strikes

• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/15/2022
  

  Once More, Railroad Workers are Taking the Lead for American Labor

  by Nelson Lichtenstein

  Railroad companies' profits hinge on inhumane scheduling practices—cutting the workforce to the bone and squeezing everything possible out of those who remain—that will soon be part of every industry if workers aren't able to fight back. 

• 
• SOURCE: In These Times
  7/14/2022
  

  America is Violating its Bargain for Labor Peace

  By starving the NLRB and other agencies that enforce the terms of union contracts and labor laws, the right wing is daring workers to take more militant action outside the system, says labor writer Hamilton Nolan. 

• 
• SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
  4/1/2022
  

  Mill Mother's Lament: The Legacy of Ella May Wiggins

  by Karen Sieber

  The city of Gastonia has struggled to agree on the commemoration of the bloody 1929 Loray Mill strike, including how to account for the murder of pregnant union activist Ella May Wiggins. 

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  3/28/2022
  

  Baseball's Labor War

  by Peter Dreier

  Organizing the Brotherhood of Professional Base-ball Players in 1885, John Montgomery Ward asked whether team owners could treat their players as chattel through the "reserve clause." Today's players seem to be learning some similarly radical lessons from the recent owner's lockout.

• 
• 1/16/2022
  

  Can a New Labor Movement Grow and Win with Direct Action Instead of Collective Bargaining?

  by Lawrence Wittner

  "In this time of growing corporate domination of the United States and of the world, William E. Scheuerman's A New American Labor Movement illuminates a useful path forward in the long and difficult struggle for workers’ rights."

• 
• SOURCE: Contingent
  1/1/2021
  

  Strange Beasts of Columbia

  by Eduardo Vergara Torres

  "According to the administration, the typical Columbia student worker must be an eyeless, toothless, infertile male creature bred on the cold shores of New England, who is about to inherit a fortune amassed by generations of well-educated ancestors."

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  11/29/2021
  

  The Rise and Fall (And Rise?) of Labor

  Historian Erik Loomis discusses whether the wave of labor activism will start to reverse a half-century of successful union busting by big business. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  10/4/2021
  

  Black Women, Sanderson Farms, and the Strike for Better Conditions

  by Derrion Arrington

  200 Black women poultry processing workers in Mississippi led a 1979 strike for safer conditions and protection from arbitrary actions by their all-white supervisors; they won, but their story highlights issues of labor exploitation and racism that still characterize the industry. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forbes
  9/6/2020
  

  Scholar Strike Forming On Social Media May Be Omen Of Things To Come

  A social-media organized effort by professors represents a new effort to connect academic work to activism for justice. 

• 
• 9/6/2020
  

  On Labor Day, Think of Bread and Roses

  by William Lambers

  On Labor Day, remember the demands of striking textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Working people deserve more than bare subsistence; they're entitled to dignity and pleasure too.

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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.

• 
• 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.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/28/2020
  

  Another Way the 2020s Might Be Like the 1930s

  The strikes and protests of the past month have been small, but they aren’t inconsequential.

• 
• SOURCE: Fortune
  3/30/2020
  

  USPS Warns it Might Have to Shutter by June as $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package Provides No Funding

  The USPS is the federal government’s most favorably viewed agency, with an approval rating of 90%.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/11/19
  

  How teachers advocating for their students could backfire

  by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz

  It reinforces the view of teachers as self-sacrificing servants instead of highly trained professionals.  

• 
• 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.

• 
• SOURCE: San Diego Union-Tribune
  10/16/19
  

  A history of key United Auto Workers strikes against GM

  General Motors and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative contract deal Wednesday.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  9/11/19
  

  The Necessary Radicalism of Bernie Sanders

  by Jamelle Bouie

  Conflict was the engine of labor reform in the 1930s. And mass strikes and picketing, in particular, pushed the federal government to act.

• 
• SOURCE: The Activist History Review
  8/27/19
  

  Graduate Worker Organizing is Scholarly Praxis

  by Hannah Borenstein

  For many inside and outside of academia the notion that graduate students are indeed workers is not readily clear. In large part, I came to see this as mirrored through the reproduction of academia’s lack of emphasis on scholarly praxis.