Introduction

It should be common sense—but often is not—that nearly every act of production, construction, service, transmission, transportation, and health care in America is performed by working men and women, most of whom earn less money and respect than they deserve. In this special section of Dissent, seven talented writers describe and analyze the lives and politics—on the job and off—of this bruised, yet creative and never silent majority.

Whether they toil in a declining Indiana factory town or in booming Nashville, the wage-earners Max Fraser speaks with share similar grievances about the present and worries about what will come next. Dorothy Sue Cobble pushes back at her fellow academics who blame workers for conservative gains. Atossa Abrahamian examines both the benefits and limits of unionism for freelancers, whose numbers are surging. In revealing detail, Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein describe the resistance of home-care workers to state cutbacks in wages an...