posts and bio
Tula Connell
Tula Connell is senior communications officer at the Solidarity Center, an international labor rights organization. She received her Ph.D. in American History from Georgetown University in 2011 and is the author of Conservative Counterrevolution: Challenging Liberalism in 1950s Milwaukee, forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press in 2016.
Tula Connell, chair of LAWCHA’s Independent Scholars Committee and Claire Goldstene, chair of the Contingent Faculty Committee organized a Saturday lunch plenary at the June 2019 LAWCHA meeting in Durham. The well-attended and highly participatory session offered an opportunity to make more visible the experiences of independent and contingent faculty scholars, to learn about work the committees have done around issues impacting independent and contingent faculty, and to continue the conversations about what LAWCHA can do and how we can protect all workers in higher education.
Read more →
Human rights activists around the world celebrated the recent release from prison of two union leaders in Kazakhstan who were convicted of bogus criminal charges after participating in a peaceful workers’ protest against the forced closure of the country’s main independent union group, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan (CITUK/KNPRK).
Read more →
As more and more new history graduates pursue careers outside academia—out of choice or necessity—and with many scholars now part of the “gig economy,” the LAWCHA Board is taking steps to reach out to this diverse and growing cohort.
Read more →
After working several years at an auto parts factory outside Bangkok, Prasit Prasopsuk compared conditions at his workplace with those of a friend employed at a similar plant—and realized his wages were lower and working conditions worse because there was no union representation.
Read more →
Women in migration are not ‘vulnerable,’ in need of ‘rescue’—they are advocates and agents of change. Current migration policies must be changed from being about ‘protecting women’ to ‘protecting women’s rights. The rights of capital to move freely across borders is unchallenged.
Read more →
Seventeen years ago, Chris Muwani migrated from Zimbabwe to South Africa, where he works on a tomato farm. If he does not fulfill his daily quota, he is not paid for the day. So to complete his workload, he typically does not walk the long distance to access the toilet or fresh water.
Read more →
Many of the more than 150 million migrant workers around the world endure abusive conditions—and one of the most exploitative phases of transnational labor migration takes place before migrants even leave their home country: recruitment for work abroad.
Read more →
Thomas Edsall’s recent New York Times op-ed on the failure of Democrats to engage as effectively as Republicans in state-level politics parenthetically surfaces a deeper historical debate that is ripe for revisiting: Why have postwar liberals been so ineffective in sustaining economic and political achievements?
Read more →
At the recent LAWCHA conference here in Washington, D.C., I was among those applauding heartily when Empire of Cotton: A Global History, Sven Beckert’s sweeping study, received the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award. It’s worth taking a look at how the “empire,” carries on today, as Beckert asserts.
Read more →
