David Watkins (Dayton): Republicanism at Work: Strategies for Supporting Resistance to Domination in the Workplace. Michael Grabell and Howard Berkes go inside Corporate America’s campaign to ditch workers’ comp: One Texas lawyer is helping companies opt out of workers’ compensation and write their own rules — what does it mean for injured workers? Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship faces rare criminal prosecution for workplace safety issues. Benjamin Levin (Harvard): Criminal Labor Law. Christine Neylon O’Brien (BC): I Swear! From Shoptalk to Social Media: The Top Ten National Labor Relations Board Profanity Cases. Labor board’s shift in legal interpretation could allow many taxi drivers to unionize. Labor law has been frozen for 60 years — Democrats are trying to crack it open. Erik Loomis reviews From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century by Alex Gourevitch.
Talking politics and political dysfunction: Hamilton Nolan and Alex Pareene interview Tom Perez, U.S. Secretary of Labor. Lydia DePillis on how Larry Summers has been making some of the loudest arguments in favor of unions. With traditional unions on the decline, can members-only unions breathe life back into labor? Not all employers hate unions — these ones are trying to save them. From TPM, Rich Yeselson on the decline of labor, the increase of inequality. The life and death of an Amazon warehouse temp: Dave Jamieson on what the future of low-wage work really looks like. J. Crew, Urban Outfitters, and more just stopped using “on-call” scheduling: Michelle Chen on why this could be the biggest deal of the season. Steve Greenhouse on the mystery of the vanishing pay raise. The measured worker: The technology that illuminates worker productivity and value also contributes to wage inequality.
Matthew Finkin (Illinois): “The Kindness of Strangers”: The Tip and the Minimum Wage in France, Germany, and the United States. Oya Aktas on the intellectual history of the minimum wage and overtime. Should everyone’s salary be public information? Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper have us wondering: Why don’t more people discuss their compensation? Dave Ashton on the case against full-time employees. Will Americans ever embrace the 30-hour workweek? First, let’s get rid of all the bosses: Roger D. Hodge on a radical experiment at Zappos to end the office workplace as we know it. An excerpt from Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams.
