Our series of interviews with authors of new books in labor and working-class history continues. Laura McEnaney’s Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago, is being released by the University of Pennsylvania Press today. McEnaney, a professor of history at Whittier College, answered questions from Jacob Remes.
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It’s been a long time since a strike in the US directly targeted sexual harassment. But on Tuesday, women workers took direct action against their bosses and brought the #MeToo movement to McDonald’s.
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Over the better part of the last year (July 2017-August 2018), Disney cast members in both Anaheim and Orlando have been negotiating with Disney and have signed what has been called a historic contract. A true David and Goliath story, they and their unions have been going toe to toe with one of the most sophisticated, cut-throat, and best funded legal teams in the world, and they seem to have won at least a partial victory.
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“Jesse” is one of a cohort of 80 students sociologist Jessica Calarco observed from the 3rd through the 5th grades and then revisited in middle school for her new book, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School.
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It’s hard for most of us to recall any period in the last fifty years that we could call the “good times” for labor in the U.S. Membership density in American unions has been on a steady decline. The National Labor Relations Board has certified few new unions, and mergers have become common.
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If you haven’t seen Sorry to Bother You yet, please stop reading this and find somewhere in your town that is still playing the film. SEE IT NOW.
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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).
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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.
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The attacks on labor these days take many forms. Some are straight-forward and brutally confrontational—the Janus ruling or the state legislation in Iowa and Wisconsin and elsewhere that follow a similar script in their attack on labor’s position of strength in the public sector.
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I was invited by Senators Whitehouse and Stabenow and the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee to open a hearing entitled “After Janus v. AFSCME: Why Teachers and Workers are Fighting Back Against the Secret Money Campaign to Take Away Their Rights.”
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