Belabored Podcast #68: Good Cop, Bad Cop, with Joshua Freeman
Belabored talked to historian Joshua Freeman about how police and their unions fit within the labor movement, and the political contradictions of uniformed officers getting organized.
Fall 2025
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Introduction: The Promises and Limits of Progressive Cities
To dwell solely on the grim events in Washington is to neglect the more complicated and, potentially, more hopeful reality taking shape in American cities today.
Introducing our Winter issue.
Social Democracy in America?
Lane Kenworthy delivers a crisp manifesto for an “American” version of social democracy. But can his vision transcend Republican extremism, union decline, and our country’s racial heterogeneity?
Belabored Bonus Edition: Han Dongfang on Shop-Floor Democracy in China
Pro-democracy activism in China takes many forms. For longtime labor activist Han Dongfang, it starts on the shop floor. In this Belabored bonus edition, the veteran of the Tiananmen Square uprising and director of China Labour Bulletin discusses his vision for social change in China, and the promise and the peril of labor organizing in the engine of global capitalism.
Belabored Podcast #67: Bodies On the Gears
As protests continue to grow nationwide under the banner “Black Lives Matter,” Belabored talks to two workers about how their struggle connects to today’s racial justice movement. We also talk to three graduate student organizers and discuss a new retail workers’ bill of rights, bad news from the Supreme Court, the secret lives of airport workers, and more.
Declining Cities, Declining Unions: Urban Sprawl and U.S. Inequality
Cities offer the natural solidarities of work and neighborhood that make sustained organizing possible. Their decline spells disaster for American labor.
Belabored Podcast #66: Seeing Red on Black Friday
For Black Friday, Belabored talks to a Walmart labor activist and learns about a recent investigation into Walmart’s tax dodging. Plus: Ferguson #NotOneDime boycott, Obama’s executive action on immigration, the port truckers’ strike, and more.
Port Truck Drivers on Strike! A Dispatch from Two of the Nation’s Largest Ports
On Thursday, November 13, port truckers struck at the nation’s largest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach, demanding an end to misclassification and wage theft. It was the fourth strike in a campaign initiated by the Teamsters and Change to …
Belabored #65: Inside the Motor City’s Economic Crash
Belabored talked to Michael Mulholland, president of the utilities union AFSCME Local 207 in Detroit, about last week’s financial deal, the impact on union workers, and the political forces driving what he calls a manufactured financial crisis.
Philadelphia to Corporate Ed Reformers: No Contract, No Peace
In a move that sets a worrying precedent for labor–management relations across the country, Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission (SRC), a five-member unelected school governing board, stunned the city on October 6 when it announced that its members had unilaterally decided …
Bartlebys All!
Few institutions have offered themselves as less promising for the novelist than the modern office. And yet…
Belabored Podcast #62: The Unfinished History of Labor Feminism
This week, Belabored is all about labor feminism, with Feminism Unfinished authors Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. Plus: labor joins the protests in Hong Kong, college students take on Teach for America, and more.
Decline of the Strike 
A new edition of Jeremy Brecher’s classic Strike reminds readers of the sheer size, violence, and power of labor struggles now erased from American historical consciousness .
Belabored Podcast #61: When Climate and Labor Converge (Live!), with Nastaran Mohit and Lara Skinner
Is real economic and environmental sustainability still achievable? How do you tackle capitalism and climate change simultaneously? Belabored, in its first ever live recording, asks Nastaran Mohit, Lara Skinner, and guests.
Belabored Podcast #60: Whither Market Basket? with James Green
Is the outcome of the Market Basket strike a victory for working people, or something more complicated? Belabored asks James Green, a former professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of several books on labor history and social movements. Plus: care workers mobilizing across the country, pre-K workers and inequality in New York, and more.
