“Stayin’ Alive” in the 1970s
A History for the Future interview with labor historian Jefferson Cowie on the death of the New Deal order and the rise of working class conservatism over the course of the 1970s.
A promise is a promise…unless it’s inconvenient
In a Rhode Island lawsuit, the state’s argument that the pension promises made to public workers were not contracts is a “radical shift” from legal norms.
Reader's anguished cry on "extreme underemployment"
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I have applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs in my field over the past two years to no avail — in spite of more than 30 years of experience. I should say “because of” rather than “in spite of” since for most positions my experience works against me. I have found that there exists almost no possibilities between my last good position (I was making $65,000 with good benefits) and the crappy hourly positions I’ve been forced to take the past year.
Individual minimum wage versus family poverty threshold
Working at minimum wage earns you less in real terms than in 1968; you're further from supporting your family, too.
BlackRock good; public employee pensions bad
Two recent NYT articles ignore altogether the need for a critical approach. In one, a front-pager billed as a news article, the reporter could easily be mistaken for a member of BlackRock's PR team. In the other, the reporter treated with contempt the idea that workers deserve to have bargained-for pensions benefits honored.
Let them eat iPhones
Apple's lack of any sense of obligation to support American workers — indeed, the lack of any national loyalty at all — is appalling. Yet that’s not even the truly frightening part of the recent New York Times story. Most troubling is the broader, underlying narrative conveyed and ultimately encouraged by the story: there is nothing that America as a nation can or should do to alter the trajectory of events.