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labor

  • SOURCE: Mother Jones
    7/4/2023

    University of California is Cracking Down on Workers and Dissent

    by Rafael Jaime

    The arrest of three UC labor activists on vandalism charges related to chalking a sidewalk with pro-labor slogans show that the university will throw its commitment to free speech out the window when it comes to playing hardball with graduate workers, says one grad union leader. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    6/1/2023

    Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions

    By an 8-1 vote, with only Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, the Court allowed employers to bypass the National Labor Relations Board to seek potentially crippling tort judgments against unions for business losses related to strikes, removing a major incentive for good-faith negotiation by employers. 

  • SOURCE: Defector
    3/3/2023

    The Police Aren't Part of Change in Chicago

    by Dan Berger

    A historian critiquing a recent book on Black Lives Matter argues that the political, fiscal and cultural influence of police is so broad that it's impossible to think of meaningful social reform in a society that includes modern police departments. 

  • SOURCE: NextCity
    4/20/2023

    The 4-Day Work Week is an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

    While workers have long expressed a preference for a shorter work week, the labor market issues of the COVID pandemic have recalibrated the balance of power between workers and management in ways that have made the idea more appealing to policymakers. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    4/17/2023

    Rutgers Unions Suspend Strike after Big Gains

    Although unions representing graduate workers, lecturers, and full-time faculty must approve them, a framework for agreement has been reached that would deliver significant gains in wages and other demands. 

  • SOURCE: Harper's
    4/15/2023

    Beyond Quiet Quitting: The Real Crisis of Work

    by Erik Baker

    Impressionistic accounts of worker withdrawal and labor militancy both fail to capture a deeper issue: Work is failing to deliver on the promises the state has made as an avenue of meaning and fulfillment. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    3/24/2023

    Why LAUSD Teachers Walked Out

    At the heart of the walkout of 60,000 education professionals is the reality that the school district's policies are keeping teachers and students in poverty that makes it harder to teach and learn, says a union official. 

  • SOURCE: Peste
    2/21/2023

    Can a "Return to Normal" Happen Without Repairing Sociability?

    by Nate Holdren

    The push to return to many pre-pandemic modes of working and living is taking place without sufficient provision for mitigating risk, and with seriously damaged bonds of trust and mutual support; people are again in proximity to each other, but far from being together. 

  • SOURCE: Yes!
    1/26/2023

    Why We Need Pirates

    by Paul Buhle, Marcus Rediker and David Lester

    Though vilified in popular culture, the history of piracy shows that many crews were egalitarian bands of maritime workers escaping their exploitation at the hands of merchant companies and navies. A new graphic adaptation of a recent history of piracy tells the story. 

  • 1/15/2023

    Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

    by Sam Ben-Meir

    The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    12/8/2022

    The University of California is Also a Landlord

    The system, which approximates a real estate investment firm that also confers degrees, is squeezing its graduate students both as their wage-payer and as a large-scale landlord that contributes to a housing market that is unaffordable to graduate assistants and postdoctoral researchers. 

  • SOURCE: Yale Daily News
    11/27/2022

    Grad Workers: Choose Solidarity with New Haven

    by Adom Getachew and Sarah Haley

    Two former Yale PhD students argue that the university's graduate student union offers not just benefits and protection to graduate student workers, but the chance for them to work in solidarity with other university and New Haven workers across the vast racial and socioeconomic divides separating city and campus.