“Freedom” is a fickle force, especially when it is expressed in the guise of aggressive flag-waving nationalism. Recent convoys in Canada and the U.S. have claimed the word to define themselves as they descended on their nation’s capital cities in recent weeks.
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Kaisha Esty’s marvelous essay “‘I Told Him to Let Me Alone, That He Hurt Me’: Black Women and Girls and the Battle Over Labor and Sexual Consent in Union-Occupied Territory” is available for free download from Duke University Press until May 31.
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Since winning two NLRB elections at Buffalo stores last December, the remarkable Starbucks Workers United union campaign has now spread to well over 100 stores in over 26 states. In response, Starbucks management has bombarded baristas with anti-union text messages, forced them to attend “captive audience meetings,” threatened to close unionized stores and tried to drive out activists at unionized stores in Buffalo, New York, attempted to pack bargaining units with newly-hired employees and limited their contact with pro-union workers, and allegedly fired union several union activists at stores in Memphis and elsewhere.
Read more →Bob Rossi’s poem “Deincarnation” was published in December 2021’s Labor: Studies in Working Class History. He’s graced us with another.
Bob Rossi
Late one night, wearied by the misfortunes
And follies of men, I put aside my work
And wondered at continuing.
Read more →What do labor history and movements for women’s rights have in common?
Check out the new additions to the Teaching Labor’s Story resource bank:
a 1910 article advocating women’s suffrage by Kate Debs (yes, that Debs)
Document Selection and Teaching Guide by Michelle Killion Morahn, Affiliated Faculty, Indiana State University
and the 1966 National Organization of Women’s Statement of Purpose
Document Selection and Teaching Guide by: Katherine Turk, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Debs makes the case for women’s suffrage with a combination of natural rights and class interest arguments, draws support from the new science of sociology, and makes a not-very-subtle critique of patriarchy within the socialist movement itself.
CA is Leader in Higher Wage Movement
California is the epicenter for a nationwide grassroots movement to raise the wage floor for American workers. On January 1st, the state set $15 an hour as the floor for large employers and $14 an hour for small ones (rising to $15 for all in 2023).
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“Protest” or “hunger strike?” Officials at the Robert N. Davoren complex (R.N.D.C.), a jail part of the Rikers Island correctional facility, have offered conflicting statements on the actions of a group of detainees who protested their living conditions on January 8th.
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Labor Online interviewed Jacob Zumoff about his new book, The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike last year. In the course of the interview he mentioned the way that this strike creatively used film to build support for the workers cause.
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Jason Resnikoff’s essay The Paradox of Automation: QWERTY and the Neuter Keyboard is now available with free access until March 31, 2022 of Labor: Working Class Studies of the Americas. The essay gives new perspectives on how typing, considered one of the “office wife” service duties, became “neutered,” in the late twentieth century.
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Please share these freely available articles with your colleagues and students.
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