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New Labor Forum Highlights: Dec. 12th, 2016 

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

As all our newsfeeds continue to be filled with an increasingly nightmarish list of Trump cabinet appointments, we wanted to bring something different to your attention. New Labor Forum prides itself on covering international affairs as well as domestic politics, economics and social movements.  And it seems apt to close the year with a focus on two countries – Russia and China – that have received so much attention from our Tweeter-in-Chief.

Paul Christensen offers Labor Under Putin, an overview of the severe challenges facing Russian workers. Russia’s authoritarian political climate makes it hard to talk about a real labor movement, but that hasn’t prevented the emergence of a rising number of labor struggles. One recent struggle involved truck drivers protesting a tax that would seriously impact their livelihoods. Philippe Alcoy of Left Voice interviews a local observer for an in-depth look at the Russian trucker’s strike.

Kevin Lin gives depth and breadth to what we think we know about inequality in China. It forms the backdrop to countless stories; one of them is the ongoing engagement between Walmart, the world’s largest private employer, and the ACFTU, which represents Walmart employees in China and is the largest trade union in the world. Qian Jinghua of Sixth Tone reports from the field.

Please note that the next issue of Highlights will come out on January 9th, and will announce the publication of our Winter 2017 issue. Happy holidays from all of us at New Labor Forum!

Table of Contents:

  1. Labor Under Putin: The State of the Russian Working Class by Paul T. Christensen/New Labor Forum
  2. Russian Truck Drivers on Strike by Philippe Alcoy
  3. Rising Inequality and its Discontents in China by Kevin Lin/New Labor Forum
  4. Mega-Retailer Walmart May Face World’s Biggest Union by Qian Jinghua

Photo by Farhad Sadykov via flickr (CC-BY)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: July 11th, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

The 2016 election season has simmered with both an inchoate and occasionally crystal clear sense that there is something intrinsically wrong with the U.S. political economy. Despite macroeconomic indicators of post Great Recession recovery, the 99 percent remains strangled by low and flat-lined wages, increasingly precarious work, mountains of personal debt, and political disenfranchisement. The resulting anger and distress, of course, can sometimes lead to constructive possibilities.

This issue of Highlights considers the transformational potential of the present moment. We begin with a proposal for large-scale organizing aimed at asserting control over wealth and capital in the interest of poor and working-class people. In “Organizing in a Brave New World,” Stephen Lerner and Saqib Bhatti make an argument for bold campaigns that confront financialized capitalism head-on and address the racial disparities at its core.

We also take a look at a new report by Tom Liacas and Jason Mogus, “Behind Today’s Breakthrough Advocacy Campaigns.” It’s a clear and helpful guide to some of the newest and best organizing taking place today by groups that aren’t following the usual scripts, including Black Lives Matter and the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Last but not least, we include a fresh article from John Nichols about the ongoing struggle over the Democratic Party Platform. That struggle — which peaked this past weekend in Orlando — represents a fascinating window into the divide between movement activists and electoral campaigners.

Contents:

  1. Organizing in a Brave New World by Stephen Lerner and Saqib Bhatti
  2. Behind Today’s Breakthrough Advocacy Campaigns by Tom Liacas & Jason Mogus, Stanford Social Innovation Review
  3. Democrats Toughen Trade Stance—but Reject Formal Opposition to the TPP by John Nichols

Photo by Tony Website via flickr (CC-BY-SA)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: June 27th, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

With this newsletter, we offer commentary and labor news on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical, Hamilton. Haven’t seen it? Odds are most of you haven’t, but that won’t stop anyone from having an opinion of Miranda’s lyrical prowess and its ‘true’ political meaning. We’ll begin with a clip of Miranda performing Hamilton Mixtape at the White House back in 2009, when the show was still being written.

Donatella Galella and James McMaster both offer critiques that capture a central dilemma: while Hamilton exalts the working-class origins and anti-slavery sympathies of its central character, it also elides Hamilton’s anti-democratic views and Wall Street founding role and furthers the immigration myth of a lone hero overcoming all odds by his exceptionalism and hard work. It was recently announced that the cast of Hamilton will host a special show for the Clinton campaign, as part of a commitment to fighting Republican nominee Donald Trump. It’s ironic, since Trump could likely stand behind most of the political messages present in the musical. Since we thought it would be of particular interest to our subscribers, we’re also including an article from the New York Times by Michael Paulson about recent labor negotiations between the show’s producers and the cast over profit sharing.

Finally, we include a review by Sherry Linkon of two recent plays with working-class characters and conflict at their center: Lynn Nottage’s Sweat and Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew Both plays depict‘tenuousness of solidarity, the persistence of divisions around race and class, and the injuries of economic insecurity’, and serve as a reminder that workers and their experiences matter.

Contents:

  1. Video: Lin-Manuel Miranda Performs at the White House Poetry Jam
  2. Racializing the American Revolution Review of the Broadway Musical Hamilton/ Donatella Galella
  3. Why Hamilton is Not the Revolution You Think it is/ James McMaster
  4. ‘Hamilton’ Producers and Actors Reach Deal on Sharing Profits/ Michael Paulson, NYT
  5. Review of 2 plays: Lynn Nottage’s Sweat and Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew/ Sherry Linkon

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik via flickr (CC-BY-NC-SA)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: May 16th, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

The Annual Summer Inequality Jump Is Nigh

Can we blame summer for inequality? Not quite. But summer is when young people are particularly desperate for jobs, recent graduates are staring at their first student debt bills, and are signing market rate leases for the first time.

It might not be fair to blame the warmest and most vacation-laden of the seasons for inequality, yet it’s a good lens for understanding some of the systemic factors at work. It matters that we draw attention to them, as a way of pushing back against schemes that only treat the symptoms, instead of root causes.

While increasing numbers of college students will be graduating with jobs this summer, it is also true that more of them will be facing a triple trap. The cities with the most opportunities, like New York and San Francisco, are also home to growing numbers of young people trapped in the gig economy, made up of freelancers with few rights and low pay. Meanwhile, this generation has ever larger student debt bills, and even faster increasing rents. Welcome to Millennial hell: low pay, unstable employment, debt you can’t pay, and impossible rent.

And while it may be true that most young people get by, somehow, it’s also the case that those who graduated into a recession will be feeling the ill effects for years to come. Recent graduates in the gig economy will be meeting quite a few from the classes of 2009, 2010, 2011 and so on, whose career prospects took a hit then.

As bad as this is on average, we need to remember that the average masks even greater inequalities. African Americans, including college graduates, continue to be unemployed at twice the rate of their white peers. And women on average still earn less than men – a problem that gets worse as the years go by.

Summertime, but these economic realities mean few of us will rise up singing, instead many will enter the ranks of the precariat, with diminished opportunities and that next step in a gray zone of uncertainty. This issue of Highlights is dedicated to our long, hot, precarious summer, and those who still need support to get by.

View on site

Contents:

  1. Indentured Studenthood: The Higher Education Act and the Burden of Student Debt by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
  2. To Be Young and Unemployed by David S. Pedulla
  3. The On-Demand Economy Is Transforming Summer Jobs by Alina Dizik, WSJ

Photo by Yasmeen via flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: Jan. 21, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

In this issue of Highlights, appearing just after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, we take up two related issues: the attack on public sector unionism embodied in the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case, now before the Supreme Court; and the crisis of mass incarceration. Both of these dilemmas profoundly and disproportionately impact African-Americans. Public sector jobs provide decent wages and job security to fully 20 percent of black workers. The potential evisceration of those unions essential to making these good jobs will therefore disproportionately affect African-American workers and their communities. And for over half a century, public sector jobs have served as a bulwark against the ubiquitous job discrimination, unemployment and bad jobs that have contributed to exceedingly high rates of black incarceration. 

Contents:

  1. Labor & the Supreme Court: Recent Cases (Charlotte Garden)
  2. Public Sector Unionism under Assault (Joseph A. McCartin)
  3. It’s Not Just the Drug War /Marie Gottschalk interview in Jacobin
  4. Michael Fortner: Forum on Justice Reform (Video)
  5. Public Sector Unions on the line (Event)
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New Labor Forum Highlights: Jan. 5, 2016

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

It’s that time of year again, when we release another issue of New Labor Forum into the world! With the New Year celebrations behind us, we’re pleased to offer a selection of free articles covering the dissolution of the Republican Party, Black Lives Matter, adjunct organizing, the next debt-based financial crisis, and the Next System Project, which aims to refine and publicize alternative political-economic system models capable of delivering more just and sustainable social, economic and ecological outcomes.

Our freely available articles are only a small fraction of what our subscribers enjoy. See the full table of contents on our website, and subscribe to our print and digital editions here.

Contents:

  1. The Fissuring of the Republican Party: A Road Map to Political Chaos / Darren Dochuk
  2. Black Lives Matter: Toward a Modern Practice of Mass Struggle / Russell Rickford
  3. Adjuncts of the World Unite: How Faculty Are Resisting the Corporatization of Higher Education / Malini Cadambi Daniel
  4. The Subprime Specter Returns: High Finance and the Growth of High Risk Consumer Debt / Jennifer Taub
  5. New York Inaugural Teach-In for the Next System Project