Some conservatives complain that if immigrants want to live in this country, they should learn the language. Tell that to Aracely C., who has worked in the sweatshops of Los Angeles’s garment industry for the thirteen years she has been …
Recently I found myself discussing the dawning of contemporary feminism with two young women—one a first-year student at Brandeis and another a senior in high school about to enter Brandeis. My cousin—the high school senior—was writing her senior thesis on …
A quiet revolution took hold in New York City during the humid summer months. WNYC FM and AM, the public radio stations owned by the city since 1922, were put on the selling block by a Republican mayor set on …
When they passed legislation mandating their own compliance with federal labor laws in the first hundred days of the congressional term, Republican leaders already knew that in the next hundred they would begin the systematic dismantling of federal labor law. …
I cherished Irving as a generous friend and mentor. We shared a passion for literature, democratic socialism, and Jewish identity, making him irreplaceable in my life. (The one thing he didn’t share, or even comprehend, was my interest in tennis.) …
As interest groups lobbied the Clinton transition team for cabinet appointments and Clinton groped for “diversity” in his cabinet, one group was noticeably silent—organized labor. Appointing Robert Reich as labor secretary was a good start, clearly linking labor’s fate to …
It is easy to forget that there are still places like Hamlet, North Carolina . . . until something tragic happens to put them on our mind.” So the Washington Post informed its readers several days after a September 1991 …
What else does a man do besides keep house .. .and hang around the saloon, after he has been out of work for fourteen months?” Harvey Swados asked in these pages in 1961, in his essay “The Miners: Men Without …
In April the federal Department of Labor (DOL) announced it had undercounted the number of violations of the child labor law found in a three-day sweep conducted the month before. The department revised the number of violations, from 7,000 to …
The last time I saw Mike, we had lunch at a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. He had a chocolate milkshake, which had been his staple food since the cancer recurred. We discussed nineteenth- century literature and E. M. Forster, …
Every year since 1911, union members have assembled in front of a building on Washington Place and Greene Street in New York City on March 25. The building is cloaked in black. A fire engine ladder reaches toward the eighth …
If Ruth Messinger were in high school instead of on the New York City Council, she would be considered “the most likely to succeed.” So said a January 1987 Daily News poll. City officials and opinion-makers were asked to rate …
