French workers are fighting to maintain their 35 hour work week. Adopted in February of 2000, as part of the platform of France’s Socialist Party, it became effective in 2002. Now, despite no ill effects in productivity the MEDEF, or the “Movement of the Enterprises of France,” which is an employer’s union, is pressing for a return to the past.
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A 2014 Gallup poll shows Americans work an average of 47 hours per week. But should the work week be 30 hours? And should this is considered full-time employment? Why should this be done and what are the implications?
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Ten years ago, one of the most radical unions in the hemisphere, the Sección XXII of Mexico’s National Education Workers’ Union (SNTE), led a vibrant movement against the state governor’s heavy-handed rule in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The demonstrations, known to many as the “Oaxaca Commune,” featured six months of mass marches, public encampments, and neighborhood barricades.
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After briefly skimming over the potential effects of the proposed restructuring of pay for graduate assistants, I found myself jadedly stunned by the UW-Madison administration’s most recent attack on the quality of higher education, specifically with regard to the Humanities, at Wisconsin’s prized flagship and world-renowned institution.
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How should Americans remember Woodrow Wilson? This is the central question triggered recently by Princeton University protesters who have brought attention to his racism. The protesters have rightly pointed out the loathsome words and actions of the turn-of-the-century pro-segregationist academic, former Princeton head, and two-term United States president.
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The IWW History Project is now live. Based at the University of Washington, the online project reveals in new ways the rich history of the Industrial Workers of the World during the formative years, 1905-1935.
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For five-days “Fighting Inequality” conference (May 2015) participants critically considered ways, then and now, that working-class people experience and struggle against class inequality. One of the conference’s highlights was the session, “Fighting Inequality through Teaching, Scholarship and Activism: A Roundtable Discussion on the Career of Jim Barrett” where panelists shared ways that Barrett’s contributions to the field of labor and working class history offer an inspiring model of how to balance scholarly excellence with civic engagement.
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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.
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On May 25, 2015, weather conditions forced the cancelation of a flight from Atlanta to Boston. One of the flight’s intended passengers was Malcolm Butler, defensive back for the New England Patriots, best known for his game winning interception in the final seconds of the Super Bowl this past February.
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