Annelise Orleck is a professor at Dartmouth College. Her new book is “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising against Poverty Wages.
The welfare rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s resisted invasive policies like caseworker “midnight raids” and cuts to already-miserly public assistance. Their animating vision: that society treat every mother and child with dignity.
Earlier this week, striking McDonald’s workers in the UK went to 10 Downing Street to disrupt business as usual. Their demands: a living wage, union recognition, and an end to sexual harassment on the job.
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.
Workers resist exploitation, even in the worst circumstances. Historian Annelise Orleck spoke with 140 of them, from garment workers in Cambodia to Walmart workers in the US.