The “labor question” was once the principal question confronting American society, the axis upon which other maladies turned. We don’t think about social problems according to the labor question today — but perhaps we should.
Since the 1970s, many colleges and universities have become predatory financial giants, while mountains of student debt pile up and academic work becomes ever more precarious. An ascendant academic labor movement may be key to reversing these trends.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party's goal is to create nothing less than a twenty-first century democratic socialism.
At Sunday’s debate, Bernie Sanders can make clear that the policies he has long fought for, and Joe Biden has long opposed, are the ones we need to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Sanders has a chance to hit Biden hard — he shouldn't hold back.
We can’t talk about the rise of right-wing populists like Donald Trump, reactionary and bizarre conspiracy theories like QAnon, and the increasingly pervasive sense of nihilism across global politics without talking about neoliberalism.
Sectoral bargaining allows unions in countries around the world to improve the lives of enormous numbers of workers, including many who aren’t union members themselves. The sectoral model could be a huge boon to labor power in the United States.
The establishment of the first Amazon union in the US is a historic breakthrough for organized labor. The successful union drive shows how the Left can best build real grassroots power: by organizing in the workplace.
From autoworkers in the US to railworkers in the UK, organized labor is enjoying a new lease on life. In an interview, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn explains why he thinks militant organizing represents the trade unions’ future.
Though Bill Clinton ran for president on promises of empowering workers, in office he gutted welfare and passed NAFTA, undermining organized labor and driving working-class voters away from the Democratic Party. We’re still living with the consequences.
At the heart of the current uptick in union organizing at companies like Starbucks has been “worker-to-worker unionism.” That model could be key to scaling up organizing and revitalizing the labor movement.
The evidence is overwhelming: workers are abandoning the Democrats and center-left parties around the world. Class dealignment is radically changing politics, and the Left needs a program to win the working class.
Democrats are hoping Trump will discredit himself with a recession, while the Left sometimes fantasizes about crisis destabilizing capitalism itself. But economic crises cause massive human suffering and have recently redounded more to the Right than the Left.
The coronavirus pandemic affects everyone, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally. Working-class neighborhoods have it much harder than wealthy enclaves — and that’s unconscionable.
Jared Kushner has gotten yet another nepotistic gig leading the Trump administration’s coronavirus “shadow task force.” The problem is, he doesn’t know anything about COVID-19, just like he doesn’t know anything about immigration reform or Middle East peace.
Emily Gallagher is running to be the first socialist in a century to represent her North Brooklyn district in the New York state assembly. Her focus on residential displacement and workers’ rights is drawing a steady flow of small donations — while big corporate money from companies like Lyft is being mobilized against her.
Joe Biden promised to be the most pro-union president in modern history. He has a chance to prove it by passing the PRO Act, a sweeping labor law reform bill.
California’s post-Reagan drift into the welcome arms of the corporate-friendly Democratic Party has meant a politics that looks like an elite lifestyle brand. It’s a state where social liberalism reigns, but so does staggering poverty and inequality. The Democratic Party has failed California and unless things change, it will continue to fail our nation.
Tech workers occupy a contradictory location in the American class structure. On the one hand, many are well paid and identify both as professionals and with management. On the other, the proletarianized aspects of their work can offer opportunities to seize for organizing as workers.
In the 1920s and ’30s, a summer school for industrial working women built an economics curriculum around the perspective of labor rather than capital. It offers a visionary example of worker education that emphasizes class struggle and worker empowerment.
Six workers were killed last month because Amazon insisted they keep working during a tornado. The corporation's poor safety record and sky-high staff turnover are caused by one thing: treating people as disposable is better for Amazon’s profits.