and adjunct professors who are fighting ...

Feature

We Are All Fast Food Workers Now

An interview with Annelise Orleck

October 17, 2018 • by Annelise Orleck and Josh Maserow

In We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now, Annelise Orleck traces a new labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from across the globe. Orleck illuminates globalization as seen through the eyes of worker-activists: small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, and adjunct professors who are fighting ...