We Should All Be Working Part Time for Full-Time Pay
Here’s a transformative demand: part-time work for all, at full-time pay. We could live freer, more enriching lives, all while cutting carbon emissions.
Search Result(s) for: “working class”
The Left Has Slightly Loosened the Cold Grip of Austerity Under President Biden
The politics of taxes, spending, and deficits are more congenial to the Left than they have been in years — but there are still some clouds on the horizon. Here's a guide to where things stand on the Biden budget proposal.
The New Deal Put Huge Numbers of Unemployed Artists to Work
New Deal job programs didn't just absorb unemployment but allowed thousands of artists and writers to work on ambitious creative projects. Works Progress Administration funding allowed a golden age in US culture — but drew vicious anti-communist attacks, offering a foretaste of McCarthyism.
Judas and the Black Messiah Actually Does Fred Hampton Justice
Leftists have been burned so many times by Hollywood depictions of radicals. So it’s a welcome surprise when, once in a blue moon, mainstream filmmakers actually do the history of American radicals justice, as in the new film on Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, Judas and the Black Messiah.
The Myth of Andrew Cuomo the Competent, Steady Statesman Is Finally Being Punctured
For the better part of a year, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has basked in an absurdly undeserved, media-driven reputation as a wise and competent COVID-19 statesman. Now reality is finally catching up with him.
Cut the Military Budget and Give Us $2,000 Checks With the Money
Average Americans want to cut the military budget, but a constant stream of defense contractor cash to Congress makes such cuts unlikely. Perhaps the best way to argue against the continued expansion of the gargantuan budget for war: insist that we need that money for measures like $2,000 survival checks.
The PRO Act Is the Most Ambitious Labor Law Reform Bill in Generations
Unions are pushing Congress to pass the most comprehensive labor law reform bill in decades, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. What exactly would it do? We spoke to a labor lawyer about how the act would help workers organize unions — and strengthen the power of those unions once they’re organized.
Hedge Funds to Newspapers: Drop Dead
After more than two decades, New York’s storied tabloid, the Daily News, finally has a staff union again. But with the paper’s sale to Alden Global Capital, a rapacious hedge fund notorious for crushing newsrooms, the union is going to have its work cut out for it just keeping the paper alive.
Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Should Stand for Solidarity With the Oppressed — Not With Cops and Corporations
From its radical roots in the 1970s, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has gradually been captured by conservative, pro-corporate interests. The festival should be more than a corporate street party: it needs to recover its original spirit by empowering Mardi Gras members.
To Get Better Work Conditions, We Have to Be Ready to Strike for Them
Since the 1990s, workers in the Basque Country have gone on strike more than twice as often as any other workforce in Europe. The Basque unions insist that we have to fight for our interests — a strike-fund-centered strategy that has won huge victories even in the age of austerity.
The Starbucks Unionization Drive Sweeping the US Has Arrived in Canada
A Starbucks location in Calgary awaiting its ballot results may prove to be the spear tip of a Canadian answer to the labor surge of its US counterparts. The longtime union-busting company may find itself on the receiving end of an emboldened workforce.
When Dutch Workers Took a Stand Against Nazi Genocide
On this day in 1941, Dutch workers went on strike in solidarity with Jews facing Nazi persecution. Maurice Ferares is one of the strike’s last surviving organizers, and his life of activism links him to some of the last century’s great political struggles.
The Left Must Stand With the Ukrainian People and Against Putin’s War
Socialists’ first task in Vladimir Putin’s appalling war on Ukraine: provide unconditional solidarity with its victims.
Chuck Klosterman Remembers the ’90s Wrong
The Nineties is, on the surface, a mixture of '90s pop culture nostalgia and cultural critique. But it also has a political agenda: Chuck Klosterman wants the leftist kids to knock it off.
The Senate Just Took a Baby Step Toward the Feminist Goal of a Universal Child Benefit
On International Women's Day, the good news is that the new COVID-19 relief bill will include a kind-of, sort-of universal child benefit — a policy that feminists have long called for. But the overly complicated, burdensome way the policy is implemented means that on this issue, the Left still has its work cut out for it.
No Union Democracy, No Union Revitalization
Union democracy shouldn’t be seen as an abstract good separate from more important strategic considerations about rebuilding labor. Without democratizing labor, we can’t rebuild labor.
We Are All Living in Rupert Murdoch’s World
The right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch turns 90 today. His news empire has been instrumental in reshaping the world in the image cast by conservative elites. The need to build a robust and democratic alternative media has never been more urgent.
Joe Biden’s Immigration Policies Must Bring Deportees Back Home to the US
Under the Obama administration, millions of people were ripped from the United States and deported to countries they hadn’t known for years or even decades. The Biden administration needs a plan to bring those deportees back home to the United States.
Pablo Iglesias’s Madrid Campaign Can Shake Up Spanish Politics
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.
Chicago Socialists Led the Way in Expanding Undocumented Immigrant Protections
The City of Chicago has now fully banned the police department from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants. That’s because two socialist city council members, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, pushed for years to end that collaboration.