Belabored Podcast #59: Labor Rights as Civil Rights, with Moshe Marvit

Belabored Podcast #59: Labor Rights as Civil Rights, with Moshe Marvit

Is the right to form a union also a civil right? Belabored asks Moshe Marvit, who recently helped turn the idea into legislation now pending in Congress. Plus: “crowd work,” Ferguson, unionizing Elmos, and why we need a four-hour workday.

Podcast (belabored): Download

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here or on Stitcher here. Check out the full Belabored archive here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis.

Unionization has always been about labor rights—but is the right to form a union also a civil right? How might the politics and culture of organized labor change if society saw unionization not simply as an exercise of collective power in the workplace, but as an individual entitlement, part of one’s economic citizenship? We explore this question with Moshe Marvit, a Century Foundation fellow who recently helped turn the idea into legislation now pending in Congress. We also discuss minority unionism, technology and labor exploitation, and how our concepts of labor rights are evolving in response to economic shifts and intensifying legal attacks on the labor movement.

In our news round-up, there’s the latest on labor’s role in the movements against police brutality and in defense of Gaza, Starbucks’s lukewarm attempts at reform, and labor unity among Times Square’s costumed characters. And finally, recommended reading on why teaching is not a business, and why the workday should not be eight hours.

News

NYC teachers union gets behind Eric Garner protest march, rally (Staten Island Advance)

1199SEIU March For Justice For Victims of Police Brutality (1199SEIU)

UFT announcement (Facebook)

Michelle: What Would Real Economic Justice Look Like in Ferguson? (The Nation)

“Mike Brown Is Our Son” (LaborNotes)

Israeli ship is blocked from unloading in Oakland for four straight days (Electronic Intifada)

Oakland Activists “Block the Boat” for Three Days Running (In These Times)

Times Square costumed characters band together with goal of forming labor union (New York Daily News)

Working Anything but 9 to 5: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos (New York Times)

Starbucks to Revise Policies to End Irregular Schedules for Its 130,000 Baristas (New York Times)

Michelle: How Starbucks’s ‘Flexible’ Scheduling Is Stretching Workers to the Breaking Point (The Nation)

Conversation with Moshe Marvit

Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit: Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice (Century Foundation)

Making workers’ rights a civil right (The Hill)

Moshe Marvit: In Order to Grow, Does Labor Need to Shrink? (In These Times)

How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine (The Nation)

Argh, I Wish I’d Written That!

Sarah: Nathan Schneider, Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday? (VICE)

Michelle: David Kirp, Teaching Is Not a Business (New York Times)