labor history 
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/12/2021
America Needs to Empower Workers Again (Opinion)
by Paul Krugman
Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that the decline of labor was a political outcome; reviving unions requires changing the rules governing management during a union drive, but is a key to alleviating inequality.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
4/13/2021
The Union Battle at Amazon Is Far from Over
by Alec MacGillis
The effort to organize Amazon's Alabama warehouse workers has failed. In this, it resembles the early stages of other organizing efforts that led to the brief golden era of American labor. Unexpected contingencies helped push management of American industry to accept unions by the 1940s despite their violent opposition decades before.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/8/2021
The Health Care Crucible (Review)
Gabriel Winant's "The Next Shift" examines the shift from industrial manufacturing toward care work as the economic base of the Rust Belt, where profit comes from treating the old, sick, and poor of one generation of the working class through the labor of the next generation.
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SOURCE: WNYC
3/31/2021
What a Unionization Effort in Alabama Could Mean for the Labor Movement
Historian Keri Leigh Merritt discusses the Amazon unionization vote in the context of southern labor history.
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SOURCE: The Nation
4/6/2021
The Age of Care (Review of Gabriel Winant's "The Next Shift")
by Nelson Lichtenstein
Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein says Gabriel Winant's book on the rise of the care industry is the story of community change in the last 50 years, with union retiree health care dollars reabsorbed by capital through the treatment of diseases of despair provoked by deindustrialization (with care provided by a workforce of women and people of color).
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3/30/2021
The Bessemer, Alabama Amazon Union Election Campaign
Historians look at the just-concluded union election campaign at Amazon's Alabama facilty and await the results.
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SOURCE: Financial Times
3/29/2021
The Ultimate David and Goliath Fight in Alabama
The effort to organize Amazon Workers in Bessemer, Alabama may succeed if it connects the cause of labor to broader civil rights issues that resonate with the local Black community and echo the involvement of Martin Luther King in struggles for workers and economic justice, say historians Keri Leigh Merritt and Michael Innis-Jiménez.
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SOURCE: FrankNews
3/26/2021
Interview: A Rich Man's War, A Poor Man's Fight
Historian Keri Leigh Merritt, interviewed about the history of labor organizing in the South, links the history of Southern policing to the maintenance of exploitative labor practices after the Civil War and explains how the fight to unionize Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama facility extends the politics of the Civil Rights Movement.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/25/2021
Can a Grand Bargain Empower Amazon’s Workers and Limit Corporate Power?
by Nelson Lichtenstein
"Unions are weaker today than they were in the 1930s, but the idea that wages have to rise and democracy has to be revitalized, in the workplace and beyond, is returning in an echo of that era."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/19/2021
The Triangle Fire and the Fight for $15
by Christopher C. Gorham
The Triangle Shirtwaist fire inspired workplace safety regulation and advanced the cause of organized labor. It's time to remember the victims with a commitment to a federal living wage law.
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SOURCE: Facing South
3/11/2021
The PRO Act Would Undo Decades of Southern Anti-Union Laws Rooted in Racism
by Olivia Paschal
By overriding state "right to work" laws and allowing unions to collect the equivalent of dues from non-members, the PRO Act passed by the House would undo a political movement that both squelched labor organizing in the South and maintained white supremacy.
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SOURCE: Go Upstate
3/16/2021
Digging into the History of the Former Dixie Shirt Textile Business in Spartanburg
Founded by an immigrant Jewish family who moved to Spartanburg from New York City, the Dixie Shirt Company connected the histories of American Jews, labor, industry, and war mobilization in the South. Furman historian Diane Vecchio uncovered the story as part of a plan to redevelop the site.
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3/14/2021
Biden Supports Amazon Workers' Right to Form a Union. Is this a Turn Back to Pro-Worker Policy?
by Martin Halpern
The union election of Amazon workers in Alabama is a signal of momentum for renewing the power of workers, but grassroots energy needs support from the Biden White House (and probably the end of the Senate filibuster) to secure a more equitable society.
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3/14/2021
The Women Who Fought Tooth and Nail for the Flint Sit-Down Strikes
by Edward McClelland
Genora Johnson and the women of Flint, Michigan were the backbone of the sit-down strike campaigns that secured union recognition at General Motors.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/26/2021
The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning
Columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historians Michael W. Fitzgerald, Paul Horton, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Robert Widell, Jr. which shows that Alabamians, and Black Alabamians in particular, have organized to fight both racial oppression and labor exploitation.
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SOURCE: Talking Points Memo
2/1/2021
Why Biden’s Forceful Endorsement Of Labor Is The Strongest From A POTUS In Decades
Labor historians Karen Sawislak and Erik Loomis discuss how Joe Biden's endorsement of freedom of workers to form a union (without mentioning Amazon in particular) goes against decades-long trends in the political power and cultural esteem of labor unions.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
2/23/2021
'We Deserve More': An Amazon Warehouse’s High-Stakes Union Drive
Historians Joseph McCartin, Michael Innis Jiménez, and Kerri Leigh Merritt discuss the historic union drive at Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama center and where it fits in the history of labor and civil rights in the south.
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2/21/2021
From Red Finn Halls to The Lincoln Brigade: Class Formation on Washington’s “Red Coast”
by Jerry Lembcke
If the current crisis revives interest in class as an analytical concept, a recent book on union organizing on the Washington state coast offers a model for reconstructing the work, community and social life of a community.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/10/2021
Curt Flood Belongs in the Hall of Fame
Sportswriter Jemele Hill makes the case for Curt Flood as an advocate for the labor rights of ballplayers and especially the right of players of color to be paid for their skill, even at the cost of being blackballed from the game.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/8/2021
The Alabama Town That Could Defeat Jeff Bezos
The industrial suburb of Bessemer has a long history as a rare center of union activity in the South and now is the focal point of an effort to organize Amazon's warehouse workers. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who has written about interracial labor militancy in Alabama, gives context.
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