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Joe Hill Revisited
| by Jose Colina | Summer 2012 |
Dance among the standing cars,
Each suit will blow his horn…
Let’s make them doubt the system
To which they were lately born.
Overlooking Outsourcing
| Marvin Mandell July 11, 2012 |
I have read many analyses of the failure to recall Gov. Walker in Wisconsin, and I am astonished that not one even mentions American industries either outsourcing or just folding their tents because they are unable to compete with foreign companies. Steel is an example of the latter: many steel workers now work as greeters at Walmart.
Surely this is an important cause of labor's sad decline. Industrial capitalism has given way to finance capitalism, as everyone knows.
"Right-to-Work," Organized Labor, and "The Proletariat as a Whole"
| George Fish July 10, 2012 |
On January 31, 2012, the Republican majorities in both the Indiana Senate and House passed "right-to-work" legislation, riding roughshod over both the Democratic minority and tens of thousands mobilized workers and their allies. Indiana thus became the first new "right-to-work" state since Oklahoma, which became one in 2002—and a possible harbinger of more defeats for organized labor to come.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Tradeswomen Tell Their Survival Stories
| by Michael Hirsch | Summer 2012 |
A sociologist tired of—if not ill-suited for—academic life and one of that generation of proper New Leftists committed to organizing or reorganizing the industrial proletariat as a necessary prelude to the much anticipated Red revolution, I hired in at a Midwestern steel mill in late summer of 1977.
An Intellectual Activist
| by Stephen R. Shalom | Summer 2012 |
Various realist political pundits have suggested — only half-jokingly — that the Nobel Peace Prize should be given to the atomic bomb, since in their view it was nuclear deterrence that prevented the Cold War from turning into a world war.[1] But historian Lawrence S.
Means-testing: Shredding the Safety Net
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Summer 2012 |
Means-testing benefits that everyone is entitled to receive has become popular with conservatives these days. Conservatives have called for means-testing unemployment benefits, Medicare, and Social Security.
Mobs, Vigilantes, Cops, and Feds: The Repression of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
| by Martin Oppenheimer | Summer 2012 |
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, or "Snick") came out of the sit-in movement that began on Feb. 1, 1960 in Greensboro, N.C. Its founding convention was at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. April 15-17 that year. 200-plus-delegates representing student civil rights organizations at 52 colleges and high schools attended.
Getting Serious About Class Dynamics: Culture, Politics and Class
| by William Tabb | Summer 2012 |
Labor historians have detailed how the structure of the workplace, the cultural aspects of community, and spatial patterning all impact class consciousness. From coal mining that paradigmatically has the workers living in the hollow and the bosses on the hill to the ethnic enclaves of steel town where different nationality/ethnic groups each occupied their own distinct neighborhoods with taverns, union halls and churches, socialization matters.
The Occupy-Labor Partnership in Chicago
| by Susan Dirr |
The Occupy Movement shows the potential to reinvigorate the labor movement and pull together the working class in a strong fight against the austerity measures being carried out across the country. However, the partnerships between the myriad organizations involved in fighting austerity are tested by cultural differences, divergent interests, and competing visions. In Chicago, the coalition between Occupy, labor, and community remains active on a number of fronts despite these challenges.
Occupy Oakland and the Labor Movement
| by Bill Balderston | Summer 2012 |
The relationship between the Occupy movement and segments of organized labor, in their varied institutional and ideological forms, has been a source of much speculation on the left. While there have been strong linkages created in other cities such as New York, many see this interaction as most focused in the East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley) of California. This article is a personal account of the growing dialogue between the labor movement and the Occupy organizing as seen by someone heavily involved in attempting to build these linkages.