Inspired by Flavorwire’s Labor Day Reading List, I’ve decided to make my own. Here are my top ten Labor Reads for Labor Day (bonus–links, where they exist, go to powells.com, the unionized internet & Oregon bookstore).
The notion that any ordinary worker might build a career is a relatively recent one. In the centuries of agricultural work, before the Industrial Revolution, the closest thing we had to a career path was the trajectory craft workers took from apprenticeship to becoming a master craftsmen…
This country is ripe for a conversation about how to adjust our economy to the realities of the digital revolution, but that conversation is barely happening. Just as all workers (not just farmer laborers) were affected by the…
Posted on February 1, 2016 by KatiSipp
In recent weeks, I’ve had dozens of conversations with people who are thinking about how to do new kinds of worker organizing, both within the traditional labor movement and outside of it. Overwhelmingly, organizers and…
Part of my ongoing interest in writing about technology and work is inspired by the feeling that there really is a lot of cool stuff going on in the world–it’s not all just about my worry that we might find ourselves automated out of jobs, without a plan to replace income from…
Harvard Law professor Benjamin Sachs has written an article for the latest Yale Law Review, titled “The Unbundled Union: Politics Without Collective Bargaining,” in which he suggests a reform of U.S. labor law that would allow for the creation of a new kind of…