As we settle into the unease and unknown of a mandated curfew and occupation by the national guard here is my best attempt at making sense of what’s happening.
Community
Getting serious about the economic response to COVID-19
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The first two characteristics of a potential COVID-19 slowdown—that it could come fast and come straight for low-wage workers first—suggest one potential response: rapid direct payments to individuals.
Essay
Book Review: ‘When Workers Shot Back’
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Overall I found When Workers Shot Back to be a careful study of the relationship workers and capital and the resulting reconfiguration of the state’s role in our lives. I would recommend the book for anyone interested in learning more about the history and nuances of the working-class struggle.
Essay
Analysis and Review of Netflix’s ‘American Factory’
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In a system that values them only as labor, these workers retain their humanity and their complexity. It’s the only thing that sets them aside from their robot competitors, which the filmmakers invoke in the movie’s sobering final scenes.
Community
Martin Luther King Jr., Union Man
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If Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he’d probably tell people to join unions.
Essay
The Powerful New Idea in Elizabeth Warren’s Labor Platform
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On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren released her long-awaited labor platform, titled “Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages.” The plan provides unions with a long wish list of badly needed reforms and new powers. It also makes a solid case that, like Bernie Sanders, she would be the labor movement’s biggest booster in the White House in generations.
Essay
The Recent Evolution of Wisconsin Public Worker Unionism since Act 10
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Looking at case studies of Wisconsin’s AFSME, AFT-Wisconsin, SEIU, and WEAC public sector unions, authors David Knack, Michaerl Childers, Alexia Kuwiec, and Armando Ibarra show the various ways public sector workers are navigating the political terrain of anti-union, anti-labor legislation.
Essay
Employers increase their profits and put downward pressure on wages and labor standards by exploiting migrant workers
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How well is the American economy working for working people?
EPI researcher Daniel Costa reflect on the state of labor and the exploitation of immigrant workers in the United States.
Essay
Imagining with The Feminist Strip Club
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What grew from this conversation reminds us that workers are the experts of their own experience and craft, and therefore should shape their workplace.
Commentary
A Stripper vs. the World
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The word “stripper” does not define me. The work I do does not determine whether or not I will be treated as someone’s daughter, or sister, or mother. I am these things regardless of what I do, and that can never be forgotten.
Essay
Regulation vs. Reality
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Indeed, the long history of sexual use regulation in Minneapolis demonstrates a preoccupation with morality and real estate. What we haven’t seen enough of are regulations that focus on the workers themselves and attempt to address labor issues like workplace conditions, fair wages, and workers’ health and well-being. Regulation and reality clearly don’t line up, at least not from a labor perspective. Individuals in positions of power would do well to listen to those for whom erotic dancing is a career and who are most directly affected by adult entertainment ordinances.