Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
For years, we were given reactionary tropes about welfare queens and the need to cut the deficit. But now there’s popular recognition that state action is needed to boost the economy and help working people. We need to make sure that the age of deadly austerity never comes back.
The outcomes of class conflicts throughout history have been influenced by how workers and rulers respond to pandemics. As we emerge from this pandemic, the fight for fairer work regimes is our urgent task.
As a member of the Irish Republican Army, I planted a time bomb at the Tory Party conference in 1984 and tried to kill Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Here’s what led me to that point — and why I believe in the peace process today.
New data shows a huge drop in tax audits of the wealthy and corporations. The IRS is hounding working people but letting the rich get away with murder.
Newly released documents show Joe Biden’s White House staffers recently working as consultants for Lyft, billionaire foundations, and an Israeli facial recognition firm. It’s another reminder of the revolving door between big business and the state.
Last year, as elected officials dithered on whether to shut down schools at the pandemic’s beginning, educators forced them shut. A year later, educators are making the same demand — against the efforts of both Mayor Bill de Blasio and their own union, the United Federation of Teachers.
Labor has suffered defeat after defeat in recent years, especially when it comes to the steady expansion of state-level right-to-work bills. But earlier this month, the state of Montana bucked that trend — by defeating right-to-work.
Graduate workers at Columbia University are currently on strike, the culmination of a yearslong campaign for a decent contract. This kind of confrontation with the neoliberal university is the only way to win decent pay and working conditions in higher education.
The death of five people in a Bucharest hospital fire is the latest illustration of how neoliberal shock therapy has run down Romania’s public services. For the labor protesters who have been in the streets since January, the blaze only confirms their message: Romania has to invest in its own public services, not just rely on remittances from abroad.
On Wednesday, the Netherlands held Europe’s first national election since the start of the pandemic — and the entire center-left took just 20 percent of the vote. While the crisis provided a chance to call for radical economic change, the “post-ideological” center-left posed no alternative to the government’s call to return to normal.
This week, AFA-CWA president Sara Nelson traveled to Bessemer, Alabama, where Amazon workers are now voting on unionization. We spoke to Nelson about the union drive, Amazon’s tone-deafness, and how her members are doing one year into the pandemic.
Talk of Joe Biden as a transformational president is getting ahead of itself. Historically, labor law reform has triggered some of the fiercest battles from business — and Joe Biden has shown no evidence he’ll go to the mat for the PRO Act, the most transformative piece of labor legislation in decades.
To fulfill his campaign promise of raising the minimum wage and safeguard the most basic elements of democracy, Joe Biden must publicly and vocally support scrapping the filibuster.
Jaslin Kaur is a socialist running for New York City Council. In an interview with Jacobin, she talks about the desperate need for debt relief for New York taxi drivers, cutting the New York Police Department’s massive budget, and the spurious attacks on socialists as “white gentrifiers.”
Last year, we reported that New York governor Andrew Cuomo trying to shield killer nursing home execs from criminal liability for actions during the pandemic. Now the FBI is probing how the corporate immunity law came about.
The Biden administration is selling its COVID relief bill as a historic milestone in the war on poverty. In reality, it’s a temporary measure whose anti-poverty impact is roughly the same as last year’s CARES Act signed by Trump. For Biden to claim an anti-poverty legacy, he needs to make the child benefit permanent.
On Monday, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias announced he is resigning as Spain’s deputy prime minister to run for election in the Madrid region. Iglesias’s move to regional politics is aimed at blocking the formation of another far-right government in the capital — but it also highlights his own party’s need to go beyond relying on one brilliant communicator.
Finally, it appears that the filibuster’s days may be numbered. This is good news, because the closer we get to scrapping the filibuster, the closer we get to passing major labor law reform like the PRO Act.
Vice President Kamala Harris now touts herself as a police reform advocate. But troubling incidents — including fatal shootings by police officers in the state — during her time as California’s “top cop” suggest that wasn’t always the case.
At a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, with Bernie Sanders presiding, economists, labor experts, and the day’s star witness — Jennifer Bates, an Amazon warehouse worker in Bessemer, Alabama — exposed the grim workings of an economy that continues to funnel wealth and power to a tiny capitalist elite.