Richard Wells is an Associate Professor of Labor Studies at the Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies, Empire State College/SUNY.
Is there life after coal, what future for the collier?
The scab and the hardliner both, wear the blue scars of the miner
Rising up now from the earth, we’re branded and we’re blinded
The sunlight and the dole queue boast, the blue scars of the miner
Is there anything but drink, drugs and last reminders
A single tear drop rolling down, the blue scars of the miner
–Lyrics from the “Blue Scars of the Miner,” The Freakons, 2022.
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Editor’s Note: We select a featured essay from each issue of Labor: Studies in Working Class History. We’ve never featured a film review, and so it’s great to make available Richard Wells’ essay, Class Politics and the Filmmakers’s Craft in Mike Leigh’s Peterloo from issue 19:3 on the film Peterloo, released in 2018.
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When “Connecting the Dots: Labor and the Digital Landscape” went to press at LABOR (15:3), the wave of union organizing and activism in the media industry was just gaining ground. The initial foray came in 2015 at Gawker Media Group, where workers joined forces with the Writers’ Guild of America East (WGAE).
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When “Connecting the Dots: Labor and the Digital Landscape” went to press at LABOR (15:3), the wave of union organizing and activism in the media industry was just gaining ground.
Read more →