labor history

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  6/29/2020
  

  The Long, Unhappy History of Working From Home

  As the coronavirus keeps spreading, employers are convinced remote work has a bright future. Decades of setbacks suggest otherwise.

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• SOURCE: TIME
  6/25/2020
  

  21 Lessons From America's Worst Moments

  Historians reflect on the lessons to be learned from the worst episodes of American history (if Americans can look unflinchingly on them). 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  6/24/2020
  

  How Police Unions Became so Powerful — and How they Can Be Tamed

  Over about half a century, police unions have become one of the most powerful lobbies in local government. Historian Will Jones is among the experts who explain how. 

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• 6/21/2020
  

  The Twisted History of Domestic Military Intervention

  by Alan Singer

  The use of federal troops to enforce domestic law and order has usually served the interests of big business and white supremacy; recent calls to send in the troops are not concerned with protecting freedom.

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• 6/21/2020
  

  The Great Upheaval of 1877 Sheds Light on Today’s Protests

  by Richard Schneirov

  1877 saw a wave of mass protests and strikes by the urban poor of multiple ethnicities, violent repression by the forces of law and order, and a news media that focused on sensational instances of looting and property damage while ignoring the protesters' complaints about inequality during a brutal economic downturn.

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  6/2/2020
  

  5 Ways to Rebuild Labor and Transform America

  The COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity for organized labor to fight for a more equitable economy and society, not just better pay and benefits, if the movement learns from historical successes and failures.

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  5/23/2020
  

  You Should Know More About A. Philip Randolph, One of America’s Greatest Socialists

  As the Left attempts to chart a new course in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign, there’s no better time to learn from America’s most underrated socialist, labor leader, and civil rights legend, A. Philip Randolph.

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• SOURCE: Labor Online
  5/18/2020
  

  The Contagion and a Cure

  by Mark Lause

  Mark Lause looks at the 1793 yellow fever pandemic in Philadelphia from a working class history perspective, and finds it informs us today.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/30/2020
  

  The Coronavirus Could Rewrite the Rules for Silicon Valley

  by Margaret O'Mara

  The blue-collar workers who power the digital economy — including fulfillment center workers and app-based couriers — are pushing for higher pay and better protection, just as Detroit autoworkers did 90 years ago.

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• SOURCE: St. Paul Union Advocate
  5/4/2020
  

  Lessons from Labor History can Inform our Labor Movement During COVID-19 Crisis

  by Peter Rachleff

  The story of the 1934 Twin Cities' Teamsters strike story shows how the union won better lives for its members by linking workers and their families to the union, other unions, and the community.

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• SOURCE: HowStuffWorks
  4/29/2020
  

  Frances Perkins: The Unsung Creator of U.S. Social Security

  Author Kristin Downey covered Social Security for years, which has driven her to correct the tendency to overlook Frances Perkins's key contributions to the most important social welfare program in America.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/23/2020
  

  Front-Line Workers in the Covid-19 Fight Need Unions

  by William P. Jones

  Without strengthening labor laws, and extending them to all sectors, we cannot ensure workers have the power to protect their own health and safety on the job and the health and safety of our communities.

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• 4/19/2020
  

  We Had a Better Social Safety Net. Then We Busted Unions.

  by Lane Windham

  For a time, union contracts were the closest thing the U.S. had to the kinds of robust social safety nets found in European countries.

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• 4/5/2020
  

  Pandemic Exposes Vulnerabilities of Workers on Farms

  by Verónica Martínez-Matsuda

  Defying the broader conservative political forces of the time, the Farm Security Administration extended health care to tens of thousands of migratory agricultural workers because it understood that farmworkers’ health was vital to the nation’s wellbeing.

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• SOURCE: AFL-CIO
  3/3/2020
  

  AFL-CIO Is Profiling Labor Leaders and Activists for Women's History Month

  The AFL-CIO's blog announced that it will spotlight female labor leaders of past and present in honor of Women's History Month.

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• 3/6/2020
  

  Jack Welch Was a Bitter Foe of American Workers

  by Erik Loomis

  Most national obituaries left out or downplayed Jack Welch’s greatest impact in shaping the unequal and unfair America of today: unionbusting.

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• 2/23/20
  

  Trump Betrays His Promise to Protect and Fight for American Workers

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Campaigning for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump promised that, if he was elected, “American worker[s] will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.” Has he kept this promise?

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• 2/9/20
  

  The Making of a Periphery

  by Ulbe Bosma

  How did the once-prosperous islands of Southeast Asia transform into a “peripheral” region?

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• 12/22/19
  

  Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act

  by Martin Halpern

  If unions and their allies win passage of this legislation, they may begin to shift the country away from the glaring inequality that is at the core of the country’s discontent. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  12/11/19
  

  Historians Kirsten Weld and Erik Baker Interviewed About Harvard Graduate Worker Strike in Chronicle of Higher Education

  Graduate workers at Harvard are striking. Here’s what they want, and how they plan to get it.