Paintings and sculptures often represent those with power, not the working class. Yet, a current exhibit at Washington, D.C.’s National Portrait Gallery, “The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying America’s Workers,” not only highlights workers, it also invites us to consider the contradictions of work and how it has changed.
Read more →This week’s labor history: Dr. Martin Luther King and organized labor; John F. Kennedy guarantees federal workers the right to join unions; how Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It” and Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” frame a turbulent era for American workers.
Read more →The Trades Union Congress Library is about to open a new exhibition, Labour’s Special Relationship?, about historic ties between the British and American labour movements from the nineteenth century until the present day.
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The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum has just finished its third year open in Matewan, and what a year it was.
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In November 2016, Iowa Republicans erased a slim Democratic majority in that state’s Senate, giving the party “trifecta” control of both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office. The moment the gavel struck to start the new legislative session in January 2017, they were ready with a raft of anti-worker bills, the centerpiece of which was House File 291, signed by Iowa’s then Republican governor (now Trump’s ambassador to China) Terry Branstad.
Read more →One of the most transparent union-busting provisions of Iowa’s new collective bargaining law has failed to significantly reduce the number of workers covered by the state’s two largest public-sector unions: the Iowa State Education Association and AFSCME Council 61.
Read more →Greetings from the Higgins Labor Program at the University of Notre Dame, where we are actively building our online presence with original content. One of our signature features is the Labor Song of the Month, a vehicle for lovers of labor and music to riff on a work-related tune — a classic protest song, a pop ditty about work, a rock rant about class, etc.
Read more →This will be the first Labor Day since America rediscovered its working class — or, more accurately, one part of its working class. If there was any consensus in the aftermath of last November’s election, it was that elites had lost touch with working people.
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Several months ago the Communist party in Russia updated their visual propaganda by giving three of their most controversial icons—Lenin, Stalin, and Karl Marx—a makeover.
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Lane Windham’s new book, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide, was officially released on Labor Day by the University of North Carolina Press.
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