Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Yeah, it’s not the real Labor Day, but we’re still offering discounted subscriptions with this link today. Support our work and subscribe, or get a friend a gift subscription. At the end of the nineteenth century, the American labor movement was among the most militant in the world. From the stockyards of Chicago to the…
Imagine you are a woman in public service in any number of states across this country. You spend your career teaching, nursing the elderly back to health, assisting the unemployed in their job search. After many years of working hard, playing by rules, supporting your children to get them through college, you retire. If you’re…
The unemployment rate is low by any historical standard at 5.1 percent. Businesses are complaining of worker shortages in industries like health care, construction and trucking. Household-name companies like Walmart and McDonald’s have announced increases to their pay for low-wage workers. Add those together, and it would seem to point to 2015 as the year…
If you know your argument that restaurant owners universally revile the idea of an increased minimum wage is complete bullshit, that’s still OK! You can just make shit up, as one of the main restaurant industry lobbyists recently did. Lobbyist-mercenary and aspiring Nazgul Richard Berman recently launched Faces of 15, a shill website devoted to…
paging_filter The News Guild — known until recently as the Newspaper Guild — has traditionally been the union for American journalists who produce written work. Lately, though, in the digital-media business, it has been overshadowed by the Writers Guild of America-East union, which has organized the editorial staffs at digital-only news outlets Gawker Media, Salon…
Screenshot via financial icon Rihanna’s “Pour It Up” music video If you type “will millennials…” into Google, the first suggestion is “will millennials ever be able to retire?” It’s a question that trumps almost any other conversation about millennial life. We’re the generation least likely to be on track for retirement and most likely to…
Uber’s Travis Kalanick. Photo: Heisenberg Media/Wikimedia Commons An employment lawsuit against Uber can now proceed as a class action after a judge certified a class of 160,000 Uber drivers in California. Four drivers brought suit against Uber in 2013 alleging worker misclassification—according to them, they are employees of Uber, even if the company treats…
Our future workplaces are increasingly managed by apps and algorithms. Is technology empowering workers, or making them ever more helpless cogs in a corporate profit machine? When we talk about the “on-demand economy”, we are really talking about two things: the ability of a consumer to summon a vehicle, their lunch, or their groceries with…
Photo “Universities frequently compete, but this is a space we can find a reason to collaborate,” said Richard A. Matasar, a New York University vice president. Credit Christopher Gregory for The New York Times A MONTH before turning 60, Helen White received her master’s degree in sport management at George Washington University, and now teaches…
Somehow this is supposed to turn people *against* a higher minimum wage? http://t.co/KTRsXlMp4n pic.twitter.com/ff8qddakYc — Jody Avirgan (@jodyavirgan) August 26, 2015 On Monday, a billboard went up over Times Square ridiculing the call for a $15-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers. The billboard depicts a doofy good-for-nothing millenial shrugging his way toward a…