Showing titles in Labor & Industrial Relations

Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes.

In a wide-ranging narrative that takes us from a downsized marketing executive in Massachusetts, to a father of three in Appalachia finding purpose and meaning working in a convenience-store chain, to an unemployed autoworker retraining in "advanced manufacturing", Shell reveals how work is essential to our flourishing and pyschological well-being - and how so many of the avenues to well-paid and meaningful work will be challenged in the years ahead.

On a spring morning in 1914, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado's industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners' families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns. Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the "Great Coalfield War."

Most Americans work too long and too hard, while others lack consistency in their hours and schedules. Work hours declined for a century through hard-fought labor-movement victories, but they've increased significantly since the '70s. Worked Over traces the varied reasons why our lives became tethered to a new rhythm of work and describes how we might gain a greater say over our labor time - and build a more just society in the process.

The untold history of the surprising origins of the "gig economy" - how deliberate decisions made by consultants and CEOs in the '50s and '60s upended the stability of the workplace and the lives of millions of working men and women in postwar America.

After the 2016 election, Republicans had their largest majority in the states since 1928, controlling legislative chambers in 32 states and governor offices in 33. They also held both chambers of Congress and the presidency despite losing the popular vote. What happened? Meaghan Winter shows how the Democratic Party and left-leaning political establishment have spent the past several decades betting it all on the very risky and increasingly foolhardy strategy of abandoning the states to focus on federal races.

It’s no secret that hundreds of companies have been slashing pensions and health coverage earned by millions of retirees. Employers blame an aging workforce, stock market losses, and spiraling costs - a perfect storm of external forces that has forced them to take drastic measures. But this so-called retirement crisis is no accident. Award-winning investigative reporter Ellen E. Schultz reveals how large companies and the retirement industry - benefits consultants, insurance companies, and banks - have all played a huge, hidden role in the death spiral of American pensions and benefits.

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

In recent years, dreams about our technological future have soured as digital platforms have undermined privacy, eroded labor rights, and weakened democratic discourse. In light of the negative consequences of innovation, some blame harmful algorithms or greedy CEOs. Behind the Startup focuses instead on the role of capital and the influence of financiers. Drawing on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, this book examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it.

The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth.

This is the story of a local government manager who got hired by a small mountain town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains in his first city manager job. The job got complicated from the first day and developed into more and more complexity.

The best-selling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America's ailing middle class what she did for the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the world of the white-collar unemployed.

From the marketing consultant down the street to the home based "mompreneur," they are America's new economic icons: the job-hopping, tech-savvy, fulfillment-seeking, independent workers. This entertaining and provocative account of the new frontier - by Fast Company contributor Pink - will change your thinking...and maybe even change your life.

Women have made up roughly half of the college-educated workforce for years, and before the onset of the economic crisis of 2020, the gap between the percentage of women and the percentage of men in the labor force was the lowest on record. But women remain underrepresented in positions of power and status. The endurance of these inequalities begs the question: Why haven't we made more progress? Ammerman and Groysberg focus on the pervasive organizational obstacles and managerial actions that create gender imbalance.

Based on extensive research and workplace experience, The Female Vision demonstrates that what women perceive in organizations and beyond that goes unnoticed and unrewarded is exactly what so many companies need to succeed. Helgeson and Johnson delve deeply into the stories of a number of women whose vision improved their companies - although often they had to struggle not only against unresponsive organizations, peers, or others, but also against their own personal fears.

Early in the 20th century, the Wobblies, or Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), fought for the rights of workers-common laborers, migrants, immigrants, black workers-unprotected by the craft unions. In the face of beatings, kidnappings, and lynchings by vigilantes, company detectives, and hired guns, the Wobblies organized in mining and lumber camps, the wheat fields, on docksides and in textile factories.

From Major League Baseball's inception in the 1880s through World War II, team owners enjoyed monopolistic control of the industry. Despite the players' desire to form a viable union, every attempt to do so failed. In the mid-1960s, star players Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a joint holdout for multiyear contracts and much higher salaries. Their holdout quickly drew support from the public; for the first time, owners realized they could ill afford to alienate fans, their primary source of revenue.

The death sentence of slavery is still a harrowing reality for far too many—both young and old—despite the improvements of the 21st century. Bruce Ladebu and his team are determined to rescue as many as possible, to bring slavery to an end, and to provide food, shelter, education, and freedom to as many of these oppressed people as they can. Out of the Slave Fields shares the heartfelt, true stories of child labor today and the rescuers who have made it their mission to get justice for children.

Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class", a strike wave - the first in over four decades - rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.

Discover how you can successfully manage your time as a busy mom to make sure you win at life every day. If you’re like many women, time management is a constant struggle for you as you juggle the demands of daily life...and you need to be Superwoman if you’re going to balance all your commitments and give everything your very best. But if your superpowers are waning, and you’re struggling to cope with your entire workload, you’ll become an unhappy, stressed-out mom - not good for you, your kids, or your partner.